Task 2 Research

Task 2 required me to research and use a social media site that would support a personally chosen social event; teach a peer how to use my site; and review and contribute to a peers social space. To begin I must choose a social event/group such as an online book club, mothers group, or sporting site. Then, I need to research social media sites that would be relevant to present my situation, choose one and justify why I chose the particular technology. The final step is to create a set of multimedia 'how to' instructions with both written text and screen captures, clear enough for a peer to access and contribute to my site.

I first looked through the unit book Meaningful Learning with Technology (Herrington & Parker, 2014) at chapter 2, Inquiring with Technologies. I found it really useful as someone who was about to embark on research and also from a future teaching aspect when requiring students to complete research tasks. whilst reading the second paragraph under 'Information Gathering with Internet Resources' on page 22, I found myself thinking back on when I was a student research in the library and how I never really learnt anything during these exercises. As outlined in the book and what I remember myself doing, if you are searching for answers on the internet to answer a set of questions from your teacher, you are focusing on completing the assignment (and quickly for that matter) and this does not really result in learning. I loved that as I read this chapter, I could reflect back and use my experience to say to myself I do not want to put my students in this sort of situation in my classroom as it shows that I have not learnt from my own experiences or taken on board what is confirmed in a book. It is put nicely in this text as taken from Jonassen and Colaric (2001), that research is a four step process. These four steps are: plan, use strategies to search the Web, evaluate and triangulate sources. I have in mind for my future teaching, that I would like to teach this sort of process before I put students into a research project. I do not want them racing to complete an assignment but rather learning as they go and become competent in searching the internet - there are so many millions of answers and results out there that you need to understand how to identify what you need to look for.

I am loving the fact that these tasks keep on challenging me to use new technologies. Initially I looked at using Diigo for my social networking space however, I felt that the layout and ease of navigation was not best suited to what I wanted. There was not many options for personalising the page or organising discussion topics. I felt that if I used this technology, it would become difficult to find discussions and information would get lost as more posts went up.

I tried Google searching various mothers groups to see what sort of technology was most commonly used. It seems Facebook is right up there as it can be set up through your personal page. The other popular option was to have the group presented as a website rather than a blog or community. As I have already created a blog and website for task 1 I want to stay away from using technology that I have already been exposed to.

The most viable option that I found through a Google search was to create a Google Community where I can communicate and share with people who have the same interests as me.

At the moment I am at the stage of exploring how to use Google communities and the various features it provides.

I'll be back soon with an update of what I'm learning and how the task is progressing :)

Digital Citizneship - Internet Safety

At first, the concept of Digital Citizenship was confusing to me. The words digital and citizenship on there own are self-explanatory; however, together have a much larger meaning that required me to research to understand. I started at the Technology Toolbox for Educators Digital Citizenship webpage and went from there with links that were provided on the page.

The most helpful description of digital citizenship that I found was by one Mike Ribble (2014), who defined it as simply "the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use". There were various other definitions on the website that helped me to fully understand the concept, however, I thought that this example used by Mike Ribble was straight forward and covered digital citizenship in a concise manner.

I also found looking at various other posters on digital citizenship helped me to learn and understand the concept and the depths that it extends to. A few I found useful for the topic that I feel quite strongly about are listed below:

• Digital Citizenship (MacMeekin, n.d.)
• Cyber rules: stay safe and have fun on the internet (cyber(smart:), n.d.)
• The Learning and Thinking Skills of the 21st Century students (Kharback, 2014)

There are so many aspects of digital citizenship within the safe, responsible and ethical areas. I was personally drawn to representing safe internet use in my digital poster and too often I see young people of whom I do and do not know posting explicit images on the likes of facebook. Not only this, but the number of cases on the news and in newspapers about missing people through social media mishaps.

I believe that as access to social media and the broader internet is so readily available to people of such a young age, such information should be presented in schools with much more urgency and importance. A picture on the internet spreads so fast and I do not believe young people of today have any idea of the true capabilities of the internet.

This you tube video clip is very powerful and sums up the entire idea and point of my digital citizenship poster on internet safety. I think it should be played in conjunction with my poster to have a greater impact.

The Very Beginning...

Wow, what an exciting and full on first couple of weeks. A massive learning curve, but thoroughly enjoyable. When I first read the outline for Task 1, I felt extremely overwhelmed with all the jargon and separate components of hyper-linking and attaching pdf documents - to name only a few. The first lecture discussed a number of suitable technologies that could be used to build both the website and blog. I found this very useful and also searched both Google and the Technology Toolbox for Educators site to see what was most commonly used to create a website and blog, free of charge. 

Luckily for me, I have previously created a website using Wix for my Interior Design business Designs for You. This webpage has been a slow work in progress. However, since creating a website for EDN113, I now feel more comfortable with the program and feel I could use it to its true potential to build the profile of my business page. After spending only a short time scoping out Wix and Blogger, I was really enjoying the challenge of creating both a personalised website and blog and worked on them for hours at a time.

The biggest challenge I had was attaching the pdf version of my digital poster to my website. I knew the textbook would not be of help in this instance as it does not cover specific technologies. The next step was to try the help centre on Wix and search my question. The search results under frequently asked questions explained how to do it and it turned out to be a really simple exercise. The image below shows the search results that helped me - even with a logo and title!

Wix Help Centre Search Results

After seeing many students upload a link to their website and blog, I decided to have a browse to see how they had approached the task. When I was viewing both their blogs and the example blog on the LMS, I was confused at how they set up an archives section that split their posts into months. I have posted this question to the Task 1 discussion forum to see if Blogger in particular, automatically does this itself or if I have to set it up myself. This is something I will continue to search for answers for on Google and wait for my peers responses.

I think that a blog would be a great tool in a classroom for students to reflect on their learning. Rather than doing this in notebooks, I would like to use such a technology to have students engaged in the reflection and writing process and to be able to comment on each others blogs to share the learning experience. 

I found an interesting article by the University of Michigan Using Blogs in the Classroom which outlines the possible uses for blogs within the classroom, and how blogging is rewarding and can improve students work and learning. Such uses include a place where quieter and shy students can find their voice; one place for all announcements, assignments and general classroom activities; and in conjunction with a class blog, a individual blog for each student (Morris, n.d.).

Below is an example from the article of a class blog controlled by an instructor where all enrolled students can contribute. In many cases, students also have an individual blog where classmates can comment and contribute.

I think this would make a great learning experience for both the teacher and students - they can teach each other!

Class Blog Example

I am looking forward to adding to my blog as the semester progressing and reflecting on what I have learnt. I have to admit, the blog guidelines have been very helpful as a starting point as I had no idea of what to write. Hopefully in my next few posts I will have found some interesting videos that I can attempt to upload! We can only hope :)

~See you soon~