Standards for the 21st Century Learner

It is nice to have a base to build the implementation of technologies into the classroom with my student. I will keep this in my resources for future reference when I am building my lesson plans and working with curriculums. This article also helped to clarify what is to be expected of students and helped me to begin formulating how to support children in obtaining the skills listed in these standards.

Education for the 21st Century: The Basics

Education for the 21st Century gave me a sort of wake up call. It pointed out that I am not as up to date on technologies as I thought I was. That children will be coming into my classroom with a knowledge based in technologies that was unknown to me when I was going through school. Today's students are growing up in a media rich, immediate, fast, engaging, dynamic and instant environment and I realize now that the classroom strategies and resources need to match what the students are exposed to in their environment. Feedback to students needs to be increased and quick and content needs to yield immediate gratification. This article also helped me to confirm that the students we will be working with need group interactions and opportunities to collaborate, be creative, and have access to various forms of media. The section of the eight characteristics of 21st century teachers, adaptor, visionary, collaborator, risk taker, learner, communicator, model, and leader put working with 21st century students into perspective and have given me a base to build my pedagogy on.

Creative Commons

I am glad that there is an organization available to support the cultural, educational, and scientific creative growth. With so many laws and battles over "rights" it is refreshing to see and know that there are people who are willing to provide and share their creative talents without the need for compensation. This article was brief and referred to their website for additional information which I also found interesting. I feel that it is important to teach our students about copyright laws not only for their own protection of not plagiarizing but also to show them that their creative idea's deserve protecting also and that they can also copyright their works of creativity.

Copyright 101

while I found this article interesting I was disappointed that it did not discuss more rights around images and copyright use for the Internet. It is always good to review the laws of copyrights so I am thankful to have an article that I can keep in my file of resources to refer to when I feel in question of whether I am within the Educational Fair Use laws or not. The examples that were provided help to clarify some gray areas that I am sure will come up while working in the educational field. I was not aware of the 5 exclusive rights or the 4 qualifiers which the courts use to determine if a Fair Use copyright law has been broken.

Universal Design of Web Pages in Class Projects

While I am not sure I would use the objectives in teaching my kindergarten classroom these objectives were super helpful for me to begin to unfold the important elements of websites and what to consider when developing my site. Shamefully I have to admit that I had not considered how the internet is accessed for those with disabilities. I had thought what a wonderful tool for the hearing impaired now instant messaging and texting are a common way of communicating. I had not considered the design elements with colors and those who are color blind or have difficulty viewing certain colors, let alone how to make a web site that is accessible to someone who is blind. I know that when I begin surfing the web that I will now be looking to see how other people have developed their web sites to meet the needs of all individuals.

Design Your Web Site from the Bottom Up

Although I do have to say that I found the amount of grammatical errors to be somewhat distracting. However, the context was wonderful. I found the tips about how to develop your content of the web site, how to organize your content, developing categories, page layout designs, planning for navigational ease, and how to keep the website simple extremely useful. Websites like Google sites makes building a webquest so very simple so that I can focus on the content of the webpage. I feel that have a properly functioning and up to date web site will be a huge help when communicating with the students and their families. I am a little nervous about developing my own web site and being able to maintain it however the challenge will be well worth it when I am able to communicate assignments, announcements, receive feed back, and share students work. The flow chart helped me to visualize how to categorize the information that I will put into my web site. I was little confused about what a "frame" the article said to use "frames" to create navigational structure, but I was not sure what that meant. There were so many wonderful pointers in this article. This article will definitely be one to keep in my file of resources.

FOCUS: Five Rules for Writing a Great WebQuest

The acronym of FOCUS directly and cohesively sums up the key components of a great webquest. I will most like use this acronym when thinking about and developing webquest for future classes and groups of students. I was shocked but not totally surprised at the amount of web pages that are currently on the web, 550 billion! I was more intrigued that general search engines only tap into the top 1 billion web pages. I need to deepen my own unfolding of the internet and hope that in my development of future web quest that I will be able to find links that accesses the deeper realms of the internet. I will definitely be bookmarking sites like Thomas. Webquest are a wonderful way to help students weed through the garbage of the internet to focus on relevant and useful information that supports lessons and learning. I feel that it is also equally important to be as organized as you can be. The more organized you are the more prepared and the larger impact you will have on your students. I really liked the ideas around organizing your resources and how to adapt your lesson to utilize the materials that you have available. Great task that encourage critical thinking will be my challenge. I can see how a teacher can develop poor webquest that turn into simple find the information and repeat it in a new form. Getting children to think critically about information will definitely be the key to making webquest successful.

