Personal Technology Project

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

I really enjoyed using this type of technology. The technology I used was Voki. Voki is an educational tool that is used by teachers and students to create presentations. You can be different people in these presentations, anyone from Hillary Clinton to a Fairy. This technology is fun and creative and easy to use.

The Learning Power of Webquests

 A teacher can challenge students by “posing contradictions, presenting new information, asking questions, encouraging research, and engaging students in inquiries designed to challenge current concepts.” 

Looks Aren't Everything

I chose the picture I chose to represent myself as a teacher because it shows that I can be fun, but sophisticated at the same time. I designed my magazine cover to attract people because its fun and shows my views of education and about how I feel about education. I used association for persuasive techniques because I used a lot of quotes for teaching and teaching associatiions with millions of teachers across the country. I used the cool use of the background color pencils to get the attention of people because I think that background is really cool. I continually used the dark colors to keep that theme going.

Digital Citizenship Digital Storytelling

I didn't exactly like doing this digital story because I am not tech-savvy at all,  but I can definitely see using this in classrooms. I could see using these when you, the teacher, may be absent and need to get your point across and the substitute probably won't be any help, especially in classes like Spanish or Math. I could also see using this in classrooms when students may be stuck and need more help, they could resort to a laptop and go to a website where the stories are uploaded for more help and understanding. You could also use the websites as a source of help at home, most parents don't understand high school math anymore and so posting helpful stories online can give students help at home that they wouldn't have otherwise. Digital stories in classrooms could also be beneficial for independent learning, say a student is more advanced than the rest, you could upload more information and they could teach themselves the information without becoming bored in class or a distraction to those who may not understand quite yet. Although I didn't like this project right now, I could see the benefit of these digital stories and could possibly see myself using them in my teaching career.

Digital Citizenship and Flaming

Before reading this article, I didn't quite understand what "flaming" was. In my own words, flaming is when you get mad for some reason and you just type a message and send it without thinking anything about it. Some factors of flaming are the anonymity of a Web pseudonym, the time lag between messages sent and received, and the lack of any online authority figure. I agree with these reasons because there are things you can say as an anonymous person that you can't say to a friend. I think this has crippled people because I feel more comfortable talking to someone over text about feelings than face-to-face. You also can not mention things in person that you have privately disclosed online because those things may be rude or embarrassing. Jett Lucas says it very well when he says, "thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically – or go unmentioned – face to face. Flaming has been given a more scientific name, which is online disinhibition effect. This is described as the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace. I think this name is applicable for flaming because it says people are inhibited while they are online. This happens because if we are typing while agitated, the absence of information on how the other person is responding makes the prefrontal circuitry for discretion more likely to fail.We try to use emoticons to try to get our attitude across, but most of the time, the emoticons aren't clear enough and so the person we are talking to might get the wrong idea about the message you are sending.

Is Texting A Bad Thing?

I completely disagree with this, I don’t think that texting is destroying our writing skills. Text language was created simply because they used to have to pay for every letter sent in a text and so instead of spelling out something like “by the way,” they shortened it with “btw.” The cost of those three letters is a lot less than the entire eight letters. See the text language was created just to save money and now that it isn’t to save money, most people don’t use text language. My father was a high school dropout and so he isn’t the greatest when it comes to spelling, but when he texts, he wants to spell things right. My father wants to know how to spell things when he texts and I think that’s a great example of how texting doesn’t kill language. I think texting improves the way people understand words. I also think texting isn’t its own language because the abbreviations have since gone away. Many abbreviations aren’t used anymore. I use about two abbreviations when I text and that is “lol” and “btw.” Abbreviations are easier sometimes, but I like writing and so abbreviating a word is stupid to me. When I text, I spell out every word other than the two abbreviations I’ve already stated. The belief that students would use the text language in essays is absurd, I use the word “y’all” when I talk and I have never used that word in a paper. Kids aren’t stupid, they know what words can or can not be used in a formal matter. I mean a lot of kids use curse words, but you would never see that in a paper because they know those words aren’t acceptable in a paper. Texting isn’t its own language and it certainly doesn’t make kids bad writers.

Education Needs a Digital Upgrade

Ms. Davidson's stand is that the digital world should be incorporated into the classroom. She recommends that classrooms get an upgrade because students now are so involved with gaming, using laptops, texting and other forms of technology that they are dragging by the time they are told to sit down and write an essay on pen and paper. The formal way of education just isn't cutting it anymore because of the advanced use of technology of kids. I mean I have a 2 year old cousin and they calm her down by letting her play on their phone or watch something on their phone. Most babies know how to use a phone before they are 3 which is kind of frightening. Ms.Davidson simply says what she says because she feels if the owrld of technology is continually changing, shouldn't the way we teach our kids adapt with the world of technology. Ms. Davidson's main point is not to ignore the developing skills of the students that have technology at home, these students are constantly using technology. Using technology is something they have learned throughout the years and not having it eight hours a day while in school can make the students really bored.

I don't think technology should necessarily form the way we teach our students. Continually changing the way we teach would become a problem in the long run. I think kids would become really confused if education continually changed. Take Common Core for example, this confuses a lot of people because they just kind of threw it at kids and expected them to just know how to use it. I do think students should not be bored in school because if students are bored, then they aren't paying attention to the teacher. If students aren't paying attention, then they aren't learning which isn't good for anyone.

This is entirely how I feel about technology most of the time. Technology is unreliable and the fact that it can't be relied on is terrifying. Most papers I write online so they automatically save because I am scared that if I am using a program that doesn't save them then I will lose everything I have worked on because the internet and laptops are unreliable. I have made this face towards my laptop before and it is not fun.