Fake News and Digital Literacy.

Fake news has become a dangerous thing in recent decades because it has become so dangerous. In order to help the future generation we need to educate students on how to logically go about using the internet. 

I am studying secondary education so I will be teaching students who will most likely be using electronics more than they aren’t. Because of this, students will be getting information overload. For example, Tik Tok is a very popular app where just about anything can be shared from short dance videos to informational news. While the short dance videos don’t really make a difference in the political/educational world, the news does. 

Getting information from social media can be helpful for people that maybe don’t want to watch the news. However, not all news on social media is coming from reputable sources. A lot of it is coming from people who are upset with what is going on in the world or their community. This can alter the information being given through the screen. Short videos don’t really leave room for explanation and a good chunk of the time the information being shared on your algorithm is information you want to hear. This is one of the ways people can get information overload because they aren’t fact checking the information being shared and are pretty much believing anything they hear insteading of breaking down the information. This is one of the ways I would incorporate the goals of the NCTE framework. 

This is why it is extremely important to teach students about digital literacy. I think the best way to go about it would be to do something similar to what we did in lecture and talk about possible pieces of fake news; like this quiz. I think that would be a good way to open up students to fake news. I also like the article “why do people fall for fake news” so I think I would also use that in my classroom as well. Telling the students the different types of fake news would also be important so this poster(also shown below) would also be beneficial. 

I would attach this to the health curriculum because it is like a stem of digital safety. I would also use this/teach in a social studies classroom. I think it would fit best with this subject because in whatever social studies class you are taking you talk about what is going on in the world around you. This way students can use what they learn from digital literacy to fact check the information being poured to them. 

The Sixth Stitch!

As I was scrolling on my Pinterest board for ideas this week I came across this post

I then found this Youtube video to give me a tutorial which is shown below. 

Starting this granny square felt fairly standard. I had to do 15 double crochets in a magic loop. However, I did learn something new right after I made these stitches. When I had to change the colour of yarn I learned that you could start with a double crochet instead of chaining 3 onto the work piece. My mind was blown…literally. I can’t believe nobody does this/it isn’t that popular. I think that my squares look so much better and the stitches look more cohesive. 

These are the two squares I made this week: 

I thought I was going to struggle with this square a little bit but I actually didn’t. The Youtube video was a great learning piece for me because it taught me with a visual. I learn best by doing things alongside someone (or alongside a video) because I can use it as a reference to what I am working on and what is in front of me. 

I made the one on the left first. I did notice towards the end on the boarder that you could still see a little bit of the green stitches from the row before. So with the second square I did I used the same yarn size which seemed to help that issue. The reason it happened in the first square is because when I bought the yarn for this project I thought I bought only 4mm yarn but turns out the green and blue yarn were both 4.5mm. It doesn’t make that huge of a difference so I just stuck with it.

Another thing I noticed was that the square was going to be too big if I added another row which the video did call for. So instead I stopped on the second last row so it would still fit around my steering wheel with not a ton of extra slack.

The Youtube video also went step by step, stitch by stitch. I know this would be super helpful for me if I was a complete beginner. I was getting a little annoyed because she was going through each stitch but that’s because I like to count in my head and move at my own pace as much as I possibly can. 

Something that I seen a couple weeks ago was something called blocking. This basically stretches your granny square into a more perfect square so everything just looks neater. I simply followed what this website said and I did this with all of the squares I made over the past few weeks so we will see how they turn out next week!

Overall I would recommend this video to someone learning how to crochet. It was easy to follow along and you only need to know how to do one stitch. 

The Fifth Stitch!

For this week I decided to try something a little bit harder and do a flower granny square like the one shown below. WARNING, this pattern tested my patients a little bit. 

I was scrolling on my Pinterest board that I made for this class looking for inspiration for what to accomplish this week. I found this flower and decided this was what I was going for. 

I wanted to try something different this time for my media piece. I did not want to use a different Youtube video or a blog from someone. So I decided to see if the app store had anything to offer me; and sure enough, it did! 

