I am just going to start off this week by writing the blog post prompt for the week so that you and I can follow along better as there is a lot of material to cover!
"Required blog post: Increasing our collective digital literacy seems like the best way to combat fake news and the dangers that accompany it. What might it look like to teach about digital literacy in your subject area/grade range? What ties can you make to the curriculum? How might you incorporate the goals of the NCTE Framework?" I am going to answer this week's blog post question by question as that is the way I like to organise my work and my thoughts. 1. What might it look like to teach about digital literacy in your subject area/grade range? This is something I have struggled with throughout my teaching experience. I found it difficult to teach about digital literacy when I am not 100% sure what that term entails either. I also found it difficult because in order for us to use laptops or go to a computer lab, I had to book weeks in advance and I normally was not planned that fully at that point. So we had laptops a few times and then the students had their phones. It is hard to teach anything to do with technology when I have no way of providing my students with the technology. With that said, I have discovered a few ways to teach students about digital literacy in an English Language Arts classroom from grades 9 to 12: One article called "How do we teach students to identify fake news?" has some useful tools and tips with how to deal with it. One that I thought would be helpful in an English classroom would be teaching the students how to use and read a Media Bias Chart. It is a nice layout for students to reference to when searching the internet for sources to use in their homework or in their essays. I also liked the mention of Catfishers because not only is that a very important thing for students and youth to be aware of, but also there are many videos and articles that could go along with that to make it an engaging and memorable lesson especially at the high school level. Another article I looked into is called "What's News: Fake, False, Misleading, Clickbait, Satire or Carefully Reported?". This article also provided good tips in helping students decipher what is good news and what is not. A few of the tips were "Investigate the URL/Site" and "Be Critical of Images". I also thought this would easily fit into an English lesson as during my pre-internship, I taught about Clickbait and during internship, I taught about Satire. They are easy words and lessons to add into the classroom as they are easy enough to explain, interesting enough to grab attention and relative enough for students to care. 2. What ties can you make to the curriculum? The English Curriculum touches a lot throughout the outcomes on critical thinking which was mentioned in an iBook I read. The iBook is called "Lessons in Critical Thinking" and has a few student-designed lessons for multiple subjects. The one that I was most intrigued by was an English lesson called "Using TV Ads to Teach Persuasive Writing". I read through it and I think it is a super cool idea. This lesson was aimed for students between grade 3 and 5, but it could easily be adaptable for high school students as well. The teacher explained the different types of persuasive techniques and then use TV ads for the students to figure out how each one is persuading. There is a little bit more to it and an actual worksheet that goes along with it. And like I said earlier, that worksheet could definitely be adjusted for a higher grade level. I thought it was an awesome activity to keep students interested, but also to hit that critical thinking piece as well as many English courses have persuasive writing in their outcomes/indicators as well. Also as I mentioned earlier in the post, words like "satire" are very important to English. In ELA B30, understanding satire and possibly writing in satire is actually in the curriculum, so any type of activities that explain or work on that are awesome for the English classroom! 3. How might you incorporate the goals of the NCTE Framework?" Firstly, before reading this article, I had no idea what NCTE is so for anyone else in my position, it stands for National Council of Teachers of English. Everything in their framework is important to English teaching and covers a lot of the curriculum outcomes. They all connect to some very important aspects of English. I have written a few bullet points underneath each framework so you can see what I think about each one individually. "Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology"
"Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought"
"Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes"
"Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information"
"Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts"
"Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"
Overall, Fake News and helping our students be digitally literate is a huge part of our job as teachers in 2019. It may not be easy, but it is an important part for us to reflect on and work towards becoming more digitally literate as an individual. Thanks for checking in this week!
