Friday, January 31, 2014

Journal Post #3, Chapter 3: Transforming Learning with Unique, Powerful Technology


What are the NETS-S and the 21st Century Student Outcomes?

NETS-S are the standards for student learning with technology developed by the International Society for Technology in Education. It is used to help know how students should use technology and how it should be used in teaching to further the learning process and use it to explore in even more detail the things they are taught. Due to the increasing amount of technology being used every day, it is essential that students learn how to use it to locate and process information they learn in the classroom and analyze it. If these standards are used properly, the students will enter the work force ready and able to use the technology tools available to succeed.
 

21 Century Student Outcomes of Learning are standard for student learning with technology developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. This works in correlation with the NETS-S and NETS-T to help students achieve higher with critical thinking, problem solving, digital literacies and other important technology based thinking and analysis.


Tech Tools 3.5:  Web Resources and Apps for Digital Citizenship

This section of Chapter 3 discusses websites and Apps that can be good resources for all types of information, but mainly what is true and what isn’t and how to act while online an on social networking sites. 

I plan to look at these Apps and try some with my kids (as they vary in age).  However, I would like to touch on the www.factcheck.org site.  It does claim to be factual and unbiased, but there have been a few cases where I have doubted this, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center has a background that wouldn’t necessarily make them unbiased, which is a whole other issue.  Some have claimed that the site definitely leans more to the side of Democrats than anything else.  According to an article in Columbia Journalism Review by Greg Marx (Jan 2012) factcheck.org has made some statements that aren’t exactly true.  Marx writes in particular about one of their year-end lists and comments regarding claims that House Republicans had voted to “end Medicare”  in 2011.  Marx writes that some of these statements were “..was more plausibly unfair and, in some contexts, potentially deceptive.”  That doesn’t sound very “unbiased” to me.  There are other issues, but this is a small example.  What this mean is that even if a “reliable” site or source says something is true, the next logical step is to research it even further.  Student and teachers alike need to have more than one source for a fact to make it more reliable.


Summary Chapter 3: Transforming Learning with Unique, Powerful Technology

Chapter 3 discusses several items including all the ways that technology can be used to teach any grade in more student-engaged ways and how important it is in today’s society to understand why and most importantly, HOW. This chapter also discusses the responsibilities of teacher sto show their students how to use technology in effective and responsible ways. Teachers are expected to not only teach their students how to use the technology, but also how to weed out irrelevant or false information and not to use it to harm others. After some of the things I have seen on FaceBook and the like, I know a lot of adults that need to learn this important lesson.
In my classroom, I plan to show my students about digital responsibility by using age appropriate stories and situations on how people can get hurt or get information that is totally inaccurate from technology, and I plan to teach them about how they would feel if someone claimed their work as their own so they didn’t get credit for it themselves. I also plan on teaching by example. I think some teachers forget that they are often looked up to and are some kids only symbol of what is proper behavior in society. Some children do not have parents to reflect on either. As teachers, they have a responsibility to students to not be perfect, but to show as much of an up-standing citizen” image as possible. Just as parents, teachers will lead children by example.


Resources:

Textbook - Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Marx, Greg. “What the Fact-Checkers Get Wrong.” Columbia Journalism Review, Web.  Jan. 2012
Common Sense Media, “Facebook, YouTube, Texting: Rules of the Road for Kids." March 2010.

3 comments:

  1. Great post - you itemize important points in your own way and have provided resources to back your writing. It is interesting that you challenge 'factcheck' - when you think about it, there is rarely a place/person that doesn't influence their thought/writing with their own prejudice. Perhaps the important thing is to look at both sides of the story - you can still leave with your own opinion, but at least you may be more tolerant as to why people have differing ones.
    Like the Common Sense Media resources - they address issues in a quick and succinct manner for all. And their videos are great conversation-starters!

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    1. Thank you for the comments! I truly like getting your critique. I like ‘factcheck’ as a resource to start, but I always look at other resources to back things up. I just have a problem with the "fact" part when some of their posts are clearly biased. I don't have a "side" exactly. I tend to look at all sorts of angles before taking a stance on something, and I usually am on the side of what is right and wrong in black and white. Others usually have a grey area, but I usually don't. I also believe in hard work and no one should get something for nothing. For this reason, my family teases me and says "You're a Little Democratic Republican" LOL.

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