Author: Amber Doucette (Page 1 of 3)

Here is my summary of learning for my class Introduction to Educational Technology and Media.

Human connection is such an important part of life and of one’s learning. With the internet and social media as a tool, it makes sharing information and connecting with others, easy and instant. One of the ways I now network my learning is through the social media platform, Twitter. I must admit, I was skeptical at first, but found it to be a really helpful tool. I was able to connect with many educators who shared the same beliefs in education as I did. I love how interactive it is, and how easy it is to share resources through tweets. I also found that I did not need to spend a large amount of time on the platform in order to get something out of it, which was helpful as I find being on social media for long periods of time to be draining to my mental health.

Through sharing tweets, retweets, articles, websites, and more on Twitter, I was able to help others learn from my findings.

By reading and viewing others posts on Twitter I was able to grow my knowledge, as well as through asking thought provoking questions I was able to add my ideas to others knowledge and engage in critical thinking.

While on Twitter I was able to participate in #SaskEdChat. The topic was inclusion, which is something I am very passionate about. It was highly enjoyable sharing my thoughts and knowledge on the topic. Seeing others responses to the questions was a great way to further my learning, just as my responses contributed to others learning as well.

Another way I networked learning, was through creating blog posts, as well as commenting on others posts. It was interesting reading others thoughts and then commenting on their posts to deepen their thinking. It was exciting to motivate others in the learning journeys by commenting on their blog posts.

While writing my own blog posts I was able to share my thoughts and knowledge with other educators. Through their comments on my posts I was able to answer questions and clarify anything from my posts.

The last networking tool I used is Slack or Discord. Here I was able to interact with other students/educators in a group chat style setting. It was a great way to ask questions and get help from others. This tool really helped me when I was starting out on Twitter and when I needed help editing my blog and blog posts. It is my hope that the questions I asked also helped others who were experiencing similar problems.

Through all of these platforms I was able to expand my personal learning network. It gave me the chance to connect with other students in my class, as well as other educators, and professionals in the education field of work. I was able to share my knowledge and ideas to help others learn, and also further my own learning. Now that I am able to navigate these different learning networks I know I will be able to continue to expand my knowledge, connect with others, and be the lifelong learner that I aim to be.

To start with what is digital literacy? Digital literacy is defined as an individuals’ ability to locate, understand, and share information using many forms of digital platforms. According to the National Council of Teachers of English also known as the NCTE, digital literacy is “one of the primary information sources of the modern era.”

The digital world is filled to the brim with information, the problem is, distinguishing the real information from the fake. So how do we help students to be prepared for the online world? Teaching digital literacy needs to start as soon as students are online. As an early elementary educator, it will be part of my job to teach students about digital literacy. In the early years I believe a lot of digital literacy learning will be done through the teacher modeling the behaviour, as they guide students through the process of searching for information. In the Social Studies Curriculum, it talks about the importance of inquiry, and how students are to become active in their discovery of new knowledge. Part of this process is understanding how to search for “real” information. By modeling this behaviour during lessons where we share information from online we are starting to build the foundation for the students’ digital literacy learning.

As students get older and are in higher grades, we can start with more hands on learning in regards to digital literacy learning. The article Fake News. It’s Complicated, talks about taking time before deciding to share something you find on the internet. We need to teach students to second guess the information their reading, fact check, or even check with a peer or educator.

Dealing with fake news is becoming increasingly difficult, in the article Developing Literacies: What We Need to Know in a “Fake News” World, Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt list techniques and strategies for dealing with fake news:

1. Deploy and employ investigation techniques
   
2. Use rich examples

and

3. Nurture a critical disposition

With our help students can more easily identify websites and articles that are filled with “fake news” or information. Teaching them to use different tools to evaluate a website can be an effective way to identify if a source is valuable or not.