0 Comments
This week was interesting week as the assignment was to Cybersleuth (aka Cyber-Stalk) one of my classmates. I had the privilege of cybersleuthing one of my best friends, Erinn Flory. This was a little harder since I know Erinn very well, but I only noted things that her digital presence could tell me. Here are my findings: Instagram: Erinn's Instagram is private, but since she is one of my good friends, I already had access. Without having access, all I could see is she is a student at the University of Regina and that a few characteristics that describe Erinn which is "Kindness" and "Hilarious-ness". And as her friend, I can confirm both of these are true statements. Once I looked at her open privacy, I discovered that she enjoys spending time with her friends as most of her pictures involve them. She graduated from Balfour Collegiate in Regina based on one of her pictures. From her pictures, it is clear to see that she enjoys spending her time with friends and family, coaching volleyball and doing outdoor activities. Facebook: Erinn's Facebook account provides a little detail into her life:
Twitter: Erinn has two Twitter Accounts: her professional one and her personal. I dug into both of them. Professional Twitter (@MsFlory): She states in her bio that she is studying to be a Social Studies and Physical Education teacher. Some of the things she believes in are "positive relationships" and "every student matters". She enjoys witty banter and travelling. She posts a lot about students being treated fairly and creating positive relationships so right away, I get the vibe that she is dedicated and is going to be an awesome teacher who will create an equal and supportive classroom for her students. Her Professional Twitter provides a clear outlook on what her classroom will look like and I am excited to see where she goes as I know she will make an awesome teacher. This is not just because she is already my friend, but because everything she tweets and shares has so much value and wisdom to it. Personal Twitter: Her personal Twitter is not as active and I did not learn anything new from her Twitter. It was more older photos and gave me a slight look into some of her High School memories. Overall, she has a good sense of humour based on the things she shares and likes. Blog: Erinn's blog is highly professional. It is filled with wisdom and experiences for her readers. Her learning project posts were entertaining to read and it was awesome to watch her progress. Overall, these blogs mainly just reiterate everything else I already found. She is going to be an awesome educator and I look forward to keeping up with her blogs and her learning posts. Google Search: Erinn has a few results when she is Googled. Her Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and blogs appear which is interesting because out of curiosity, I Googled myself and did not find any results that matched me . Either way, it made my job way easier to have all of her social media in one place. The one new thing I learnt from this is that she works as a Summer Intern with WestHill Church. She works with the children and youth of the church. This was a fun activity! I enjoyed diving deep into the lives and the social media of one of my best friends. I had never taken the time to actually full on stalk her before so this was super interesting. Overall, Erinn does not overshare online, she is generally a pretty private person on the web. Based on what I can see, my main take-aways are that she is a very friendly, family/friend-oriented person, she enjoys sports and being outdoors and she is going to be an amazing educator. *All pictures have been approved by Erinn*
*For her privacy, only her professional Twitter and Blog has been linked* Digital Identity: Another part of our homework was to look at our digital identity on a more general scale. I watched a TED Talk by Jon Ronson called "One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life". I found this video very interesting because it really puts it into perspective how one wrong move online can flip your life upside down. In the video, Jon talks about a woman named Justine who wrote a racist tweet before boarding her flight. By the time she landed, it was everywhere and she was trending and not in a good way. She was fired from her job and targeted on social media due to her actions. Although I do not agree with Justine's actions, it is insane how fast word travelled and how one stupid thing she wrote decided her life. This is a terrifying thought, I don't post very much on social media, but it is always a process for me to post something. I am terrified that I will accidentally post something that the teacher's board finds inappropriate and I will suffer for it. Every time i post, I think "is this an appropriate message? Is this an appropriate outfit? Is this an appropriate caption?". I am constantly in my head because I do not want to make a mistake like Justine did. It boggles my mind how much social media has grown in importance over the last few years. It has created a huge boom in the world and because of that, people are suffering consequences because of their online life. Jobs are beginning to cybersleuth your profiles online in order to make sure you are an appropriate candidate. And all it takes is for you to post one bad post, someone to screenshot or share it and after that, it belongs to the web and there is no turning back. This video was definitely alarming to me, I was pretty sure all of my pictures and content were appropriate, but I felt the need to double check. Everything seems fine on my social media, but it is still crazy to think that one wrong post can turn my life all around. We need to be extra careful when online and be very aware of our own digital identities. Thanks for reading! The following conversation was held between Garrett J. Bates, Hillary Mercier and Erinn Flory. It is a conversation on whether or not Facebook should or should not be used within the classroom. The conversation was recorded and is transcribed below.
