As most of you know, I struggle to have my students remember their log-in information. The idea of them creating their own web pages is beyond overwhelming. Once I get past the first initial idea of how much my students still need to learn I start playing with some ideas. I felt the over arching themes from this week's readings were how to create critical thinkers in relation to digital writing from what information is important to what information are you comfortable putting in the public eye. In addition to critical thinking there was a strong message about the influence of popular media and how it can and cannot play into the classroom.
I found it shocking when Hobbs and Moore (2013) cited that 40% of students said they valued fame the most in their lives (p. 78). This statistic made me feel scared and excited. I felt excited because it reinforced the idea that my students want to be heard outside of the classroom. I think that is the way that many things are headed and I am constantly try to figure out ways to make their ideas heard. It made me scared because fame can mean a lot of different things. We live in a culture where students want to be celebrities or go "viral". As their teacher I want fame to mean a cure for cancer, or a discovery of a new and powerful teaching tool. I wonder if we as educators can shape fame into incorporating celebrity in addition to civic engagement.
Currently my students are learning how to decide if information is fact vs. opinion. This is a very challenging skill for primary students. Developmentally students are just starting to realize that there is a world outside of themselves. This translates to just because I love lasagna doesn't mean it is the best dinner of all time for everyone. We reinforce fact vs. opinion for the rest of the year. We start with discussing facts and it leads into a research project. Students pick an animal and write four separate paragraphs about it. The consistent message in our class readings relates to student's writing being read and used beyond just by the classroom teacher.
In Hick (2013), he discusses the idea of optional links vs. required links (p. 51). This really got me thinking about how I could work to teach students about how to use visuals to help their animal projects. I think that even though my students cannot type more than a couple words a minute they might just be motivated to enhance their writing. Hicks (2013) goes on to discuss "digitally enhanced" (p. 57) work It could lead to a good lesson about what visuals help make a project better and which visuals distract of don't add to the content. I do think this is a lesson that 2nd grader could access and in turn have a more public platform for their work.
While reading Hicks (2013) and Hobbs and Moore (2013) I was able to really analyze my classroom and my perceptions about popular culture as well as what I want digital literacy to look like in my classroom. I think first and foremost I want students to be able to become more fluent when using a computer (i.e. logging in, opening up a web page, trouble shooing small technical errors). I also want students to become more fluent in typing as this is a skill they will need to use heavily in 3rd grade. Lastly, I want my students to access each other's writing and be able to take information from their research and represent it in a more powerful way than a traditional paper-pencil paragraph. I think by teaching my students how to critically analyze visuals, create a Google Document that links student's to each others work and providing time with technology my student's can meet these goals and enhance their learning experience.
Lastly, I was very interested in being able to pull up YouTube videos without distracting other videos. If you are interested in using this in your class you may go here. I think that my students that have special needs might benefit from verbally being able to read their paragraphs and post them to YouTube as an alternative to having to type all of their work. For now these goals feel lofty, but as I start planning out their unit I am excited to see what is reasonable in my classroom!
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