Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons is a website where teachers and students can share what they know. Others can review, tag, share and sometimes change the information. To join OER, the user has to register and the service is free of charge. Depending on how you choose to display your information, other users will be able to use your work, change some of the content as long as they give credit to the author. There wasn’t any particular resource that stood out for me, but it is great to know that there are many subject areas that can be searched by grade level, subject areas, materials types, etc, to simplify the search of what you are looking for. OER’s Community serves to help teachers become more aware of the things they can accomplish in their classrooms. They provide tips on technology, teaching and learning, research, etc. that may help teachers become better teachers. You can also post blogs and post them on the OER website. You can help the OER Community by providing other users links to information about open source and anything related to what specific schools and the government is doing to expand teaching. I liked that, just as Delicious bookmarking, you can bookmark any of the other information that you found through researching the site with tags. This makes it easier to find what you are really looking for. It is really neat to see how other people can spark ideas for teachers to improve the interest of their students in the classroom. For example, they can look for games that will help assess the material or become a secondary source for students to learn. It can also help generate ideas that will make teaching funner and more interesting to students, which is important since students learn better when they are interested in what they are being taught.
1. Games can be useful in supporting real-world skills and knowledge because in order to succeed you need to socialize. One of the most important contributors to having a great avatar in World of Warcraft is to maintain social networks with others. Through networking, players learn to negotiate and become advocates to social change through the games. It also requires critical thinking skills and problem solving skills to make the best decisions in order to succeed.
2. Serious games can promote learning because “learning designers have unique opportunities to make a significant contribution to game design teams by organizing game play to focus on changing, in a predefined way, the beliefs, skills, and/or behaviors of those who play the game, while preserving the entertainment aspects of the game experience”. Also, games motivate players to spend time on task and keep performing skills that would make them master a level.
3. Incorporating games into a learning environment can be a little challenging to teachers. They have to look for games that can be related to the class content. But once they find these games, it is just assigning it to students to become better. When I was in third grade, every week or so, students were allowed to play Reader Rabbit for reading and math. This games helps with simple mathematics problems and stories that required for us to pay attention to since there was an assessment.
4. Civic learning opportunities are measured through the impact that games have on teens’ likelihood to become involved in civic and political activities.
5. Game-play is related to teens’ interest in civic and political activities because it requires for them to reach out to others in order to maintain high points. In Sim City for example they learn about economics and they can see how a city can manage with certain budgets. They can then apply what they learn in Sim City and analyze what the government is doing in their area to see if there are ideas to better the economy. It is also related since they have the tendency to be involved in fundraisers and persuade others into voting.
Causes is an application on Facebook that is linked to non-profit organizations. This is done to “empower” people to have a positive impact on the world. The organizations are Canadian or American which receive donations, which is the reason for the application. The donations are accepted through credit cards.
The idea of Causes is for a Facebook user to raise money for an organization of their choice. This is done by sending invitations to the user’s friend and asking for donations. An example is Mr. Sugars, whom at his 38th birthday decided to help the Cancer Schmancer Movement, which tries to detect and treat cancer at an early stage. He was passionate about this organization because he was a cancer survivor. So he made the event on Facebook and asked his 3,000 friends to help by donating $38 each. Within a few weeks, he was able to raise $8,000 for the organization.
According to the the monthly active users (MAU), there are more than 35 million people using the Causes application.
The educational value of Causes is for that of social change. There is always something that needs to be done and most of the time it can be done by anyone. With Causes, individuals have the power to advocate for social issues that they feel passionate about. It could also help students build bridges to the community.
Controversies facing Causes is that it is not truly a “Green” way to seek donations. Only 1% of the users of Causes have actually been able to raise money for the non-profit organizations. And the amount of money they have received is about $1000.
Causes is free for nonprofits but it costs them staff time to develop and maintain. It is also free for Facebook users to become a part of, but the outcomes do not seem to be very effective.
Sources
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/about
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/giving/12FACE.html?_r=2
http://www.appdata.com/facebook/apps/index/id/2318966938
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103786.html
I really liked a school setting that I saw for students with learning disabilities. They are called Lab School. Every classroom was decorated differently and there would be different themes and the kids did some very interactive work while learning. They would dress up as medieval times and they would learn something from history in that classroom. There would be songs to help them remember what they were learning and according to the founder, students were very well prepared to go to college.
I would like to follow their idea of the lab school but make some changes so that it is not just for learning disable students. The school would be a small school. The teachers that I would hire to work there, must have a passion for teaching and have creativity for teaching students. I wouldn’t use grades. I would use pass/fail because I feel that students either do good or they don’t.