Erinn: I am Erinn and I am taking pro-Facebook in the classroom. Hillary: I am Hillary and I am also doing pro-Facebook in the classroom. Garrett: I’m Garrett and I am anti-Facebook in the classroom. So we can just start by sort of saying our personal experiences with Facebook, like, when did you guys get on Facebook? How old were you/what grade were you in? Erinn: I didn’t get any type of social media, including Facebook, until first year university, so I had never used Facebook in the classroom or in high school. Hillary: I got my own personal Facebook account in grade ten I want to say. But none of my high school teachers used it in the classroom or anything like that, so I’ve only ever known it as a personal platform. Garrett: I remember I got Facebook when I was in grade five. It had just come out and all my friends were talking about it. We all got on it at the same time. There are pictures of me, on Facebook, when I was in grade five. So I’ve had it for over ten years now. Erinn: Yeah it’s definitely more of a personal platform than a communal platform. Garrett: So why don’t we just jump right into it. Why is it good to have in the classroom? Erinn: Well I’m thinking that it’s great for creating a class community. So teachers can create private pages that have privacy settings on them that only their class members can join. It’s just a great way for the class to interact with each other, I feel at least. What about you Hillary? Hillary: Yeah I agree and the article I read talked a lot about how it’s heavily used by everybody. It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t have it, so it’s very easy to connect and it’s available 24/7. You can reach out to these people and it will ding in their pocket and they’ll look at it almost immediately, so it’s not like you’re waiting for emails where it could take a day for them to respond. People respond to Facebook quite often. Garrett: People kind of treat it like texting almost, to a certain degree… Why Facebook instead of something else, is my big thing. Why Facebook instead of something like Google classroom? Or anything else that’s more private and can’t be seen from the outside right? Cause after looking into Facebook in general, especially the link I sent you guys, the Guardian article said that 50 million users data was breached. Erinn: I think it kind comes with what Hillary said, like everybody, or almost everybody, would have Facebook so I think it’s something that students would already know how to use. You wouldn’t really need to teach them much on how to use Facebook, and I think that when they’re scrolling through their news feed they can just click on their classroom page and just see what’s going on. Hillary: Yeah, and also to add onto that I don’t think it’s such a question of why Facebook over other things, I think it’s more: why not use Facebook in addition to Google classroom? Using all these different types of technologies in your classroom. Because, for instance we use Twitter in our Ed Tech class and I’m still not a huge fan of Twitter, so it’s kind of nice that if like students had multiple platforms they could go to, and like one better than the other. Garrett: Okay yeah, so you guys are advocating for multiple things, not just a Facebook strictly, it’s an addition to multiple things. Erinn: Yeah, like a why not? Instead of a why, a why not? Garrett: Okay yeah, I guess for me it all comes down to privacy, especially for my students, and depending on what grade I’m teaching too, like, if it’s a grade 9, 10, 11, 12, if I do get into high school then privacy isn’t much of an issue, but I’m more thinking of elementary level. Definitely not. Would you guys say that you would only use it in high school and not in elementary? Or would you use it wherever, in anyway? Hillary: In my personal classroom, I would only use it in high school, just because I only got Facebook in high school, and any earlier I probably would’ve been so confused. I don’t think little children need to be on that type of media at that age. Erinn: I agree, I think it is a high school thing. I think you need to have a maturity to understand how to properly use it, and wouldn’t advocate for it to be used in an elementary classroom. I think that’s just not something that should be done. Garrett: Okay, well, just to go further on that point, would you say that when you start your class right at the beginning of the semester, or the school year, kids walk in, teenagers I guess. Would you say: “Okay we’re gonna have a Facebook group, so I want everyone to join that.” Or would you have a big lesson on digital citizenship and all that privacy stuff? Would you say you’d start with that and then move into using Facebook, or would it just be strictly a “This is our group. Join it. Go home and join this.”? Erinn: I think they coincide with each other. I think you’d get them to join the Facebook group and through that you would teach them and they would learn through hands on learning that would be digital citizenship and privacy. I think that learning how to interact with others online is a huge part of it, and I think they don’t really understand that until they actually have to interact with others online. Hillary: And there’s like that big collaboration piece we touched on a little bit, and how important it is that they can reach out or talk to these people right at their finger tips whenever they need to and whenever they want to. That kind of takes that class dynamic out of the classroom. Garrett: So what I’m kind of gathering here is that it’s not so much a substitute for anything else, it’s not really for like assignments or what not, it’s more just to foster a community within the classroom, right? Erinn: It’s another tool that’s already familiar to the students. Hillary: It could be used for assignments I think, but generally it would be really good for group work, or like journal questions that you want to send out over Facebook every night or something. I don’t know what you’d want to do, but there’s ways to do it as an assignment. Erinn: I mean yeah, creating fake Facebook profiles for characters in books, when you have to write: “What is their bio? What is their job?” Things like that, just making it a real life personal thing. Hillary: We did that in internship. I had them make Facebook profiles and they really liked it. It was awesome for me to go through them and find all the different pathways, like “What are you interested in? What are your hobbies?” And all that stuff. I thought it was a really cool assignment. Garrett: Is it possible