Media Literacy Update

Nicole, Darlene and I are doing our media literacy project based on Alcohol on the web. We have already met once to discuss our topic, layout of our lesson plan, and what resources we will need to teach this lesson. We are meeting again tomorrow to gather our information together to see how much we have succesfuly completed so far.

second life

Second life is spreading through colleges and being used in classrooms. Will this resource latch on to middle schools?


http://www.thejournal.com/articles/20363

No more laptops

For some reason, I can not say that I am totally suprised that Liverpool has decided to get rid of their laptops in the classoom. If they do not see any academic improvements, then why continue to invest in such a large purchase?

However, it did not sound as though they were even trying to use the laptops for educational purposes. Have they even heard of Will Richardson? I did not read one thing about a class blog, a class website, students making their own wikis, podcasts, newsletters, enhanced power points (etc). Obviously grades are not going to increase if all students are doing with the laptops are typing papers, checking their email or looking at porn while in school.

No matter what, there will always be that one student who will break through the security and have access to sites which are not appropriate. Although I imagine it would be hard for a teacher to know what every student is doing on their laptop, but where were the adults while students were hacking buisnesses and looking at porn? If you ask me, the only people to blame for the termination of the laptops are the educators. They allowed the situation to get out of hand and they clearly never took a technology course if they don't know how to integrate the internet and computers into their lessons.

It is unfortunate that this is happening because there are so many students that would be incredibly engaged in blogging and having the ability to publish their own content. The school is at fault here. It is as simple as that. I would love to mail them Will Richardson or Friedman's book so they can realize what a huge mistake they have made. They just decreased those students chances of being Untouchables. How sad is that when we are busting our butts to make sure we know how to make our future students are untouchables? They had the tools and they failed.

That school just cost someone their future career.

Video games

Apparently it is true...video games a beneficial!


http://us.i1.yimg.com/videogames.yahoo.com/ongoingfeature?eid=513460&page=0

The "Interview"

First of all, I would take a deep breath and try not to freak out. Being put on the spot is not easy at all.

• The first thing I would do is show the princpal how to create a class blog. I would discuss the benefits of the class having one and the benefits of each student have their own. I would demonstrate how to incorportate educational links into the blogs and explain that the main importance of having the blog is so that learning and communication continues outside of the classroom.

• My next step: Show the principal how to make a newsletter. I would be able to explain how I used this program in college for my classmates to read articles on a conference I attended and well as making a theader view for an English class. I would show all the different ways you can introduce content and why this would be a useful tool for students to use.

• Next : Demonstrate an enhanced power point. Show a variety of tools students can use within this program, how you can add content from the internet into the power point...etc.