Reflection #1 - EDLD 5316
Technology has always fascinated me. The thought that someone half way around the world could communicate and share thoughts and ideas with me in a matter of seconds is pretty amazing. However, I never really gave digital citizenship or its definition much thought until this course. I never really thought about what it meant to be a digital citizen or if my students even understood what it meant. With all of the issues I personally have dealt with, this year alone, it is clear that many of my students haven’t given it much thought either. Teaching our students what it means to be a positive role model online or what to say or do if they see someone being bullied or brought down is every important, especially in this day and age with how often our students are online.
Ribble’s nine elements really showed me what being a digital citizen really looks like. The break down of each element helps even the youngest of minds understand how the digital world, should be treated the same as the real world. I found the explanations to help me better understand each element and be able to explain it better to my students. It shined light on issues I was having with my students and helped me see why they may not understand what I’m talking about. I grew up in a very different world than they did and it is abundantly clear when it comes to technology and making the correct choices.
I think his three principles, Respect, Educate and Protect are very powerful words that can show a student what it means to be an all-around good person. Not just on social media or through technology but also in person. They are words that should be placed all around a school and in every classroom. I also believe this should be talked about at the beginning, middle and end of every school year to remind students what they should be doing and how they should be acting while in the digital world and real world. With our school switching over to 1:1 Chromebooks next year, I really worry that students will make poor decisions because they don’t see what they are doing as being inappropriate or a poor decision. Or they haven’t been taught how to be a good digital citizen and I hope now that I know more about it, I can help be a good role model and teach them right from wrong. They are good kids in person but we have to teach them to be good online and make the right choices in the digital world as well.
As teachers we are taught to see problems before they occur and be proactive instead of reactive but our students know more about technology than we do at times. So, we tend to find ourselves being more reactive to situations that occur with our students in the digital world. One area I really notice this during my classes is when a student thinks they are anonymous. They will make rude and uncalled for comments that are not constructive to the presenter and it can be hurtful even if they didn’t mean it that way. It is very important for us as teachers to start being more proactive and get a head of our students and start teaching them the right way to be good, respectable digital citizens.
Reflection #2- EDLD 5316
As an educator I was told to always be aware of what I posted online. When I first started out studying to be a teacher, one of the courses I took, talked a lot about our digital footprint and being aware of the positive and negative things the internet has to offer. For the most part, I was pretty good at what I posted and said while online. However, I was not as good as I thought. I had one of my former (now graduated and in college) students search my name and see what they found. The things these kids can find online are absolutely amazing. They are true detectives when it comes to the internet, especially if it means finding out more about their “favorite” teacher. At first she said my life online was boring, only able to find my school page, old college field hockey stats, LinkedIn profile, and one of my Trail Runs from college. So I thought I did a pretty good job at keeping my footprint clean. She went home later that night and found more than I thought possible. It wasn’t the end of the world but it definitely wasn’t something I wanted my students to ever read about me. It was a post I made in college on Facebook between my best friend and the guy I was talking to at the time. It had a lot of inappropriate language and was not who I want my students to think of when they think of me.
I have always wanted to be a positive influence on anyone I came in contact with throughout my life. I wanted to make a difference in their lives even if it was a small difference and this conversation contradicted who I am and who I have worked so hard to become. I quickly deleted the comments and made sure to change my privacy status on conversations and post. It made me start digging more into my social media side of who I am and I cleaned up some of the conversations that occurred on my pages especially while in college. I want to make sure I keep my footprint representing the person I am and have fought so hard to be. I also changed all of my names on my social media before becoming a teacher, so that students can’t find me as easily and the ones that do I have it private so they can’t see anything unless I accept them.
This week’s readings and videos have really made me think twice and remember the importance of a positive digital footprint and to be aware of what I am posting. It also made me aware that what I search and post is not always private even if I think it is. Other people will always be able to track our movements on the internet, so it is important to be aware of what we are doing online. Internet is also changing the way our students explore, interact and learn so it is important that we also grow and learn so that we can be there to support our students and teach them right from wrong and keep them safe while online.
Reflection #3- EDLD 5316
To be honest, this week had my head spinning. The readings felt like another language I had to decipher and then discuss upon. Before starting this week I knew very little about copyrighting. I knew the basics, for the most part, but after all of the readings and videos, I still don’t feel confident and comfortable enough to say I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Copyright and the Law. What I did learn is that there are many rules and expectations when it comes to using or borrowing someone else’s work. I also learned there were areas in my life that I needed to correct so that I was giving the credit to the people who created the work I was sharing.
