Final Five

#FuturePLN

I think the concept of PLNs is very interesting, and I hadn't really considered it before. I have seen teacher blogs, and teachers pay teachers, but I've never considered being an active participant in it. From the article, it definitely makes me interested in using Twitter. I've never used it before but I think the Twitter chats sounds really greats! Being able to sort through a topic so easily to see what everyone is saying about the one specific topic is very useful. I've never used a hashtag in my life, but seeing the benefits makes me want to try it out. 

I love the tip that everyone should jump in. We have a tendency to overthink things, and we never really just let ourselves do it. This is a tip I want to take into my teaching, because as teachers we HAVE to be flexible. We can't plan everything, and when a lesson goes in a different direction than what we expected we have to jump in. There is no time to overthink things. This is also applicable for the social media groups. Often we are so afraid of being judged or of being out of place that we psych ourselves out about it. We end up not getting involved in something that we could possibly add value to, just because we don't know how to jump in. 

I think following a range of people is very important. What is the point of following someone that thinks exactly the way you do? That doesn't broaden your thinking! Following someone who thinks differently than you do allows you to think of things you wouldn't have otherwise. It gets you outside of your box, and can give you more ideas for the classroom. Not every child thinks the way you do, and to differentiate for them you need to have other ideas. Following different kinds of people and adding them to your PLN can help to broaden your thinking and perspective. 

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind Trailer

 

My book trailer for The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind can be found at:

https://youtu.be/B6wTM0Ra9uY

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind Story Board

Storyboard Practice!

Let's Write A Letter!

We were recently introduced to MySimpleShow and Powtoon. I used MySimpleShow to create this How To Video on how to write letters. This is a video that will be extremely helpful when I have the opportunity to teach my thematic unit on Abraham Lincoln, as my writing lesson is centered on writing letters. Here is the link to the YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK8pPUEig8k

Flipped Classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pejCfTdNdZQ

Research Tools - UDL

Infographic!

Is the Internet Changing Our Brains?

I believe that the internet is indeed changing our brains. We are constantly on our phones texting, emailing, or playing on the internet. Parents now hand children their phones or tablets to keep them busy and distracted. But it is making us think differently and rely heavily on technology. With technology and access to so much information, we don't have to use our brains to think as hard. It is so easy to look something up on Google or to find information immediately, and a consequence is that it makes us impatient and almost lazy. We don't use our brains for math anymore, we all have calculators on our phones and thus there is no need. We don't read books as frequently, we read on our phones and often what we read does not have much substance. We are so reliant on technology for answers and help.

What are children going to do when the lights go out or when there is no service? They won't know what to do with themselves because they are always on their phones and computers.

Copyright

I know that things that are copyrighted cannot be used unless permission is given. I have never really looked into how this could affect me though. This did come up last week when a Facebook friend posted that Facebook had removed his opal video because of copyright issues. It definitely made me realize that I need to look into it to see how it may affect my jewelry business and posting my own videos and photos.

Learning more about copy right, I had the gist of what it means. But now that I know more information, I'm very intimidated about using things in my classroom. I know that I'm going to be really cautious when pulling resources to use. I don't understand how no one has talked to us or taught us some of this information - especially because we have been given PowerPoint assignments so frequently. They never told us to be careful about pulling images from google or to even be aware.

Pre and Post Plagiarism Article Thoughts

Plagiarism is when you copy someone's idea or writing without giving credit. This is something that is very serious and has very serious consequences, especially in high school and college. I know that there are many apps that run essays through their databases to check if anything has been copy/pasted in or stolen. I'm not sure about how much you have to paste in to be considered plagiarism or what happens if you use something similar but not quite the same.

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Looking back at this after reading the article makes me think that I had a good idea of what plagiarism was already. A lot of what I discussed came up, though they never said that professors use software to see if essays have been plagiarized. I didn't really think about how professors would take it, the article mentions that many professors take cheating and plagiarism very seriously. I also learned that changing words around is still plagiarism.

Punctuation in Texts?

I believe that punctuation should be used in text messaging. I do agree that texting is its own form of language and thus is not killing language as we know it, as stated in the the TED talk video, but I think punctuation can be important. We are constantly texting and so it's a good habit to get into using grammar and punctuation. It's a great opportunity to practice.

When I am texting someone, I do admit to judging them by how they text. If it's full of misspelled words and poor punctuation, then I will probably be less inclined to talk to them in the future. Once while texting I ended my sentence with a period. The person I was texting asked if I was mad at him because the period "seemed harsh". When did punctuation take on that type of meaning? And how common place is this becoming?

Texting Epidemic

Does texting make us bad writers?

This has been a question that people have been asking for years. As texting became more and more common place, people started using shorthand and soon a whole texting language emerged. But does it make us bad writers?

Looking back at some of my old Facebook posts, or old texts, can sometimes be cringe worthy. In middle school I thought it was so cool to use the text shorthand, or add extra letters to words. It's how all of my friends talked, and so it's how I talked. But I realized in high school that I was representing myself in a way that I didn't like. I didn't want to look uneducated or like I didn't know how to type. So I stopped using texting lingo and started typing everything out. No more "idk" or anything like that. I used proper grammar. But so many teens and kids text now, and they usually use short hand. As a result I've seen elementary school kids put "idk" for "I don't know" in their written work in class, and have seen other results of texting. But one thing about texting is that it forces us to be more expressive. We have to type in a way where the other person can understand how we mean our words. Reading a message is more difficult than hearing it, how can we get across our sarcasm or emotion? We learn to be more expressive and and to get our message across.

Texting has had different effects on our writing, both negatively and positively. It hasn't necessarily made us bad writers, but it has brought new hurdles into the classroom.

I never considered that texting is just an extension of how we are speaking, and not actual writing. Texting is fingered speech and thus is something that we do not spend a lot of time thinking or reflecting over, it is something that flows. Like speech we are not overly concerned about grammar, and this is definitely something we see daily in texting. After listening to the TED Talk video, I can definitely see that texting is different than writing and consequently does not make us bad writers. A point from the video that I really loved was that people, even presidents of colleges, have been complaining about youth's grammar and spelling for hundreds of years. It is not something that is only now occurring just because of texting. It is something we will probably continue to complain about for the next hundred years and should not be blamed on texting and technology.