Digital Thoughts

Digital Literacy: "the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology."  -Wikipedia

While that is concise definition of digital literacy, it fails to illustrate that people can use their digital literacy in different ways (for evil, or for good! well.. not quite) For example, in my own family I see how different we are in terms of how we use our digital literacy. 

I apologize in advance for the... random nature of this posting. I had a lot of ideas that kind of flowed into each other to create this...product.

First there are my parents. My father uses his cell phone mostly for work, sending e-mails and participating in phone conferences. And while I rarely see him use it, he is more than capable of navigating his laptop. My mom on the other had is just as literate, but in a different way. She can be found talking to friends and family through the means of text messages, e-mails, facebook and instant messaging. While at first she was opposed to using the internet for something such as looking up a phone number for a store or restaurant, now she seems to think of nothing else. (To think it took me 5 years to convince her that the Internet is your friend.)

Then I've got myself and my siblings. To keep something that can be long and drawn out, nice and simple, let me say this. My older sister uses technology for research, school work, socializing and having a laugh. My younger sister uses it for those same reasons, though there seems to be an emphasis on the socializing aspect. (Maybe this has something to do with the age group? She's 18.) And finally my brothers who are now seven years old are capable of using technological to research (they love looking up astronomical facts) and for entertainment purposes (it is hard to tear them away from the Kinect or their Nintendos).  

While all of my family members were capable of locating and understanding information using digital technologies, we put an emphasis on different aspects. Does this have anything to do with our varying environments or when we were born, or simply what we value? Maybe...but moving on.

My use of my skills with technology are much like those of my older sister. (Though sometimes I enjoy the entertainment aspect more than I should) But those sentiments aside, I must say thatI like to consider myself digitally literate. I have always been fascinated with technology (and games.. who didn't love oregon trail?) but I know for sure that I'm still learning. There is always some shortcut key I didn't know about (or simply refuse(or forget) to use) or some website that someone introduces to me that blows my mind. 

This idea of constant learning makes me take a step back and think of myself as a future educator and member of the teaching field. No matter how much I like to believe that one day I'll have the majority of the answers, I know that there is always something for me to learn. "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." -Socrates ....  I love that quotation because when it comes to today's world, you have to be open to almost anything. And most of the time, you are being taught even though you are supposedly the teacher. While we hope we can teach our students what they need to know, we need to be aware that are some things they just know more about. For example, I had a class full of 8 year olds explaining how a certain feature of a SMART board worked. Me, the obviously older individual who considers herself digitally literate learned something from her students. I think the one thing that this course taught me most was that in order to be digitally literate...you need to open your mind to the wonders that are technology, and be prepared to ask a lot of questions, and search for a lot of those answers.

In The.. Not So Distant...Future?

I have recently come across videos and articles about various technologies. Some of them are already in the prototype stage, and others still an idea, but a freakishly feasible idea. I think of what technologies were available when I was in elementary schools and compare it to today and become overwhelmed. Now there are things that could be coming up that are even more…unbelievable.

The first technology is one being produced by the ever expanding Google. Something called Project Glass. This refers to a pair of augmented reality glasses. In other words, it puts images that you would normally view on a computer screen, right in front of your eyes. Scary, right? Or incredibly cool, take your pick. Part of me worries that this could be one step in the wrong direction. We already have some concerns about children and teens not being able to socialize face to face. (Sadly I’ve seen this in action. A room full of teenagers supposedly hanging out, all glued to their cell phones hardly interacting) Wouldn’t it make it harder to talk to the person next to you when you essentially have the internet attached to your eyes? Perhaps we need to be better about how we use (not abuse!) technology to begin with. Either way, these may not be the ideas of the future envisions by out past (I’m still waiting for my mass produced hover board, Back to the Future… you’ve got three years), but they are amazing nonetheless.

The second and final technology I have heard about is perhaps a little more farfetched than the augmented reality glasses (augmented reality is something that already exists today in things like Nintendo 3DS), but it doesn’t make it more innovative. In my opinion, it’s something that would actually be a step forward in terms of the possibilities. I honestly cannot find the words to describe this idea for a greener world in the future, other than amazing. But to help me, I have the video right here. It’s over five minutes long, but it’s worth it. When I first watched it, I was in so much awe that I wrote off the entire concept. However, watching it a second time, I caught all of the benefits for education. Kids interacting with children from other countries, learning languages, sharing ideas. Parents checking on what their kids were learning, as they learned it in school. It’s like interactive whiteboards, but at a whole new level. Do you think this is a technology you’d want in your classroom if it were available now? Is it something you think we should devote some of our resources towards achieving? In my opinion? I say yes. Yes yes yes. It makes me think about how we as teachers may be preparing our students for jobs that don’t exist yet. In a way, we are also preparing them for creating innovative technologies that are simply ideas or dreams at the moment. It is our job to make sure our students are digitally literate, so they can take what we have now, and make it better. So perhaps I’ll be accessing the internet on a simple sheet of glass…in the not so distant future.

Diary of A Seed

Hey there, I've been working on a curriculum page on the topic of the plant life cycle, and I would greatly appreciate you checking it out! My latest addition is my example for digital story telling.

Any feedback on the example as well as what I have so far, would be very helpful!
(Please keep in mind that is a work in progress, and after switching around some things,
it looks a bit worse for wear.)

What I would really love some feedback on in particular is whether or not the 3rd Grade is
an appropriate grade level for this curriculum page (so far). (In terms of the links, I'm working on
finding more/better/easier to navigate websites, so bear with me) I was originally going to stick with
second grade, but after checking out the Sunshine State Standards for Science (as you may or may
not know, I'm originally from NY, so I'm not as familiar with the standards here), I decided to up it to
3rd grade. While I have student taught in kindergarten and second grade, I have never had a classroom
of my own. Any thoughts/suggestions/questions are welcome!


The wiki/curriculum page can be found here

Thank you so very much =)