EduBlog Review 02

http://www.suzemuse.com/

As a self professed total nerd and an instructor at Algonquin College in various media and video courses, Suze Muse (Susan Murphy) has a keen interest in the use of technology in education.

http://www.suzemuse.com/2011/04/ontario-teachers-told-not-to-tweet-not-quite/

I first came across her blog when searching for information on the recent notice from the Ontario College of Teachers regarding the use of social media in the classroom. I don’t know about you, but the vague message from our union, administration, and board was to avoid the use of today’s media for communicating with our students. Through communications with other teachers, especially through a course such as this one, it’s apparent that to not use this technology would be an injustice to students. They use this media everyday in communicating with each other, and not always well. In reading her blog, she goes through the emotions that most teachers would have gone through when first hearing the news reports regarding the OCT advisory. Most news media outlets jumped on the report as a warning to teachers to avoid social media. However, when reading the report on the OCT website, it is clear that the College is actually advocating for the use of this technology in the classroom with caution. It’s too bad that the CBC and others did not use this OCT advisory as a way of promoting what good is being done in the classroom, instead of focusing only the negatives as news producers tend to do.

http://www.suzemuse.com/2011/02/digital-literacy-is-in-crisis/

I found another great blog entry regarding digital literacy and how today’s youth, while turned on by technology, don’t understand it as much as we think. She writes about the amount of change in technology but the lack of evolution in the curriculum.

“...we are actually breeding a generation of digital illiterates. How? We are not teaching them how to really understand and use the tools. We are only teaching them how to click buttons.”

Much of this discussion was brought to light in our forum discussions on internet usage and safety so I won’t go in depth, just wanted to share this article from this blog.

http://www.suzemuse.com/2011/07/you-get-to-choose/

One final entry that really got my attention was the latest from July 20^th, which is a short but direct piece on the use of the internet. It is all about the choices we make in the digital domain and how choose to represent ourselves. It is advice about using the internet properly and smartly for researching, communicating etc.... This would make good bulletin board material or a computer lab poster to remind students about proper online etiquette and respect.

I didn’t mean for this to be a review of three blog entries - I just found these caught my attention the most. The entire blog is full of excellent information and advice from a woman with a world of social media experience. Incorporating some of these ideas (ideals?) into our classes will help to make better use of the technology at hand while engaging our students in a modern learning environment.

EduBlog Review 01

Well, here it is - my first blog, ever. Please be kind.

The first blog that I’ve found for review is The James Logan Courier, produced by the students of James Logan High School's Journalism and News Production classes - http://jameslogancourier.org/.

It’s not so much a resource for students to access information from daily, or even an educator’s resource on how to use technology in a classroom setting, but I’ve found it to be a great example of one teacher’s use of blogging as a way of getting his journalism students publishing their work on a regular basis. Replacing the old school newspaper, this medium gives the students an incredible opportunity to display their writing skills in a setting very much like the one they may be aspiring to in a future career.

The format seems pretty simple and straight-forward. There are written contributions of news stories each day by the students meant to inform the masses, as well as student-created art and cartoons to entertain. The stories are well written and obviously the teacher takes the time to edit his student’s work to present a truly professional final result.

There is lighter fare as well with the reviews of movies, DVDs, CDs, concerts, and restaurants. There are political cartoons posted regularly which would be an excellent way for teachers of other classes to spark conversations of current national and global events. Also, the regular feature “Tech Tuesday” deals with reviews of video games, new pieces of technology, or even the use of technology in the news, as evidenced by one story of a teacher suspended for her remarks about her students in her own blog entries.

Included with the regular daily contributions, there is a profile of someone of some historical or popular significance, based on the calendar day and on the birthday of the historical figure. These are mostly referenced from Wikipedia and are used to send a message of education, justice or tolerance.

Using the blog format to give the journalism students a regular voice is a great example of one teacher using technology to educate and instil confidence in his students. Beyond that, he has created an area for other students to frequent that will foster and promote literacy with their peers, even if it just to see how the basketball team performed in the weekend tournament. There is such a wide range of material covered in this blog space, much like the various sections of a newspaper, that there is something to attract almost anyone and hopefully get them hooked on reading more of the entries on a regular basis. Heck, I even learned from one of the entries that there actually was a man named Rube Goldberg for whom all the Mousetrap-esque contraptions are named for.