Teaching Zack to Think

As a partial digital immigrant I have to admit that I have rarely if ever double checked my references from the Internet. I too like Zach, well will more critical eyes, take information from sites that look good, sound good, and are from what looks like creditable individuals. I have do not double check the authors, check into the publishers of the page, check for additional information about the authors, or use the web address as an indicator of online credibility. Learning what to teach our students about has been a lesson for myself. I feel being on the edge of digital natives and immigrants has placed my understanding and formal instructions about the Internet and it's technologies into a void of sorts. I am not fully unaware of how to use the technology but I am primarily self taught. going through school I was taught how to use card catalogues, conduct interviews, or use those microfilm readers to look up old newspaper articles. Bad information was not so easily accessed or stumbled upon. I feel that the article is dead on when it says that "...kids must learn how to research, publish, and communicate working with the Internet and other information tools." The Internet has completely changed the way in which we research topics. researching Internet sites has spawned a new level of necessary awareness what makes a site or information creditable. There is no Internet librarian to ensure the library is stocked with credible sources and to deny entrance of nonsense articles or flayer's that reflect personal opinions or beliefs. Where libraries had a safe guard or an umbrella of protection to keep useless information out the Internet is vulnerable to the piles of opinions from anyone about anything. I agree that we must teach our students how to evaluate the resources they choose to use as references by looking at the author, the purpose, and the meta-web information. I,for one, will be evaluating my resources with a finer toothed comb.

Developing Ethical Direction

The activity of having children think about their moral or "digital citizenship" I feel would be a very effective activity to conduct with an older group of students. I do feel that it is important to begin implementing lessons into our curriculum at younger ages that address the rights and wrongs of being a digital citizenship. With the introduction of technology our society has a new medium in which rules of etiquette need to be established and implemented. As in person to person interactions there are rules (whether written or not) about the appropriate ways to interact with one another. But interestingly enough while some of these "rules of manners" are taught in school, most are taught at home. This makes me wonder where the lines of responsibility are drawn between parents and schools in teaching children about being ethical, responsibly, and moral digital citizen. School teaches about stranger danger, but my parents took the responsibility of helping me understand the fears and worry that they have of someone taking me from them and really, how and when to determine if someone is safe to talk to. It was my parents who taught me how to use my please and thanks yous, and that sending thank you cards is the polite way to show someone that you appreciate their kindnesses. It was my family that taught me to be respectful of other peoples property and feelings. I believe that as this second generation of digital citizens grows up and have children of their own, that we will see more and more of this development of the moral digital compass being taught at home. That schools will be the introduction point, like stranger danger, but families and parents will be the primary educator and role models for their children in developing their moral digital compass.

The Student Web Quest

Web quest? What is a web quest? This has been my first introduction to the world of Web quest. What a wonderful tool when done thoughtfully, purposefully, and with creativity. "The Student Web Quest" clearly describes the components of how to build a web quest. It addresses why it is important to connect the web quest to the curriculum and the students interest. Good web quest also encourage children to analyze information rather then regurgitate it. It is important for our students to have experiences where they are presented with real issues or problems, asked to gather information about the problem, analyze the information, and generate solutions to the problem. Bernie Dodge has given teachers a means to use the problem solving, critical thinking process and connect it to the Internet in a fun, motivational, and interesting way. Web quest are a great way to help our students develop web surfing skills, moral digital citizenship values, and to be analytical thinkers as they become more familiarized with the Internet. As I look further into web quest I continue to be impressed. I am looking forward to developing my own web quest.