On a typical day, students will take turns going into the different classrooms. They would be provided with the materials needed and they would be allowed to spend a lot of time being creative and playful while learning all the different content that they need to learn to be successful. Digital media would be very important because there would need to be interactions with professionals. I believe that something that wold help students know what they would like to be in i by learning and getting to know professionals, so we would integrate digital forums so that they can interact with different professionals. School would be used with the same time period that regular schools have. When I was looking at the video, the founder of the Lab Schools mentioned that students always looked forward for the next day of class, therefore I would make it the same length. Students would be assessed on depending on whether or not they can apply what they learn in the classroom to the outside world.
Australia
Greenland
America
Antartica
I have never vetted purchase decisions with friends online. Why? I don’t know. But when there is a big purchase I need to make, I ask my family and friends… offline. Although I do have a facebook account, most often than not I don’t really keep up with it… The last time I changed my status on facebook must have been about two months ago or more. Social networking is not really something that I do all the time, so I wouldn’t base my decisions on them. I do use the internet to research the best prices available, to see all the brands possible, and and to know where to get the item at. For example, I purchased a cell phone about two months ago and I looked for the phone I was interested in at the mobile online store. When I saw the price, I was skeptical as to whether or not I was going to get the cell phone at the time or not. I googled the phone and several websites had the phone at a discounted price. So I went with the cheapest one and I didn’t wait long to get a new phone. Social media has shaped my decision on a purchase when using ratings, as Jeremy mentioned on Does Social Media Sway Online Shopping? When I was looking for a vacuum cleaner, I saw all the vacuum cleaners Walmart had online within the price range of what I was willing to pay. Then I saw which ones I liked the most and which had the best reviews out of the two top choices. This is how I decided to buy a vacuum cleaner.
I would guess that the reason why half of my students do not have a computer and internet connection at home is because they are a low SES family. Therefore, using some of the same resources that were used in the article How to Use Social Media for Social Change I would create several different platforms to try to get the computer.
A. I would use a blog to tell the world the situation about my classroom.
B. I would create a group in Facebook whether through Causes or by itself to raise awareness.
C. I would also email politicians.
In each of these three I would include information about how technology is incorporated in our classrooms to facilitate learning and have students become more critical thinkers. As well as emphasizing how our world is so dependent on technology that children should be very computer literate. I would mention that it helps people to be advocates for social change.
Hopefully this will get business and government attention and we can either get grants or businesses are willing to provide the computers. The only problem with this is whether the business will provide computers for those who are currently enrolled in the class. They can probably also provide laptops or computers that could be loaned at the beginning of the year and returned at the end. But there is still a high risk and problem with that because you never know the conditions in which the computers are going to be returned in.
I think that the best way to deal with the internet issue is to directly talk to a government official so that low income families, who have children in school can have government help. Just like there are government assisted phone services, they can extend it to provide internet as well.
Sometimes it is just lovely to think about what made you joyful. The most clear image I have of play when I was little was in an island. My family and relatives (including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents) and I had gone for a long weekend to an island in Venezuela. We camped at the shore of the beach and everything was eat, swim and play. The one thing I really remember was that we went exploring the island and there was mud.My sisters and I insisted that we had to get a mud bath, but quickly after learned that we shouldn’t have done so. We felt really uncomfortable walking back to where the rest of the family were. We also decided to get on a pool float and swim as far as possible so that my parents would have to come get us (like we saw on Baywatch). I remember it felt both fun and daring going away from them, although we eventually had to return by ourselves. Now, I feel like that part of me that was playing in that beach getting away from all my relatives came true. Maybe not for a hot guy to come to my rescue but for a better purpose. To study. In my culture, it is not that common for the kids to leave their parents nest until marriage, but I went away from home to get an education. But my relationship with all of those relatives that were on that island with me has grown closer.
I agree with Sir Ken Robinson on creativity. If people were not creative, there might have never been art, internet, facebook, etc. And since creativity is what drives people to act and come up with so many things, the future is always unpredictable. We can only speculate what it would be like, but we may not be right. Yet I had never thought that creativity can be as important as literacy. As Sir Robinson pointed out, math and science are the top topics in school. But since creativity is so important it our world, it should be encouraged more. I remember only two times when I had to be creative in school. The first was in an art class (and you are supposed to be creative there) when I had to do my own comic strip as well as a drawing. The other was in my language arts class where I had to create a Greek mythology character. To this day I still remember the name of the creator (Magma Boy) and what he looked like (his hair was made out of fire). But other than that, I don’t remember any other instance in which we really had to be creative during school. A question that comes up in my mind is: are people naturally creative or do they have to be encouraged to be creative?
I believe it is awesome that play helps the conceptual brain to develop. And it does have this positive effect in our brain as far as our emotions are. When we here in class that we are going to play a game, we get excited. When my boyfriend and I are bored we begin to play around and it makes everything so much better and fun. I never knew how important play can be. I am playful most of the time and sometimes people do not like it. But now I can tell them that I am able to be a good problem solver.
