Stephanie Feeman Education 776 Blog

As I reflect back on the last two years of my school at Dominican University, it has always been in the back of my head whether or not I will stick with this after all of the classes are done. I am at the end of this path and integrating social media into my classroom has never sounded more necessary. I have found so many awesome resources that could possibly change the way that students learn. Not only that, but the way that I communicate information with parents and community members could be completely different. I had recently learned about the Remind App to communicate with parents. This changed the way I communicated with parents, but through this class I found even more social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Edmodo that would be beneficial as well. Moving forward, I'd like to look into transforming some of my current classroom interventions into technology based interventions. I'd also like to streamline some of communication with families and community member...

photo attributed to psychcentral.com This week we had the opportunity to unpack Rheingold's 5 different social media literacies. He described them as attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption. I think all of these areas are incredibly important but the two that stuck out to me the most were attention and collaboration. These are two areas I think of most when I think of my own students. When we are working through curriculum and instruction whether it is with technology or traditional classroom setting, these two areas I feel are the most important. When you integrate technology into the classroom, attention becomes an area that students can begin to struggle with. I do a large amount of my interventions through apps like MobyMax. It is often really hard for me to tell if students are giving their full attention to the activities within the program. I often get information back from the activities that do not match what I know their ...

Photo attributed to Pinterest.Com This week in class we took a deeper look into the laws surrounding keeping our students safe and knowledgeable when working on the internet. I had actually never heard of these laws before, and had no clue that these kinds of laws were in place. I know that my school has all of the documents required through these laws in place, but I always thought it was just common sense and our responsibility as educators. I like the idea of having these laws in place, but I just find it so hard to enforce when not inside the school the setting. We have site blocks and intensively teach about internet etiquette, but so many of our kiddos go home and have no censors and are exposed to things that are so inappropriate. In the light of the recent news in Florida, I can't help but think there could be something more we could do to help students and young children not have access to those kinds of terrible sites. I believe in the freedom of internet sites, but I...

photo courtesy of imgflip When I think of Digital Tattoos, I always think back to the people who choose to put their entire life on the internet for everyone to see. My meme that I created shares my opinion on the matter. I have a social media app called Timehop that pulls up old pictures and social media posts from years past. I am always so embarrassed by the song lyrics and awkward teenage quotes that I find that I shared over the years. I then remember that I started social media when I was still in high school, and the social media universe was a very different thing. I am now much smarter about what I choose to post on different social media platforms. However, I still see people I am friends with write and post the most ridiculous things on their social media accounts. I'm often times unsure if they got the digital tattoo memo that everything you post on the internet stays there forever no matter what you try to do. I have this same conversation with my Jr. High basket...

photo attributed to The Blogging Adventures of the Awkward Education Major Social Media is in every aspect of the 21st century world, so it was only a matter of time until it reached the public education arena. With the increase in Social Media comes the responsibility to monitor it's use within the school setting. This week we were given the task to find out District Social Media Policy and examine it. My school and district policy is one in the same, as we are the only school in our district. District Internet Policy, see page 42 As you can see this document does exist, but is very vague on its view of social media uses within the district. The district took the time to outline all that is prohibited while using technology and district computers. Every student in jr. high has their own school Google account. They are able to access all of the Google Apps for Education. These terms outlined in the above mentioned document clearly state that the use of all internet resources ...

Getting Started with Snapchat in Your Classroom Okay, so I read the title of this article and was like "No way, no how!" My students are third graders so I don't often have problems with them being on their phones, but I also coach Jr. High Girls' Basketball and it is like pulling teeth to get these girls off of their phones. They are always on Snapchat sending weird pictures and silly things to their friends, and their friends are usually in the same room. I use Snapchat as well and I do exactly the same thing. When I think of Snapchat, the last place I think of it is in the classroom. I use it as a mindless way to de-stress after a long day of work. However, then I read the article, and the same juices that start to flow when I get lesson ideas in my mind began to flow again. There are so many ways that Snapchat can actually be used effectively in the classroom. This was something that I never would've believed, had I not read how successful it has been show...

Photo Courtesy of S. Feeman Padlet Presentation This week's blog gave me the opportunity to discover a different way to engage the students in my classroom. We learned all about active learning and what it looks like in a real 21st century environment. Active learning is student led, teacher facilitated, builds on communication/collaboration/critical thinking skills, and allows students to create things they learn. My professor shared with us different activities that she has done with students in different classrooms. I read about an activity she did using QR codes. She had students in her class use QR codes to decode different famous quotes for an African American history project. Students traveled around the classroom reading beautiful and famous quotes and then used the QR code to figure out the missing word. Then she flipped the script on the kids and had them create their own QR code mystery quote. Students worked collaboratively to find a quote and then shared them with ...