Child Safety on the Internet

I shared this article with my mom tonight and her response was, where was this when you were a kid? I have put my parents through some interesting and nerve racking nights while I fully indulged in the social networking side of the Internet, back in 1996 when there was little if any information about Internet safety. Along with all the wonderful aspects of the Internet a whole new world of fears and dangers have been born. And fortunately realizing these dangers many people and companies have spent hours and resources to make the Internet a bit more safer for children. But ultimately it is up to the parents of Internet using children to give their children the tools and guidance needed to keep them safe when surfing the web.
Being an adult user with no children I have a different set of eyes when I use the Internet. It has only been through discussions in class and discussion about technology in the classroom that I have seen the vulnerability that children are at when they get on the Internet. I was grateful that there are search engines designed and developed with children in mind so that they too can surf the Internet safely. I did not realize that there was a yahoo site for children called yahooligans! or that Ask Jeeves also set up a search engine for children. I had hear about some of the kid friendly sites like starfall and I have been checking out some of the sites mentioned in this article.
As adults I think we also take some things for granted like, common sense. We were able to naturally apply our immigrant real world common sense onto the Internet. however now we have digital Natives who are using the Internet and other technology tools before they have fully developed their "real world common sense" and so teaching them "cybersense" is vital to helping them stay safe on the Internet.
There was so much information packed into this article. I am excited to share this information with future families and students and to utilize many of the checklist and tips for safe Internet use. I feel that it is vital to educate all families on how to use the Internet and not to deny children the opportunity to use it.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I am a Digital nomad. I am the small window of a generation that got stuck in between Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. I was not raise with computers from a young age, they came when I was about 10, the Internet as a household use, 16 or 17. I was young enough to be excited about the possibilities it held, but old enough for my instructors to not know how to fully utilize it's potential. Reading about the Digital Natives brought back some amusing stories from my high schools days.
I took German in high school as my foreign language. But due to my instructors illness we had one sub after another sub, after another sub so by the time my senior year came and a new instructor was assigned to our class I had not learned one lick of German. I had however, discovered German chat rooms on yahoo. And so when I was struggling with an assignment I would turn to my newly made German friends and seek their help. Well apparently their skills were far to advanced to pass off as my own work and my teacher rejected my assignment. And this I feel is where the clash of Digital Natives met Digital immigrants in my world. I had found a new way to obtain information. which I believe in schools now is encouraged to an extent. I made connections with people in Germany, who were in fact helping me learn more German. I was learning about their culture and talking about my actual German assignment. But it wasn't a typical means of receiving information within our school system yet. At that time, seeking help on assignments from the Internet was viewed as cheating, instructors wanted you to first look it up in card catalogs, books, journals, etc. The Internet was taught to be a second reference not the primary. In this way I feel like I was taught to be a digital immigrant. Since those high school days years ago I have developed more competence in using the computer and feel today that I am not a digital immigrant but a digital native. Well until I read this article and was not sure what a "hypertext" was. So I am that lost generation that got stuck in the middle.
I believe that this middle ground that I stand on, and my own experience with the conflict of to surf or not to surf (the Internet) will help me when working with my own students in being open minded and able to view their "outside the box" utilization of technology as creative problem solving.

Tools for the Mind Summary

Being out of school for some time now I find it fascinating how computers have been integrated into the classrooms. I hate to date myself by saying this but in my days the computer lab was a super special treat where we either played the "Oregon trail" game or took typing lessons, asdf jkl; ;lkj fdsa dafs. Everything was pre-internet and the computers that we did have were seen as just a tool to make writing papers more efficient. In fact I believe one of my first papers was done on a type writer. Then later the computer came and naturally I thought, perfect! I never have to take another spelling test again, the computer will tell me if the word is wrong or not.
So I can see how teachers, as most are of my age now, having gone through school with computers being a tool to make typing papers faster would use them in their classrooms as such, word processors. I was not surprised in the least bit that computers and technology is not being used to maximize children's analytical and problem solving skills. Early in my college career I took a class that focused on three computer programs, Access, Excel, and Word. Well, Word I was already familiar with (after all that is what the computer was for, oh yeah, and Internet was publicly about 2 years old), Access was saved for last so we only spent about a week learning about it, but Excel, Wow. I fell in love with Excel. I have always been number oriented and love looking at data and watching for patterns in data so Excel was a fantastic discovery for me.
I have not been into a high school in many years but I had hoped that programs like Excel would be currently utilized at least at the high School Level. I was disappointed to see that only 6 percent of schools, not just high schools, but schools, were implementing and making use of spreadsheet programs. Just 6%! I am sure, that spreadsheets are the most widely used form of collecting data in most work places, and only 6% of schools are providing their students with Spreadsheet experience.
Technology is moving so quickly and changing constantly. Educators need to maintain up to date knowledge and fluency in how to use the new technologies.

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