Participatory Culture
1. The video was interesting. It was a little hard to follow all the parts or skills that they were trying to talk about. But I think that they should have expanded on what each of the skills were.
2. I believe that some of the topics that were mentioned in the video are things that are common sense. They mentioned technology as a participatory culture. There are the different skills that were mentioned in the video such as affiliations, judgment, networking, and negotiation that they make sound as if it is something new. But in reality it is not. Teenagers are involved in these things. An example would be affiliations; most likely than not, teens become affiliated with a group of individuals that express their likes and dislikes. So I don’t see it as “new skills” but as skills that are emphasized or expanded online.
3. Now as a college student, I have been able to have some of these “skills” in my learning experience. I have an affiliation with blackboard or e-learning which can be used for discussions. The discussions includes experiences with negotiation, networking, and collective intelligence. Negotiation can be expressed because many different students have different views on an issue, therefore it forces me to think outside the box and outside what I think is the right or wrong way of something. Networking because we may be able to explain certain key points better than a teacher can, and collective intelligence because we gather information or explain information for or classes in a way that can be clarified. But as a child, these things were not available to do in a classroom setting and it seemed as a privilege to use a computer in the classroom setting.
4. If I were teaching a health class, I might have students research on a topic and each year, the students who choose to pick a topic that has already been talked about in previous years in my class, would build upon what other students had already found out. This way, they can see thee changes that occur or put a different twist to health issues as the years pass by.
Media Literacy
1. I believe that new literacy media is what students need to know about because it is our future. There is so much information that can be acquired from the internet that can help students become what they want to achieve. And it helps with their jobs. We should be able to teach students skills that may be useful for the workplace.
2. Media literacy education is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages. In media literacy education, students are able to be recipients of information as well as producers of it. It is important for students to be aware of media literacy because it shapes our communities. They should also understand the importance of copyright materials and avoid things such a plagiarism when using the information that they can access online. They also should know that the information they find is placed online for a purpose and that they may express different beliefs and opinions.
3. Fair use is the right to use copyright material without the author’s permission. It is a user’s right. Fair use is important in education because it allows for cultural materials to become critical to generate a new culture.
Attribution- This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.
Attribution Share Alike- This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution No Derivatives- This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution Non-commercial- This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike- This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work.
Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives- This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
4. Like the video mentioned, I think that it is an easy way to protect your work and share it with others. If you really want to be strict and not allowed changes you can do that or if you want to expand on an idea you can have people add on to it a revise and eventually make it better. I really like their licensing programs and I’m considering using it myself for when I post my personal pictures or files online.
5. Flickr might be used in my classroom to show visual aids of a certain topic or for the students to look for pictures or videos that may be related to an assignment. In an art class, it can be used to show the steps to certain type of technique used in the classroom. And the best part of it is that they are using a legal way to share photos with their peers.
WOW!!! That’s what I have to say about the video. I was one of the people that thought that what happens online as far as victimization, was from a stranger and that the victim was fooled by the age of the perpetrator. I also believed that the percentage of kids that were contacted by a stranger would be higher. I do have to say that when people on facebook want to be my friend… if I don’t know who they are I ignore them with no contact whatsoever. But 25% of the teens that are contacted by a stranger do go on and talk to them and only 7% are afraid of being contacted by a stranger. That is just crazy.
In a way, I see why teenagers would openly talk about sex online. That is because parents aren’t usually open to talk about these important topics with their children. But why aren’t parents closely monitoring what their children are doing online? I do believe that parents should not allow teens to enter certain sites and block them if possible. I also believe that just as parents ask who their kids are meeting with, who they are going out with and where they are going to, they should also follow what they do online. One problem that I do see with this is that parents, especially in middle and upper class families, don’t keep track of what their children do offline to go on and do it online.
# Who are we making safe?
We are trying to make it safe for teens to go online and not have to face any victimization. “Remember that
teens are changing a lot” (Amanda Lenhart), referring to their interests and their needs.
# What are we making safe?
We are trying to make messaging safe. This is where teens talk about their personal problems to strangers. “Engaging in sexual conversations…harassing others online.” (Dr. M. Ybarra).
# What are the consequences of such decisions?
“These behaviors seem to be most strongly associated with increased risk for victimization” (Dr. M. Ybarra). When they decide to contact strangers online or even the people they already know, and talk about sex or start harassing, there are teens that get caught in sexual behaviors with older people and those who become cyberbullies.
“So for example, Jenna – this is a pretty typical case – 13-year-old
girl from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chat rooms, had
the screen name “Evil Girl.” There she met a guy who, after a
number of conversations, admitted he was 45. He flattered her, gave
– sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And
eventually, he drove across several states to meet her for sex on
several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested in her
company, she was reluctant to cooperate with the law enforcement
authorities.” (Dr. D. Finkelhor)
