Week 4 Student Comments

I posted a comment on "The Wizard of Apps" Posted by lsmith. My second comment was on "The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening" Posted by Nay.

Internet Etiquette

I watched the video Digiteens:Digital Citizenship by Digital Teenagers. This film is about Internet etiquette and safety created by teenagers. I thought the information that was presented was helpful and insightful. I was shocked by the Driving while texting segment. I was surprised that driving while texting was responsible for more deaths than driving under the influence. I never realized that there is actual protocol for using the Internet.

I knew that some children lied about their ages when using social media networks, such as Facebook, but I had no idea that there were so many children doing it. I liked the last segment or project the best. I knew there were risk that had to do with the Internet and identity theft but I did not realize that this could affect our children. I am aware of shopping on the Internet but it is not something that I do myself. I was blown away to hear that 9 year olds are shopping on the Internet and have had their identity or their parents identities stolen from them. I did not realize that there is a great need to educate children and adults about proper use of the Internet.





I realized that I am also very uneducated about digital citizenship and what it involves. This is an area that I definitely need to spend some time learning more about. I had never heard of the term digital citizenship before this assignment. There seems to be some concern about when, where, and who should be responsible for teaching it to our children. I feel that as teachers we should make sure that our students know how to safely use the technology that we are working with in our classroom. My eyes are being opened to all of the wonderful teaching tools of technology but at the same time I want to know that I am safe and so are my students.

What is project learning?

One of my assignment was to watch the Project Learning: An overview video for my t4t class during week 4. This video is from the Edutopia The George Lucas Education Foundation website. Their goal is to improve education in our public school systems. Project learning encourage student learning through using what they have learned in real-life situations and projects.

I think this is a great concept to use with junior high, middle school, and high school students. I feel that the students need to have the basics before they can build on them with these kinds of projects. The students choose what they want to learn about and then complete a project based on this knowledge. Everything in project learning revolves around the student. The students are responsible for their learning and completion of assignments and project. They become their own managers and directors of their learning and projects. This is great for the over achievers but what about the average student. I am a procrastinator, by nature, and I can see where I might not do so good in the project learning environment.

When I was in school, we did not have these type of activities or group projects. The closest I ever got, was doing a research project that only used the books in the library and encyclopedias. There was no computer or Internet to use at that time. Your best help was the library, parents, and teacher. Not much room for individual creativity in education during this time. As a matter of fact, it was discouraged instead of encouraging it. Not at all like it is today.

I think this would be great to incorporate into my classroom. I want to teach junior high, middle school, or high school science. I think these types of project are a great way to see what the students have learned by using them in real-life circumstances. There was one question that kept going my through my mind while watching this video. So I am going to close this with some food for thought. What if the student has no desire to learn or for that matter are only in class because they are forced to be there? How would this type of learner fair in the project learning environment?

Changing a lightbulb

Creative Commons

In my t4t class we are learning about visual literacy. To help learn this we are making a story in 5 photos. One of the example stories we looked at was The Great Pumpkin. Our assignment is to tell a story in 5 photos while honoring copyright laws. We could get photos from Compfight and or Flickrstorm to find images. I decided to tell how to change a lightbulb for my story in 5 photos.

Introducing my little sweetheart

I did my voice thread project on our Chihuahua Bambi. The assignment was to use voice thread to create a project with voice and picture media. I chose to tell about Bambi because she is my pride and joy. You can check it out on voice thread or you can watch it from here. The next part of the assignment was to include my project on my blog page. Hope you enjoy!

This weeks student blogs

My wife and I were checking out a classroom, site that we learned about from one of the previous videos that we watched for our t4t class, for a school in New Zealand. I chose the story Indiana Jones in Space. I like outer space and I am a fan of Indiana Jones so of course I had to read this once I read the title. I loved how they incorporated Jones into outer space. Great job with a creative story line.

For my second one for this week I went back to the Fireside Book Club website. I chose a student review for the book Shoeless Joe and me. I found his reveiw was very thorough and could tell that he enjoyed reading this book.

Human Trafficking: Myth or Fact

I was asked to select a video, from the International School of the Americas in San Antonio, view it and make a comment on it. I chose a video presentation that talks about a subject that the average person does not want to admit could really exist on the world.

I knew this was happening but did not realize how unaware and educated the general population is about this topic. My wife was taking a Humanities class, a couple of years ago, and they were discussing this topic in it. She came home one day and told me about a remark made by one of the male students in the class. He had made the comment that there was no such thing as human trafficking and forcing someone to be a sex slave. His theory was that a female could not be forced to participate in sexually activities if she really did not want to. HELLO ! There are so many things wrong with this statement that I would not even know where to begin. It made us realize how ignorant society, as a whole, is still about this subject.

The Ugly Truth On Human Trafficking

View more presentations from guest0fbc3ed.

I love that our young people are taking the lead and stepping out to the plate to educate the world about serious issue facing the world we live in today. With the help of today's technology students are discovering new ways to have their voices heard and express themselves. We need to educate people so that this can not continue to happen while we look the other way. These video presentations are a great way of doing this.