EME6414 Blog

 This week really established the differences of secondary and higher education in terms of classroom social media use. I think social media is an excellent tool to use in higher education as these learners are more equipped to use it and can motivate themselves to learn from it rather than getting distracted. Middle and high schoolers, on the other hand, run a much higher risk of distractibility when using social media and there is a lot more room for legal trouble when using social media in a secondary classroom.  I have worked at a couple of middle schools and a high school in the last decade. Every single school had "tea" pages where the students went to spread rumors and say nasty things about other students and staff. Every school also usually has multiple fight pages as well where students go to post their "world star" style fight videos, often the ones that have taken place on campus.  This is a mess every. single. time. Especially when parents stumble on th...

I found this article from the readings to be very interesting. I love to examine all the ways professional learning communities can form, especially via social media platforms. Having the ability to learn from and engage with educators across the world, rather than just the bubble of your in-person community, is a huge game changer. I have examined the major takeaways of this study below. 1. Prior Engagement Leverage: using platforms like Twitter and Facebook served as a catalyst for teacher engagement. These are platforms that many already used and had an interest in, and it is easier to engage with a platform you already know how to use or use on a daily basis. This kept interest levels high.  2. Facilitator Role: facilitators were vital to ensuring discussion was based in pedagogy and that discussion was effective and meaningful. Good facilitators ensured that social media did not become a burden to the process of the CoP.  3. Development of CoP: Social media served as a ...

 I. Love. Padlet.  I've used Padlet before as both a learner and instructor, mostly as a way of collaborating and communicating in the midst of a lesson. It is a great way to stop and allow everyone to share their ideas and thoughts in a course without the discussion going off the rails. Sometimes, it is so easy for class discussions, especially those held amongst the middle school population. I have found that Padlet is a great way to ensure the conversation stays focused. I wanted to explore some of the ways Padlet can be used in the classroom and I found this great blog with a ton of ideas! 30+ Creative Ways to Use Padlet   Below, I have listed the top 5 I found in this list that I would like to implement in the coming school year.  1. Live Question Bank:   This could be a great way to implement a web-based "parking lot." Many teachers have large anchor charts in their classrooms where students can leave questions they did not get to ask during class, usually...

 I enjoyed this week for a number of reasons. Last weekend I went through a rather arduous ordeal, so this week it was very fun to simply be in my house and dive into my novel for the Goodreads challenge and learn about network knowledge activities.  I particularly enjoyed Salomon's article It's Not Just the Tool but the Educational Rationale That Counts. This article really resonated with me because I have seen first-hand what happens when tools are chosen because they are sparkly and new, but educators don't know how or simply cannot effectively integrate them into their classrooms. This can happen for a number of reasons. Instructors all have their own style of teaching, and it is important to allow them the autonomy and support to find what works best for them and their students. Give them the space and ability to choose what will work best for them based on their desires as well as their knowledge of their students, but also give them the resources they need to effecti...

 For the Goodreads challenge, I decided to read the novel Normal People  by Salley Rooney. I had seen the show and remembered social media being a relatively prevalent catalyst in it, and after some research found it was the same in the novel. The novel specifically utilizes Skype (though not really social media, still a form of technological communication) and Facebook. The novel takes place in Ireland from about 2011-2015, so I was surprised that only Facebook was used, but concluded it was a specific choice made by the author. I believe that only using Facebook ensures that the intimacy between the characters is felt deeply by the reader- it is not lost to the noise of Instagram and Twitter.  There are a few instances throughout the course of the novel where Facebook is utilized. One of the most powerful instances is during the death of Marianne's (one of the two protagonists) friend Rob. Marianne finds it absolutely disturbing how people use his personal Facebook page...

 I have always adored a game of Exquisite Corpse. I am a huge fan of surrealism and think the collaborative aspect of the game is enjoyable while presenting a challenge. When I made my account on FoldingStory, I was delighted! This is something that I think will be very fun for me, in my personal life. I am hoping to use it as a way to get back into creative writing, just for fun and stress release. In terms of secondary education, I think FoldingStory is a tool that can be used to amp up engagement with writing, something that is almost as hard to get secondary students into as reading, and it could establish rigor in a collaborative online environment.  Unfortunately, with Florida's standards and expectations, there is not a lot of room for creative writing in the standard ELA classroom. Many educators have to find quick and easy ways to incorporate it into their lessons, if at all. More often than not, their hands are bound by the looming state-mandated writing test (FAST) ...