Being in the middle school, as a PE teacher who teaches mostly in the pool area I don’t have many chances to see copyrighting and plagiarism. An area I did have to revisit however, as a teacher, was my worksheets I created online for my Lifeguarding class. I did not give credit to the American Red Cross who technically created the questions I used in my worksheets. Sometimes you don’t think about the credit when you put things online that used to be in paper form. You don’t think about who took the time and effort to create the document. However, if I took the time and effort to put together the worksheet or any other work for that matter, I would want credit where credit is due. Until recently my life the last 5 years has been at the pool but now that we are online learning for the next couple weeks at least, I have to be more aware of what I am posting to my Google Classroom and make sure I am giving credit to those who created some of the work I will be using.
Out of everything we learned this week Plagiarism was the only thing I really knew anything about before entering this class. When I was a sophomore in college I ran into an issue in an online class that my professor said was considered plagiarism and he was threatening to kick me and my roommate out of the class and out of the school. We thankfully came to an agreement, after involving the dean and fighting with the professor, that I still think was unfair but better than the original threat, which was to withdraw from the class instead of getting kicked out of the school. Now let me back up a little. My roommate and I got in trouble because we had the same first line sentence on our midterm essay response. We were given 13 questions a week in advance and told to have an intro, bullet points and a conclusion ready to go for each question come exam day. We were only going to have so much time to complete the test and we were only going to get 2 questions out of 13. What are the chances we get the same question? And how many other student’s worked in large groups to do this? (I know that doesn’t make it right). Well we did get one of the same questions and our first line was, word for word and we did not quote it because it wasn’t a direct line from a book or online, it was just what we thought would be a good intro. So we quickly learned that was not ok and that is considered plagiarizing. Lesson learned, the hard way!
After this week, I feel like I have a better understanding about Copyrighting and fair use but there are still some areas I am unsure of. Like most teachers, I was taught not to recreate the wheel. So, I tend to borrow a lot of materials from my coworkers and others online. Sometimes I post it on my google classroom without giving the creator any credit, which I know understand is illegal. I learned that I need to make sure I give credit where credit is due before posting it to my site so people know I am not saying it is my own work.
Reflection #4- EDLD 5316
This week’s videos were absolutely amazing. I was very young when the Monica Lewinsky’s situation happened and I didn’t really understand what was going on. However, watching her Ted Talk I could feel the pain and humiliation she felt even after all of these years. We all do stupid things in our lifetime. Thankfully, the stupid things we do aren’t always under a magnifying glass waiting for someone to comment on and give their opinions. However, our students are living in a world where people are watching their every move and commenting their thoughts and beliefs on their lives. I witnessed a situation online this week between a mother and some random girls and the mother was judging and commenting about their looks and the way they acted without ever meeting them or getting to know them. How are we supposed to get our kids to be nice to each other and treat each other the right way if there is still all of this hate in the world?
Cyberbullying is a topic that many people in this world witness or are experiencing every single day. Sometimes we get so used to it, we learn to just ignore it and go about our day. Which is great that we don’t let it get to us but over time those comments build up and can take down even the strongest minds. As teachers and adults, it is our job to help teach these kids and our students, why they need to remember the person on the other side of their comments, in real life or online, has feelings and those comments can tear them down just like being punched and kicked. No one should have to feel that way and no one should want others to feel that way. Earlier this year, I asked my student who was cyberbullying another student why he was doing it and from the answer he told me, he didn’t think what he was doing was wrong. He thought it was funny and just a joke and said she took it the wrong way. As a teacher, this broke me a little to know that he was unable to see the difference and to see how much it was hurting the person he was making fun of. He apologized but it didn’t change how it felt to be on the receiving end of his message.
