Where is education?

Education is in the heart of the listener not in the voice of the teacher.

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Alternative Schooling / Reflections

After reflecting back on what my expectations were for the class, I think my expectations for the most part were met. The one field of my expectation was of no surprise after reviewing what they expectation was and having been in class for the past 12 weeks. I wanted to gain a better knowledge of the Web 2.0 and how tactics could be applied to schooling and learning. I definitely feel like I can adapt any lesson plan by placing a technological angle on it. I specifically found that wiki’s are great for teaching and allowing for students, teachers and parents to all interact with each other. I have also learned that as much as technology can be a helpful and easy way of doing things, it can also have its flaws; for example, cyber bullying. Integrating technology into the classroom has made me realize that there is a whole new field of things to look out for when it comes to dealing with your students. I expected to work openly with my classmates in this course. The education class I took in the previous semester built a strong relationship with one another. In this class, I cannot tell you one personal piece of information about a student (unless I read it off of their digital autobiography). I personally, think that is because of the use of technology, which is ironic. I expected the instructor to teach me about new savvy instruments and yes that was absolutely fulfilled. I learned about tons of websites to incorporate into teaching. Even though this subject is rather boring, I wish I knew more about the political side of teaching.

Advice for future students: The class is not a “walk in the park.” If you are good with computers, then this class is for you. Your skills will be challenged and the lesson plans can get a little frustrating but after you’ve completed them it is a big relief and you feel accomplished with what you have created. Also, I would suggest investing in a laptop that, or having a friend whose laptop, has a video camera and microphone. Other than that, the journals can be a little heavy so stay on top of them. The professor is a pretty easy going guy and will help you with anything! My class was really quiet and didn’t participate much, so I encourage you to get to know your classmates. Good luck!

Learning Networks

Tell me specifically:
(a) what network did you join?
I joined the Twitter network. Twitter is a social network and miniblogging site that allows for users to send and receive messages that are known are tweets.

(b) who are you following and what do they do for a living?
The majority of the people I am following are friends of mine who I either go to college with, went to high school with or have met along the way. Aside from following friends, I also follow informational sources, celebrities and organizations. Some of the information sources that I follow are The Miami Herald, CNN, The Gainesville Sun, The Alligator, OMGfcats and Barack Obama. Some of the celebrities I follow consist of John Mayer, Chad Ochocinco, Chelsea Lately, Dwayne Wade and The Miami Heat. And some of the organizations I follow are Public Relations Student Society of America(PRSSA), Gamma Eta (a multicultural sorority) and the Outrigger Hawaii.

(c) describe a conversation that you engaged in, e.g., what did you talk about?
A conversation that I was engaged in was set up by PRSSA. The chat was titled #ufprchat.

Here were the rules:
1. Include #ufprchat in every single tweet
2. On first use of the #ufprchat tag, introduce yourself using your
first and last name.
3. Stay on topic. Add "Q1" to represent the question number at the
beginning of your tweet. Include #ufprchat in your tweet.
4. Respect others.
5. Submit questions to Adrienne Browne (@msgatoradr) without the
hashtag #ufprchat.
6. No Florida State fans.

The chat was set up to connect alumni from PRSSA and the College of Journalism and Communication to current students and student who are graduating this semester. The main topic discussed during the chat was about how social media has changed and effected the public relations field. It was also any ones chance to ask alumni for advice or questions. I asked for tips on taking reporting (one of our colleges hardest classes).

(d) what did you learn from this process? Is this something you might find useful as a teacher?
One of the things I learned in this process was the power of social media and how effective social media's power is with communicating. I also learned good tips about the use of social media and how to brand yourself within its images for clients and the business world. This chat was a way of networking for me. I also learned that most alumni have found that teachers and adults have no idea how to use social media or incorporate it into their education. I found this very useful and would definitely encourage my students to partake in a chat as part of an assignment or project.

Social Action & Communication Skills

http://www.takepart.com/actions/play-for-safe-water-play-freepovertycom/133892
This site is best for students taking geography (6th graders), students in high school and college. The Web site encourages some type of action to take place to get people to donate healthy water to countries with a high poverty level. It contains a game that has the world map. The Web site gives you a location such as Rome, Italy and asks that you locate it. The closer you get to the location the more cups of water the Web site will donate to a country of poverty. This activity could be used for teaching students about geography and real-world poverty issues/concerns.

http://socialworkaction.blogspot.com/
This site is best for students either in high school or college who are taking some kind of government or economics class. The Web site is a blog that discusses social actions that are taking place in the United States government. It is a good use of reference for teaching students about the government and economics. It is also good to show students how to blog and to share information, specifically information about social action.