 This week brought with it a lot of fun and useful tools and concepts. I have used Flickr (I participated in the Flickr challenge and am considering making some more photo essays out of my trip to Bonaroo this week) and I pretty regularly use Goodreads- when I'm not in a reading slump.  I was also very interested in the content curation resources. I usually help the students at my school with both history and science fair. We generally use Office365 to keep a running document of shared resources, but a site like Pocket would be incredibly helpful to the kiddos as they would be able to keep all of their resources in one place. Middle schoolers are notoriously bad at keeping track of literally anything, so having an easy to access and simple user interface will make all of our lives easier.  This week also made me think a lot about Intellectual Property Law. The educator in me wants information to be accessible to the general masses- information is power and power belongs t...

 Our Goodreads challenge this week got me thinking: Who doesn't like to read? The answer is SO MANY MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOLERS.  I will be entering my 9th year working in secondary education at the beginning of the 25-26 school year, something truly crazy to think about. My background has always been focused on ELA education and every year I am tasked with that battle of reading engagement. I have heard IT ALL.  "I haven't read a book since I was like 5 Miss." "I just don't like reading." "There are no interesting books out there." Once, upon assigning the short story The Lottery  by Shirley Jackson, I received this email from a student: "Please miss, don't be like all of the other teachers that assign us boring and pointless stories that don't mean anything blah blah blah who wants to read about the lottery?" I was genuinely baffled. How was this kid not intrigued by a story where the main character is stoned to death for the ...

  Since this week's readings focused on the concepts of intellectual property, privacy, and ethics, I decided to dive into a YouTube search focused on these topics. In this search, I stumbled upon this lecture from David Koepsell. I was intrigued by the points Koepsell makes on the concepts of ownership versus possession. When I first began the lecture, my immediate response was "how on earth can we function with intellectual property law? What is to stop anyone from taking anyone else's intellectual work as their own?" but this does not seem to be the point that Koepsell is trying to make. My understanding is more that he believes intellectual property should be free and available to the masses- we should not be met with paywalls to access information. He has a few key points he makes throughout his lecture: Commons by Necessity v. by Choice: commons by choice are things we intentionally keep public, such as national parks. Necessity refers to things kept public beca...

  Week 4 Reflection: This week touched on the subjects of tags and folksonomies, digital badges and gamification, and crowdsourcing. Although I was relatively familiar with these concepts, it was fun to dig into how they can be utilized in terms of the learning environment.  Folksonomies and tagging had the majority of my interest this week. I think it is a great method that can assist with building online learning communities. Although I do not utilize tags in my personal social media I can absolutely see how they can be effective in ensuring content reaches an intended audience. Obviously, there is a reason "Instafluencers" (the internet is a weird and wild place) end their captions with a bajillion different hashtags: they're working to make sure they reach as wide an audience as they possibly can. For me, the real magic of tagging and folksonomies comes from the information organizational method that comes with it. I love the idea that every bit of the web can be cate...

 For my readings, I chose to read the article Stolen Snow Shovels and Good Ideas: The Search for and Generation of Local Knowledge in the Social Media Community. I found this article intriguing as it got me thinking about the online communities built within my hometown, Tallahassee, and how much I participated in them without realizing what I was doing. I have compiled a list of the ones I found helpful, as well as ones I enjoyed after stumbling upon them going over my Facebook, below: Are we Dating the Same Guy? TLH:  I have participated in this group as a lurker for about a year now. I have not seen any men I know on there personally, but it is a relatively supportive group of women who try to look out for one another amidst the dating scene of Tallahassee, Florida. It is not a group without its flaws, but I have seen a lot of uplifting comments and have even seen some of my friends turn to the group when they needed information on bad relationships they had experienced. Mos...

Folksonomy Classroom Activity   Brainstorm   This week, I decided to do some self-directed research on the concept of Folksonomy and how it could be utilized in a secondary classroom as this is likely a concept our students have experience with, but could not put a name to. I think it would be especially beneficial to my middle school kiddos to become familiar with this practice as it will help them with research projects in a variety of subjects down the road.  While doing this research, I stumbled upon this great lesson that involved students studying and tagging a variety of zines, sharing their tags in a shared Google document, discussing their reasonings together as a class. The link to the lesson is below: https://libguides.williams.edu/c.php?g=1010260&p=8292148  This is a lesson I would love to do with my middle school students because we are generally the first time they experience actual research projects, be it in the form of history fair, science fair,...