I think Shane Koyczan said it best during his Ted Talk, “To This Day”. He talked about how we are expected to define ourselves at such a young age and if you didn’t do it ourselves, others did it for us like calling us names; slut, fatty, slacker, poor. Then at the same time as you are being told what you were, people were asking what you wanted to be? As a kid it’s hard to know what you want to be. I changed my mind at least five times before I got to college and even then I questioned if I made the right move. I had a dream to become a professional soccer player. I worked my butt off night and day but playing on travel teams wasn’t really in the cards growing up so my skills were more average than all-star. Then my Senior year of high school I was told I was never going to be good enough and I should quit right then and there. Someone robbed my dream from me and I let them. Now, don’t get me wrong I still play soccer and love the sport but I ended up handing in m cleats and shin guards for goalie pads and playing field hockey instead which wasn’t in my plans growing up. I let other people make my decisions for me and tell me who I was and what I was going to do. I don’t regret a single choice I made because it led me to who I am today but I do wonder who I could’ve been if I didn’t walk away from my dreams.
After listening to Shane’s speech it made me want to be even more of an advocate for my students. I want to be their supporter of whatever dream they have and let them know that if they want it enough and fight hard enough for it, anything is possible! I want them to know that someone else’s words may hurt and may break them down but that they can be who they want to be and do what they want to do. I want to be their mentor and teach them to be good people on and off the internet. To know the difference between a funny joke and a hurtful comment.
Reflection #5- EDLD 5316
Before starting this course, I thought I knew a lot about being a good digital citizen and the laws that should be followed while being online. However, I learned shortly into the first week of this course that I was about to learn so much more. Even though I grew up in a time where technology was around and at my use for most of my childhood, I still am not the biggest tech-savvy person. I am up to date on the social media side of technology but that was about as far as my technology went. With this course, I learned not only about being a good digital citizen but also about how to step out of my comfort zone and try new ways to present information like on Powtoon and screencasting and learn different ways to teach my students how to be good digital citizens as well. One area that really caught my attention was cyberbullying. I see this all the time on social media and hear about my students getting into fights with each other while online. I think this is a huge issue for a lot of our middle school students because they are still learning who they are and who they want to be and now they are being told by others who they are and who they should be. This could cause people to struggle mentally and cause them to break down. We want to teach our students to build each other up not break each other down.
I feel like I have accomplished a lot in this course. From learning how to create Powtoons or use Sceencastify to answering case studies and writing weekly reflections. One area I feel like I have really succeeded in is the weekly reflections. I know I am not the best writer and I struggle with comprehension but I feel like having to write a weekly journal reflection on what we learned has helped me remember what I’ve learned throughout that week. It has shown me that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to. It also allows me to look back and read what I learned without having to reread all of the resources we read the first time through.
With that being said, one area I struggled with the most was finding time to get my work done. With our schools all switching over to online learning halfway through this course I was flying by the seat of my pants just trying to get everything done. This course had a lot of mini-assignments due each week and with everything going on with work I was struggling to get it all done on time and felt completely overwhelmed. The first week of being online for work and trying to get this school work done I had a couple of mental breakdowns. I was unable to figure out how to manage my time correctly. I forgot how to schedule my time and do things the same as if I was actually in school. I was spending around 16 hours a day answering emails and trying to come up with lessons and learn how to use Google Classroom correctly and then trying to find time to eat, workout and do my masters work. It became all too overwhelming and took some help to create times for each item I wanted to accomplish on a given day and get back on track.
The most useful and meaningful thing I learned from this course was the information on copyrights and wrongs. Being a PE teacher, I don’t have to worry about this too often. However, now that we have switched to online learning, I feel like there was no better time to learn about this than now. It helped me understand a little more about what I can and can’t use while teaching and how to give credit correctly for what I want to use when teaching or just online in general. This also helped me when looking at my digital footprint and what I was posting. Was everything I was using and posting correctly labeled and covered by the copyright laws. Was what I was posting okay for my students to see? Is that who I wanted them to know me as? Am I being a good role model for them? So I really appreciated that part of this course because it gave me a chance to really see what I was online and see if it matched who I am in person.
My favorite aspect of this course was just knowing exactly what was due each week and how many points each section was worth. It allowed me to break things down easier and not feel so overwhelmed with the number of assignments. This format allowed me to understand what the week was going to look like and the format continued over the course of the 5 weeks. This allowed me to get into a little routine and know exactly what to do at the beginning of the week. I truly believe the information I learned throughout this course will help me grow as a teacher and become more rounded when it comes to technology and being a good digital leader. I am hoping with now being online for probably the rest of the year, that I can continue to use what I learned about digital citizenship to help my students through this time of their lives and make sure they are aware of what they are doing online and how they are behaving and treating others.