New Media Literacies

I think that they are all critical skills to participate in media. These are skills that are critical in absorbing all of the information available to us today. In order for these to be positive way of learning you have to be able to filter through all of the opinions and stick to the facts. I think these are great ways to collaborate and enrich what we are teaching, but it's hard to tell how they might interfere with what you are trying to teach. With media being so deceiving you have to be careful of what you consider reliable.
I actually posess quite a few of these skills, judgement and negotiating being the most important. I know that when I am looking for answers I find facts first, and then dig around for other concepts which is known as judgment. I also can decide what is and is not useful to my learning network which is known as negotiating. Multi-tasking is something everyone will learn in the workforce. I have to say these are things everyone develops, but when communicating with other learners it enhances the outcome.
As a teacher, I hope to bring out a child's creativity. At the end of the day I want to know that my students went outside of the box. I also think that fostering this creativity is more full-filling that sticking to the books. My education was always based on one dominant culture and I feel like I was deprived of creativity and focused on memorization. I think that education can do great things when broadening it's standards and tools to better learn and communicate with the rest of the world. When students can come together from all over and debate and discuss what they are learning it's a whole new form of learning. Undoubtedly more effective too.

Check out this video that goes through a list of new media literacies critical to keeping up with the pace of producing and consuming media
click here

Networked Student

A networked student is an idea of how a student can use networking as a better way to form ideas about the information being learned. This video portrays what is referred to as connectivism. Connectivism is a theory that learning occurs as a part of a social network of many diverse connections and ties. The tools that we have access to allow these connections to strengthen your learning process. I find this learning process more beneficial because I learn better and faster when I am able to form my own opinions. There is a lot of fuss these days about people learning from a biased perspective and blogging allows you to explore and create your own biases. I think these networks are very useful in today's learning as well as teaching tools. Since this is moving into the norm and not just something above and beyond, as teachers, it will be our job to be fluent with these tools. There are absolutely right when they ask "Why does the networked student even need a teacher?". To help them organize and filter the sources of their knowledge. If we can't teach these students to excell with bigger and better things then they can't compete with those who are.

The Way We Dream

Richard Miller explains the fact that as teachers today we have the ability to reform the way individuals look at and comprehend information entirely. His videos explore the possibilities we can reach in all aspects of the classroom. Because our workspace has become more convienent and accessible, We have better document sharing and storing. Also when collaborating you can enhance your document in so many ways. Richard Miller goes even further with this by trying to create something even more advanced in composing documents with the web. Still a work in progress, but he hopes that school invest time and money in researching this idea that he forsees overcoming today's already technologically based society.
Check out This is How We Dream Parts 1 & 2
Part 1
Part 2

Should Ipods be incorporated into classrooms?

Schools really seem to be trying to get ipods incorporated into the classroom. Duke University being the first provided their freshman with ipods! Wow! That can help a student in so many ways from recording lesson for study tools to accessing podcasts, and saving files. It's a major asset to your convienence. I think an ipod is a nice thing to have for yourself. There were arguements over whether or not it was a good learning tool and that it was was being utilized for personal entertainment more than education. When you are providing them for a large group they have the ability to become more of a distraction than a learning tool. I would strongly agree that they are extremely useful to teachers for lessons. Teachers are finding that students are less distracted when they use video iPods, they stay focused on the instruction and are motivated to do the activity.
There are many sites that give you good ideas and suggestions with using ipods as a teaching tool. This website gives you alot of ways to use an ipod and iphone. It also tells you ways you can even introduce students to educational mobile applications for iPod touch and iPhone, so they can access reference information, write blog posts...etc. And they can do those things wherever they go. It's all about the access these devices provide. By getting this access anywhere can become a place to learn.

Dr. Alice Christie

Dr. Alice Christie is amazing. Not only with her lessons, her photography, but also providing resources for our classrooms. It's exciting to see what you can really do with all of these technologies. There are tons of ways that her website will be useful to my teaching. She has amazing lessons that allow students to see what they are learning about through virtual experiences. You can even become a member and subscribe to virtual field trips which are awesome ways to learn when budgets are down! She also has lessons that use current and new technologies like a GPS receiver. I'm excited about the virtual stuff because I will be teaching elementary grades.

This website will also become a big part of my Perosnal Learning Network. Go visit Dr. Alice Christie's website to learn from what she has learned from 40 years as an educator!