Beakers Gonna Beak - Ms. Kelly's Tech Blog

2/28/18 Hello, Today's blog focuses on the relationship between social media and students. I have chosen to read and write about a blog post from Sewickley Academy's Private School Blog. This blog is titled " 9 Ways to use social Media in your Classroom ." I really liked reading this blog post because it was short and to the point. It offered quick explanations for tools and how to use them in your classroom.  I love finding new tools to use, but the struggle is finding the time to experiment with them. Teachers need to find the time to not only acquire new tools, but to see if they will be beneficial to the learning of their students. I also liked how this blog built up. It suggested that teachers start with getting themselves on social media.  The article then suggests joining Twitter or creating a Twitter hashtag for your students to use. It builds up from there to blogging, Tumblr, Skype and many others. After participating in this class and learning more ab...

2/19/18 Hello, This week's blog focuses on the ideas of Howard Rheingold and 21st Century Social Media Literacies. After reading the article titled " Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies" by Howard Rheingold, I learned that I had been aware of the many social media literacies, but maybe didn't know them by the same names. The three main literacies that stuck with me the most are attention, participation and critical consumption. Although this article was written in 2010, I feel that is still strongly relates to learners today.  Rheingold stated that "Students feel a strong sense of entitlement to the freedom to direct their attention wherever they want. For students, the classroom is a marketplace, with multiple seductive attractions from the online world competing with physical presence. If I can’t compete with the Internet for their attention, that’s my problem" (Rheingold, 16). I agree! The attention I receive or don't recei...

2/14/18 Hello, In this week's blog, I will be discussing my thoughts on CIPA/COPPA. My school uses one to one Chromebook technology and most teachers are using apps daily in their classrooms.  We hear a lot about COPPA from our Tech Specialist, but  most people don't have a full understanding of what it is.  Until this assignment, all I knew is that if an app or website asked for the age of a student, we couldn't us it. After learning what CIPA and COPPA are, I have more of an understanding to our district "rule."   I feel the having COPPA is place is a great start to keeping kids safe on the internet.  COPPA ensures that private information, such as full name, address, grade and school location are not shared with outside sources. It seems like this rule should apply to all people, not just those under the age of thirteen. I understand that sharing information is part of the business, but why not protect all people online?  I feel that th...

2/10/18 Hello, In this week's post, I will be discussing my Digital Tattoos. As someone who has quite a few tattoos, I was interested in the meaning behind digital tattoos.  After hearing the explanation on why the term should be digital tattoo rather than digital footprint, I agree that tattoo is the more appropriate term.  Everything you put on the internet can be found once again.  Nothing really goes away. Of course there are ways to remove things, just like real tattoos, but most things on the internet are there to stay. Now the challenge is knowing the right places to look. I was honestly hoping to find some funny posts from my old Myspace or Match.com profiles. I have actually been thinking about looking back into my Match profile. I met my wife on that platform and we have been together for almost five years. It would be hilarious to see our first online interactions.  However, I had no such luck. When I used Google and searched my gmail account name,...

2/3/18 Hello, This week I will be discussing some educational research that I found interesting. After reading through the selected articles, two pieces of information stuck with me. The first articles I am doing to discuss is called Survey: More than Half of Students want their Classes to go Digital, by Rhea Kelly. This article states that according to McGraw-Hill Education, "fifty-three percent of students in a recent survey said they prefer classes to use digital learning tools." This survey was given to over 1,000 college students. I was surprised by this number. I was mostly surprised because it was right in the middle. Anytime I get into a real conversation with my middle school students, I get a lot of strong opinions against digital textbooks.  Now I understand they are talking about the broad spectrum of digital learning tools, not just online textbooks. However, McGraw-Hill is a huge textbook publisher. I would be curious to compare their digital textbooks vs. h...