http://www.takepart.com/issues/education-reform/13734
This Web site is specific toward education actions. There are videos, links to be able to tweet a statistic that is give on the site, links to donate and other informational texts. However, the takepart.com Web site is a site that encourages action to be taken for a huge range of issues from Environment to Social Welfare issues. This Web site can be best for any range of students as long as they know how to read somewhat detailed text and can comprehend the subject manner. Teachers can use this Web site to relate to basically any subject or content area that is being discussed in class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htbNbmVLvkU
This video site is best for students at the middle school level. Middle school and be a tough time, especially for trying to communicate to one's parents, friends or school teachers. This video breaks down very simply concepts but states the information in such an easy way to understand. Teachers can use this video to teach students how to resolve conflicts. Teachers can also use this video to teach how to effectively give a speech or presentation to a class.

http://www.speakeasyinc.com/
This site is best for students in the business field. Middle schools and high schools tend to offer business classes and then of course once you reach the college level there is a whole college for business. The Web site discusses how important communication is within the business sector and how it is a key component to success. This site can be used as reference guide when discussing and teaching about communication skills. This site can also be shown as an example of how to incorporate key business skills with communication tactics.

http://stress.about.com/od/relationships/ht/healthycomm.htm
This site is best for students in high school because the depth of information may not be understood by those any younger. This site can be used by teachers to learn how to effectively communicate with their students. The site can also be used by students to study these concepts for classes that deal with communication skills (such as interpersonal communication skills at UF). This is another good communication Web site to use as a reference because it lists 10 ways to communicate effectively and then a range of tips to keep in mind.

Curiosity, Imagination, Creativity, & Play

KNOW:
Curiosity is an emotion. Curiosity is the feeling of wonder and inquisition to learn or discover new things.
Imagination is the mind thinking about thinking in a fantasy world. Imagination can be used to enhance learning and allows for the mind to create pictures.
Creativity is the mind exploring all aspects of a concept and putting those aspects to use in an unordinary and banal way.
Play is the act of enjoying what one is doing or having fun. Play corresponds to activities.

WANT:
I know that curiosity is most commonly found in humans and from firsthand experience I know that cats are also very curious. What other animals or creatures are highly curious?
When does imagination and reality co-exist? Is there even an exact answer or is it merely an interpretation?
What dictates creativity? Something that is creative to one person may not be as creative to another.
Are humans the only beings who are creative?
What is an example of something that is not considered to be “play”?
How do these four terms help to teach students how to learn new things? How can playing help students to learn?

LEARN:
Creativity should be treated as important as critical literacy is treated. If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original. Creativity allows for children to take a chance. But as children become adults they lose that creativity. Dance, art, and music are all ways to express creativity but in public schools those subjects are slowly being taken away. Math, English and Science is what is stressed in the public school system. All of which are important but when the creative subjects are offered then students begin to lose their creative sense. The first video made a statement that said something about if all the insects on Earth were to disappear, every life form would disappear within 50 years but if humans were to disappear all other forms of life would prosper. I think that this could possibly answer my question about what creatures are curious. I think all creatures are curious, but on different levels and some levels that humans can’t understand. In order to appreciate the concept of failure, I think that one must have a good sense of imagination in order to see the benefits of failure. Embracing one’s imagination deals with allows to views things from more than one point of view and being able to empathize with people instead of being so closed minded that one sees life solely from one’s own perspective. There is a huge variety of play. Nobody can dictate what play is because play is something different to every person. Humans are not the only ones who play. Animals play also. The beginning point of play is the first time one finds joy. Play does not have a particular purpose. Plays purpose should not be more important than the act of doing it, if it is then it is not play. Play triggers the brain and helps memory development.

RSS Activity

The sites I am following consist of a wide diverse range. The week before you asked us to set up an RSS feeder, I had to set one up for my writing for mass communication class. This class asked that I following three specific blogs. So, part of my 10 that you requested we follow are those three from my other class. Those three deal with news that pertain to UF and writing and editing rules and tips. The other blogs that I searched were blogs about teaching abroad, or studying abroad. I also found a really interesting blog about Hawaii. I basically chose these sites because of interest. I would like to teach geography, so that was my initial search topic. If I am going to teach geography I might as well know about all the places that I am teaching. What I found challenging about this activity was finding 10 sites. It was easy to find a few sites that I was interested in but after about five, it became pretty difficult. I also think that it is challenging to stay updated on 10 blogs, that is a lot of information for just one day aside from all the other information that a student has to research, or take in that deal with other classes. On the other hand, the RSS reader makes it easy to access information as opposed to having to run a Google search for a particular article. As a teacher, I feel that I the feed reader can be used in a classroom first off by use of current events. Current events are typically an assignment give to students in the upper elementary school or middle school level. One of the first three blogs that I started to follow is a great source for news because the writer is a reporter for Gainesville. Blogs can also be used in a classroom by being the base of a story idea or project. It also can relate real life to what is being taught. For example, if I was teaching about the culture in Italy, I could pull up a blog that I am subscribed to and my students could read about whatever this Italian blogger writes. I don’t really care much for the RSS reader, I think it just creates one make location and spot for people to have to check or keep up with on a daily basis. I guess what I would like to know is where did RSS come from and why did it all of a sudden become so popular? Was it because of the high demand for blogging in the media world?