The app is called YarnPal. It assists with not only crocheting but knitting as well. The app was super easy to navigate and use, I was quite impressed with it. When you first open the app, it gives you a survey to fill out. The questions ask things like what level are you at, what are your interests and then the survey goes into what you know about crocheting/knitting. Not by asking you “how many projects have you made” but by asking if you can understand certain patterns and instructions which I thought was extremely helpful. 

It then “creates a personal crochet plan” for you and gives your projects based off of your answers. I found this blanket that I thought looked really cool. Now I was not going to make the entire blanket but I wanted to make just one of the squares which is what I did. Jeez, was it difficult. 

It tells you all the info you need like the type of yarn, hook sizes and colours of the pattern. 

It also has an AI Chat as well. This was probably my favourite feature this app has. You can ask it any question about stitches, or language being used and it explains it further. 

The instructions are also step by step. When you complete a step, you press next, if you need help, ask the AI! Super easy!! 

I also only made one of these squares because I was kind of struggling. Now that could have been because I was trying to make the square in the back of a truck on my way to a rodeo but I did not want to take any chances and be angry again. Overall I think the square turned out quite well for it being my first and only attempt. 

I Cybersleuthed my Roommate!

I decided to cybersleuth my roommate, Tat. She did also give me permission to post this. At first I googled her first name and last name, Tat Vickaryous. It should be noted that her full name is Tatiana Vickaryous, she just prefers to go by Tat. 

With my first search I came across all of her synchronized swimming posts. I went through a couple articles and found a couple awards that she had won throughout her years competing. I also found a small interview she did with the Saskatchewan Games Council. 

I also found her moms Pinterest account oddly enough. When I went to the images section on google, I found a couple obituaries which showed that she has one brother, and told me both of her parents names. This also fact checked the Pinterest account for me. 

Then I looked up her full name and the city she is from; Tatiana Vickaryous Moose Jaw. I still got the same results I did the last google search which was her synchronized swimming articles. 

I dug a little deeper and found her elementary track and field scores as well as her entire address. Which is actually crazy because I did not even have to look that far for it. 

I also found her Instagram account but it was private as well as her Facebook account which was also private. 

I could not find anything about what she does/where she works. There was no information on relationships or activities she likes to do besides synchronized swimming. Based on what I found I would say she is definitely aware of her presence and what she posts on the web.

It is almost impossible to tell any beliefs she has. Her public online presence is so minimal that there really is nothing to go off of. 

I am not really concerned with her digital footprint. Of course we are going into a new age where a digital presence is actually important but there is nothing that I am concerned about. The only thing I would recommend to her is to make an Edusite, or some sort of website, because she is also in education so this would help her in the future. 

Digital Citizenship in the Classroom.

Digital citizenship is something that should be talked about in all classrooms. I plan to teach it in my future classroom as well because it fits in perfectly with health education and health is my minor. 

I want to be open and honest with students about the digital world. Any and all questions will be answered. I want students to know that the internet does not need to be a scary place all the time. I also liked how we talked about digital citizenship in lecture. I want to be able to have open conversations with my future students about digital citizenship and I think one way to do that is to talk about how it used to be taught. I think this would give students an opportunity to ask questions and really think about why digital citizenship is important. 

I think I would also introduce digital citizenship at the beginning of the semester. Why? Because I want to be able to guide it through every lesson that I might teach throughout the semester. This way students will become more and more familiar with it. This would also be a great way to talk about the nine themes of digital citizenship in the classroom. This way I can talk about all of them throughout the year. 

Jason Ohler’s short article talks about two perspectives; one called one life and another called two lives. The two lives perspective basically says that students should use technology at home and not at school. The one life perspective basically says that educators should help students live with technology. I agree with the one life perspective over the two lives perspective simply because as educators, we are trying to set each student up for success. As time progresses, technology and social media are beginning to be a larger part of everyone’s lives so we should be teaching students how to work with technology rather than staying away from it.