Part of teaching students about digital literacy and fake news is helping them to understand their own biases. It is easier to accept something as true if it aligns with our biases even if they are not true. In the article Why do people fall for fake news?, it talks about biases and specifies that “we are inclined to trust people we consider a member of our own group more than those of a different group.” Being aware of these biases helps us with seeking information that is factual and not just information that we think is real because it is shared by someone we think to be trustworthy.

Sometimes we need to think outside of the box that is our current knowledge.

This week in class we were assigned the task of “cyber-sleuthing” one of our peers.

While searching for one of the members of my group, I was able to find many of her social media accounts such as her twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts along with her online portfolio. Her social media accounts were fairly private and did not give away a lot of personal information, her portfolio was very professional, and would be a great way to be discovered by potential employers. Her online presence was very clean and she had nothing shameful to be found. The same can not be said for everyone.

The online would can be a very dangerous place for ones’ personal identity. For instance, Justine Sacco, who’s life was ruined by a tweet she had made without really thinking it through. Jon Ronson talks about what happened to her in his Ted Talk, and how one little tweet can escalate and change someone’s life.

It is scary to see how horrible someone can be treated and just how fast things spread in the online world. In the span of a matter of hours she was shamed, threatened, and even lost her job. All over something that happened online. Don’t get me wrong what she said was not okay, but the things said about her and the threats she received were also far from being okay.

Our digital identity can say so much about who we are as a person; it can also be a way to hide who we are. In the article Split Image, Kate Fagan talks about a young girl whose life seems perfect, when in reality she is suffering in silence. Online you can be anyone you want to be, you choose what you share, and what you keep to yourself. Like this young girl, many people display the glamorous side of life, making things seem as if they should be effortlessly perfect.

As professionals and as human beings we need to be careful about what we post online, and how we treat others online. Even though there is a screen between you and reality doesn’t make the person on the receiving end of the comments less real.

A big part of teaching is preparing students to be citizens of the world, this used to be a fairly straight forward concept, now things have changed a little. We are no longer just citizens of the world, but are also citizens of the digital world. These two worlds are connected and also very different in many ways.

So what exactly is digital citizenship? According to Mike Ribble’s article Nine Elements, it can be broken down into nine parts; digital access, digital commerce, digital communication and collaboration, digital etiquette, digital fluency, digital health and welfare, digital law, digital rights and responsibility, and digital security and privacy. Together these elements are a way to keep yourself and others safe and respected in regards to digital citizenship. For me the most important part is digital health and welfare.

I searched through the Saskatchewan Curriculum for connections to Digital Citizenship and started looking at the younger grades since those are the grades I am hoping to teach when I am finished my schooling. There is a lot about respecting oneself and others which ties into both the real world and the digital world, but most connections in the younger grades were more real life experiences and not virtual ones. Though I do think it is important to teach aspects of the online community at a young age, it is a bit more complicated as most online experiences are fairly simple and often under the supervision of an adult.

When looking in the Grade Five Health Curriculum, I was able to find some good connections. Learning outcome “USC5.4 Analyze the connections between personal identity and personal well-being, and establish strategies to develop and support a positive self-image” (Saskatchewan. ND) had a lot of indicators that worked well with exploring ones’ digital image and others digital image. Indicator “k. Identify misunderstandings and/or misconceptions related to messages in the media that may misinform the public about identities (e.g., portrayal of violence, ethnic, gender, and racial bias) (Saskatchewan), would be a good place to start when discussing digital identity and citizenship. Learning to respect oneself and others online is such an important lesson to learn. Making students aware of misinformation and misunderstandings that can happen online is critical. Mental health is of utmost importance in students’ lives, and learning to care for oneself online is a part of this.

In the classroom I would like to ensure students are fully educated about their digital citizenship, so they are able to be online safely and effectively. There are so many useful tools for online learning and I would like to take full advantage of these as I am sure many students will find them helpful and enjoyable. Having students create a portfolio of learning is something I would like to try doing. It would give them a place to keep all of their work and have the ability to go back and see how much progress they have made though out the year. Students could interact with each other and learn about each other as they create personal aspects of their portfolio, all of this while learning about digital citizenship.