Access

First of all I would just like to point out that after reading these articles, I logged onto my Facebook just to see if I had any new notifications or if there were any new interesting status updates. But anyways, how does socioeconomic status affect access to the Internet and social media? Hmm.. the way I see it, is there is a definite age group difference. Those who are in middle school typically use MySpace. Highschool is a mixed of MySpace and Facebook, college students just only use Facebook and won't dare give out there "immature" MySpace link. Twitter and Linkedin, however, become a bit of a toss-up between ages. With my own personal use of Twitter I find that the youngest age group of users are college students. Many professionals, company's, and celebrities use Twitter. Linkedin is what I have the least knowledge about. I believe it is just for a business aspect and used solely for networking. I do believe that one's socioeconomic status affects their access to the Internet and social media because for one, if you do not have access then you won't have any of these social networks. And typically, those who are in college or have college degrees tend to have or make more money than those who are not in college. It even makes sense for middle-schoolers, who have no income. Those kids have no business using something like Linkedin or following someone like CNN because they cannot comprehend that information just yet. This access to the Internet and social media has just recently become extremely important. One of the articles said its access enhances local economies, manages natural resources and improves access to education and health services. I agree with these statements because anyone can type in a Google search and learn something new within 5 minutes. Students who do not have internet access can be supported by the use of libraries in schools or even public libraries or computers within the classrooms. Just as internet access and social media are increasing around us, classrooms and schools are enhancing too so even if there is not access at a students home the likelihood of that student accessing internet in school is very high.

Participatory Culture--The New Literacy

The participatory culture article brought up a very interesting point that I did not consider until I read about it: the participation gap. The participation gap is the represents the unequal access to these online media skills that will "prepare youth for" for the days of tomorrow. The networked student video discussed that students or everyone actually must become skilled in media in order to succeed in the world, just as the article discussed but the video definitely left out the gap between those who have a means of access and those who do not. After both reading the article and watching the video I feel that this new form of media allows for more in-dependency to be placed on students. Their creatively is measured instead of their facts and students are trusted more to allow their brains to work on their own and form a new idea or at least a path to a new idea by their own means of collaboration. Even though a student acts independently, on these social networks one interacts with hundreds of thousands of people (or at least has the opportunity to). Which leads to what I believe will be an on-going debate for the upcoming years... Is the "New Media Culture" helpful or harmful to Americas youth? The article discusses that new media will allow for individuals to multitask and be able to collaborate better with people from diverse backgrounds(something that the video doesn't discuss). I don't know if I agree or disagree. I don't know if new media is helping society become united through these networks or creating barriers among people on a personal face-to-face level. I may have gone off on my own tangent about new media.. but I think I at least answered the question somewhat? I hope "/

I feel like the only student experience that I can see that would be similar are those from this class. It is really the only class that allows for students to be hands on with technology and to really give them the freedom to almost teach themselves by allowing for them to learn the ends and outs of the online websites. I don't remember if it was the article or the video but one talked about a project with other students working all online and it reminded me of the Art Show that will be put on at the end of the semester. The other experience that I can relate these two sources to is my writing for mass media class. This class literally teaches students about all the forms of mass media.. and why does it do that? Well obviously because it is what is needed to get by in the business world of today's society.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

1. Bloom's Taxonomy represents the process of learning, without completing the first step one cannot move forward to the next step. The chart listed describes learning as a process of: Knowledge -> Comprehension -> Application -> Analysis -> Synthesis -> Evaluation
Bloom's representation is slightly different in word choice yet basically measures the same thing. It looks like this: Remembering -> Understanding -> Applying -> Analyzing -> Evaluating -> Creating

Learning Objective: The student will write a compound sentence using conjunctions.

Knowledge: The student will be asked what he/she knows about conjunctions.

Comprehension: The student will be told what a conjunction is and how to spot them out in sentences.

Application: The student will create simple sentences using conjunctions.

Analysis: The students will share their sentences with each other and decide whether the use of a conjunction was proper or not.

Synthesis: The students can collaborate what they have learned and form paragraphs using sentences with conjunctions.

Evaluation: The student will evaluate his/her paragraph with past paragraphs they have written without conjunctions and then evaluate their paragraphs with other classmates.