that could be extended into, not just assignments, but maybe that you tell students to create a new Facebook account. Use a pseudonym and that will be like, you in this classroom. That way you can post assignments and opinions and stuff without having to worry about it coming back to you necessarily. If you know what I mean? Erinn: Yeah! Like making a separate account, not one that you would have all your friends on, but one that would be more your professional one? Garrett: Yeah! Erinn: For sure, but I think as well in that, if you’re going to have students do that, you still need to ask them to evaluate their friends’ profiles a bit, like their profile for their friends and say: “Are you having good digital citizenship? If somebody you didn’t know looked at this, what would they think of you?” I think it just comes along with really good lessons about how you’re presenting yourself in the digital world. Garrett: Definitely. What subjects do you think this would be the best for? Hillary: I teach English and it worked awesome, like I said we did the character profiles so I’d recommend it for that. Erinn: I can see it being really good with social studies as well. Group projects, even finding current events, things like that. Garrett: Speaking of current events, with the advent of “Fake news”, do you think the kids are susceptible, teenagers I guess, to seeing fake news? Like seeing things like that isn’t necessarily true, and then internalizing that. Really believing that. That’s one of the big problems, apparently anyways, with Facebook that spreads a lot of misinformation. So should we be wary of that if we introduce Facebook into the classroom? Erinn: I think that goes along with teaching them what is a credible news source. If you’re looking online, maybe the Buzzfeed articles are not necessarily the most credible, but what about the CBC, the CTV, and The National, and things like that. I think teaching them what are good sources and teaching them kind of what you can invest your own belief in. Hillary: I agree. Garrett: Is digital literacy, digital citizenship, is that an English curricular thing? Or is there even one? Is it health? Hillary: Not as far as I know is it in the curriculum. Garrett: Do you guys think it should be introduced to the curriculum? Hillary: Probably. At this point, in 2019, I feel like it probably should be in there. I think that especially with all the different platforms and social medias there are, I think of how bad some people’s posts are. I think we could definitely learn a lesson from that and educate our students on that. Garrett: Absolutely. Hillary: So a question for you then Garrett: what is your counter? Why would you not want to use this in the classroom? Garrett: With Facebook doesn’t just come a classroom element, it comes with the big idea called FOMO. Don’t know if you guys have every heard of it, it’s F. O. M. O. It’s the “Fear Of Missing Out”. So, yeah we can use Facebook in the classroom, and it’s all good and well, and we can use it for assignments and what not, but at the same time, students are still on Facebook. I try to totally avoid it. The reason being that it, in my opinion, fosters two different things: anxiety big time, and the fear of missing out. So FOMO is basically that you see all your friends, they are, it looks like they’re having fun. They’re going to parties, they’re doing all these things that you’re not doing, right? So when students see that, anyone see’s that, it triggers something in them that’s like “Aw that hurts. I wish I was there too. Like why isn’t my life as fun? Why isn’t my life like that? Why aren’t I as cool?” Right? So it just breeds comparison, which is unhealthy for for our students especially. You could say that they’re going to be on it no matter what, but in my opinion, the less social media, anybody’s on really, the healthier mentally they are. So that’s why I am very hesitant to bring it into a classroom setting instead of something like Google classroom where there’s no actual social media element to it. Erinn: I can understand that. Garrett: So that’s why. I just think it’s like unhealthy mentally, but that’s obviously a personal opinion. I don’t know if the studies are still out on that, cause social media is a new-ish phenomenon. Hillary: No, I’ve heard all that before. I think the only thing that I could say, is that, if we use it in the classroom it wouldn’t really be a personal level. Like we had talked about, maybe like changing your name, like what we did for our Twitters, we put our teacher names, kind of thing. And that Facebook would be specifically for school, so you wouldn’t be posting pictures of you having a good night out kind of thing. Garrett: Yeah. Hillary: In the school setting, I get that it might still cause anxiety for people but I think that it would be a lot more of a community place and not a “look what I’m doing and you’re not doing” kind of thing. Garrett: I can definitely get on board with it if there’s two separate accounts. You have, like, your private account that’s like your life, and then you have a public account that’s like, your public life essentially. I can get on board with it that way. But if you’re supposed to use your Facebook account, like the one I’ve had for the last ten years, there’s no way I’d be comfortable with doing that. Especially cause like, even as teachers, going back and like scrubbing our social media accounts of anything stupid that we did when we were kids. Especially me because I have like, you know like grade 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. I had to go back and make sure through all that time I didn’t say anything dumb or offensive or anything. So yeah, I could get on board as long as there’s two. Erinn: I definitely see both sides of the argument. I can understand why, especially people would be hesitant to do it. I think it’s something that people should be open to. But I think it also just goes with your classroom climate. Judge “who are your students? Do they get along well? Do you think they can grasp the concept of a positive digital citizenship?” I think you have to evaluate who you are as a teacher . Will you be able to keep up with doing the online stuff? Will you be open to other options? Will you be able to work with students? Do you think you can adequately put things online for it in a way that everybody might understand? I can see both sides of the argument for sure. We ended the conversation there after reaching a pleasant middle point. Thank you for reading. |
Details
Archives
April 2019
Categories |