Stepping Through the Looking Glass and Into the Digital Age

I read the article, "A Teenager's View on Social Media" because I was curious to see what teens would say on the topic. I am 26 years old myself, still not too far out of my teenage years, so I felt like I would possibly be able to relate to some of the points made in this article. Some things that I have "heard through the grapevine" before reading this article are that teens don't really like or use Facebook and Instagram is the social media application that they seem to flock to more now. This point was addressed in the article, so I now know that the rumors are true. I never understood the reasons why, though. When I was a teenager, Facebook was created and was really one of the first forms of social media to take flight in popularity, well other than MySpace, which I never had an account with. In my high school years, Facebook was "all the rage" and everyone had an account, and you had to be friends with everyone. In fact, just recent...

This week, I chose to explore the topic of the makerspace movement. Makerspace is another one of those education buzzwords that I have been hearing for a few years, but haven't had the chance to explore the movement further. This was the perfect opportunity to do so. Before looking into the topic of makerspaces by reviewing the sources that Nicole provided as well as researching independently, my understanding of makerspaces consisted of the fact that the movement was all about students using creativity and collaboration to produce a functioning creation of some sort or complete a certain task. I was unsure of what the true purpose of makerspaces were, though, other than allowing children the opportunity to participate in hands-on learning experiences. This video link is a great introduction to what makerspace is. While exploring the topic, a concept that seemed to be emphasized in terms of the purpose of the movement is that makerspace is designed in order to teacher studen...

It was exciting to be able to choose your own learning path, or "adventure" this week. Since Nicole mentioned that she is well versed in the topic of media literacy and has done many presentations on the topic, I was intrigued to look into the topic further. The word, "media literacy" sounded familiar, but as I went through the sources I was refreshed on what is meant by media literacy. If you need a refresher too, click on this link ! From this source, I was reminded of the definition of media literacy. The source states that, "Media literacy is our interaction with media and the message(s) that we take from it, as well as our ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages." From my understanding from the sources that I viewed, media literacy is teaching students, as well as adults, about the purpose of media. As stated in another source by Nicole, "The purpose of mass media is not to educate, inform, or entertain, it's p...

I reviewed the Project Tomorrow Speak Up 2016 infographic. The Speak Up Research Project for Digital Learning asks K-12 students, parents, and educators about the role of technology for learning in and out of school. You can find out more about the Speak Up project in general by viewing this website . The infographic in which I am focusing this blog post on compares responses of teachers in their first year of teaching to teachers with elevan or more years of experience on the topics of how technology is used within their classes. You can view the infographic by clicking on this link . (http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/speak-up-2016-first-year-in-the-classroom-april-2017.html) When viewing the first section of this infographic as shown in the image above, I was surprised at the fact that when responding to prompts such as, "Use digital games with my students," "Customize digital content that I find online to meet my class needs," and "Create investigatio...