2. I do not believe that the students were less capable than Paul assumed them to be. I feel that the students had what they believed to be prior knowledge that led them to believe that "summer temperatures were warmer than winter temperatures because the earth was closer to the sun in the summer". So when Paul emphasized "that summers were hotter than winters because of the changes in the angle of the earth and the sun" the students simply skimmed over his statements because they believed what they had already thought. Then when the students had to write about it in essay form is was harder for them to remember which was the false reasoning and which was the true reasoning. I think Paul probably just lectured the students, and therefore put the blame on his teaching techniques. I believe that had it been a multiple choice question, it may have been a little easier for students to differentiate simple because the two options would be stated as opposed to having to come up with ones own wording. If a lab, or an example, was given to physically show the students the differences would help students to learn the material and do better on answering the question next year.

Critical Thinking Readings & GWAP

PART 1
1. What do you already know about critical thinking and critical thinking strategies?
Critical thinking involves thinking "outside of the box". It means that when one thinks, that there should be many options not just option A or option B; black or white. Critical thinking is the Grey area in between. Critical thinking allows for one not always have a correct answer, in my opinion. As long as there is rational between the thought then I find it to hold some validity. As a good critical thinker, one can handle uncertainty, be aware of their areas of ignorance, awaits a valid piece of evidence and for evidence-based answers to a specific issue.

2. As an educator, what do you want to know more about critical thinking strategies?
Instead of knowing more about critical thinking I'd like to know if empathizing is a component of critical thinking. When one empathizes with another, I believe that being to have critically thought about the situation.


3. In what ways can you apply critical thinking skills in your lesson planning? As a teacher and as a student in school.
Critical thinking skills can be applied to lesson planning by assigning response papers that allow for the student to comment, question, or discuss at least two issues of concern or interest. This allows for the student to give feedback and to think about the assigned reading.

PART 2
1. In what ways do GWAP games support sharing, communication, collaboration, and action?
GWAP games support sharing and collaboration because each has must be played with a partner. Although the user does not get to physically see or meet his/her partner one gets to interact with one's partner by sharing thoughts and collaborating by selectively thinking about what your partner will do next. It involves communication by allowing one to type and to detail what one hears, or sees and then submit those details so that the partner can make their selection of action.

2. How might I use a GWAP game in my lesson planning?
GWAP games can be used in lesson planning as "free-time". It is a opportunity for students to give their mind a break while their mind is still focusing on critical thinking, even if the students are not aware of it.

Chapter 1

In what ways is preexisting knowledge important?
Preexisting knowledge is important because it influences what humans notice about the environment and how they organize and interpret what they notice. The more preexisting knowledge one has the easier it is to make judgments on a new sight.

In what ways is active learning important?
Active learning is important to enhance the process of learning between students and teachers and the relationship created within that process. Active learning helps people understand what they are learning and understand when they are not fully comprehending what they are being taught and when they need the topic to be discussed in more detail. Active learners seek to understand complex subject matter and are better prepared to transfer what they have learned to new problems and settings

Provide a brief summary of the key findings.
Understanding, active learning and metacognition are all essential key points within the education system. Students are going to come in with preconceptions that must be addressed. In order to gain competence in certain areas student must have a foundation of knowledge, understand facts and organize information. Metagonitive can help students take control of their own learning.

What is metacognition? What are its implications for education?
Metacognition is the ability for people to predict their performances on certain tasks. Metacognition deals with sense-making, self-assessment and reflected on what worked and what needs improvement. The implications for education are teachers must incorporate preexisting understands that their students hold, teachers need to provide many examples that children can relate to when teaching in depth, and metagonitive skills should be integrated into the curriculum in a range of subject areas.

In what ways are assessments vital in teaching and learning environments?
Assessments are vital in teaching and learning environments based on the trail-and-error system. Assessments help engage students because they can try out an assessment and make a judgment on whether they have conquered the subject matter or if it needs improving. This is also vital for teachers because they can determine whether their teaching skills are being utilized correctly. The assessments relate to the cat learning example. The cat did not initially understand that he had to pull the string down in order to get the food but after trial-and-error, the cat eventually understood and learned what needed to be done. Assessments will eventually lead to a student having learned.

Course Expectations

What are your expectations for this course?
*My expectations of this course is to gain a better knowledge of the "Web 2.0" and how all its tactics can be applied to a school/teaching/learning setting.

What are your expectations for your classmates?
*My expectations for my classmaters are to be friendly, communicate more clearly, and to open up to a group of students and share feelings that one wouldn't normally.

What are your expectations of your instructor?
*My expectations of my instructor is to learn more than just technology savvy instruments but about the non-structural form of teaching and communicating with students.

What questions do you have about this course and/or learning, teaching, and technology?
*None