Weekly Reading #12

"Your Motivations for Digital and Media Literacy" Top Five Ranked for Me:

1. write your own: to show students how science, technology, and society all rely on each other to advance. STEM

2. to increase student motivation and engagement in the classroom

3. to promote creativity and self-expression

4. to support the development of students' content knowledge

5. to modernize the curriculum and make it more relevant to students

Quotes from the chapter:

"It all starts from a place of passion."

Digital and media literacy comes from a place of passion for me. For me, it is the perfect tool to bring out the best in every student, giving them the opportunity create and express themselves in anyway they see fit. This weekend I attended the WVSTA conference at Glade Springs resort and discovered something that integrates the science that I love and the technology I can't get enough of; I am talking about the First Lego League programs. After attending the sessions with Jaime Ford and Todd Ensign, they got me passionate about First. What the program does for students has me excited for the future and what this program can be for students. I hope to work with this program in the future.

"A deep commitment to student voice is at the heart of digital and media literacy."

Student voice is what drives digital and media literacy because it is their voice that gives it life. Their creativity brings out the best in digital and media literacy; projects that can shock and aww the audience in the best ways.

"When it comes to cell phones, educators in some schools are discovering that policies based on respect and courtesy have a bigger positive impact than those based on control and prohibition."

It may seem odd to some educators, but students often use their phones in class to gain a better understanding of what is being lectured. Yes, sometimes they are texting or goofing off, but this is not usually the case; unless they have nothing to do and are not being engaged by the educator. When students look things up for themselves they typically remember the information because they had to go out of their way to understand it. Cell phones have become a great tool in the classroom and let students have all the information of a library at their finger tips. There are also some great educational apps that you can have to students download and use in the classroom. This can also save the educator some money and time.

PSA Video!

To reach my audience I created a video using my sister, who is not a high school student at all, but looks younger, to try to connect to the students. If the message comes from a younger person, then I hope that it will be more well received more students will watch the commercial. The music gives it sort of an older feel, but has classical qualities that set the mood with a political type setting. The persuasive techniques I used were things like: presenting facts that will get the students thinking, only stating the bad things that have been caused and the restrictions to the students by these laws, and giving the students the knowledge that they can reverse their current state in the school. The key part of this PSA, I think, is that it provokes the students and gets in their face to do something.

Weekly Reading #11

In this video Sarah Stuteville talks about how her and her friends are about to graduate college wit ha degree that is "worthless". What they decide to do is to do the one thing they want to do most, travel the world and report on the stories they find the most intriguing. Chapter 8 is all about students using current events in the classroom and talking about different types of news that they want to report on. It is about reporting what the students believe to be news worthy by justifying it in their own way. It is an authentic learning activity because it can be used in any classroom and the students can report on an authentic topic. It can also be of news that takes place as a world news story or even a local news story. What motivated Sarah is that she could report on what she wanted, the ability to have a choice in what you want to do is a powerful method in teaching because it gives the student control over their learning.