I am insanely late with this post, but for my birthday I had the best gift ever! I had the rare opportunity to spend an entire day at Mystic Aquarium with a group of trainers and get up close and personal with these amazing animals. I was lucky enough to not only learn about each of the animals in the aquarium, but also got to feed the penguins and even brush the beluga whale's teeth! Although my career path is not leading me to be an animal trainer or a veterinarian, I am incredibly passionate about learning about the safety and well being of all animals.
As my final update for my network learning project, I explored the one remaining technique that I had not yet explored: Online Scrapbooking. For the template above, I used the free application, Smile Box, to create a quick and easy scrapbook page. The download of the application is free, and so are many of the templates. The process of using the application is not only easy, but it can save you a ton of money for the scrapbook product that is being produced. It all depends on if you prefer your embellishments to be printed from the online templates, or 3-d like handmade scrapbooks. 1) The first step is to pick the template that you want to put your pictures in. 2) Select the pictures to insert into the template. 3) Place pictures in the template and size them accordingly. 4) Add any text or additional embellishment 5) Save your work and either a) print it at home, or b) order the book to be sent to your house! Overall from this project, I have learned that there are many online resources out there that can help someone learn how to do essentially anything. I have used sources like Storify, YouTube, SmileBox, Pinterest, and many more in order to learn new techniques and inspirations to create the perfect scrapbook. The end product resulted in a combination of pages made by my own two hands with embellishments from aquariums, zoos, and Disney. The scrapbook also contains pages that were created through Smilebox. My biggest challenge with this project was being able to find time to be able to express my creative side - especially with the lack of time from my internship, school, and my real life job as well. Although it has been a long journey, I am proud of all that I was able to learn :)!
As a future educator, one of the most important things to me is ensuring that my online identity is portrayed in a way that is both appropriate and that would make my students proud. I would want to demonstrate to my students that I am contributing to my field, not just preaching whatever I please over and over from year to year. I think that this blog, for example, is a pretty good track of my digital identity through grad school. I have had times where I was easily able to demonstrate my own creativity, judgement free, and have my peers view and review what I have done. Through the course of this semester, I have been proud to be able to post ideas that I believe to be out of the box in comparison with projects that I had to do when I was in high school. To fully demonstrate my online identity, I like to demonstrate both work that I create by hand as well as pictures that I can find on the internet that demonstrate my own personality. Because we were able to choose to learn anything for the network learning project, I chose to show the art that I can create with my own two hands and edit the photos and my blog posts to demonstrate my ability to construct a visually appealing blog post. In addition, through the course of this trimester, I have only posted one video of myself on this blog, which demonstrates that I am a bit camera shy, though I do not mind typing out and expressing my thoughts. My online identity is a collection of my thoughts, my concerns, and my quirkiness. Overall I think that any project that students create online is typically more appealing to the students themselves, which therefore makes them a little more motivated to take their project a little further. Students are so used to the classical classroom setting in which they sit down with their pen and paper, write prompts, sit through lectures, and have to use outdated textbooks that are near impossible to navigate through. When students are able to use the internet, they are easily able to access information. If the information is too hard for them to understand, they move onto the next source until they are able to find information that is easy for them to understand. I think that this is a crucial element of the internet and that when students understand the material, they are much more likely to yield better results. Using the internet can also yield better results because students are able to show off creativity without feeling embarrassed of their ability to draw, paint, or create physical art. Projects that are done not the computer can use many different online tools in order to create a visually interesting and completed project that the student could be proud to share with their classmates.
This online construction lesson was created for a 9th grade English class as a way to tie up the end of reading the novel 1984. Lesson Goal: Students will use creative critical thinking skills in order to envision, record, and create an online advertisement that will make people want to read the novel 1984. Each student will be working on this project as an individual project that gives students a chance to showcase their sense of creativity. The projects can be completed using any online resource, though the following criteria must be met: *A new online tool, such as photoshop or pixlr, is used to edit photos and text and explained in a one page summary. *The photos are visually appealing, eye-catching, and spark an interest int he viewer. *The ad must be posted to the class Edmodo page with a summary depicting why the ad was constructed the way that it was, and what the student believes makes their ad stand out compared to other ads. ** Students MAY choose to create a trailer instead of a photo advertisement. This will be uploaded to YouTube and submitted through Edmodo following the same editing and paper requirements. The purpose of this assignment is to get students who may be interested in other careers such as marketing or advertisement to think about what is crucial in an advertisement. To complete the assignment, they will have needed to read and analyze 1984, as well as be able to use critical thinking skills to determine which part of the novel to focus on that will spark an interest, yet not give away the entire novel. One good example, but one that I would not want to be copied by a student, are the following photographs: These photographs are all examples of advertisements that would be able to catch the viewers eye.
If I was the creator for the first photograph, I would post something like the following on Edmodo: For this advertisement, I duplicated and incorporated the cynical feeling that comes with reading 1984. In the novel, all people are being constantly monitored through a government system ran by "big brother." People are literally brainwashed into the ways that they function as a society, and anyone who has their own thoughts or ideas are arrested. This ad gives its viewer a creepy sense as to what it feels like to know that someone is watching their every move. In addition, I used a vintage filter in order to make the photograph look old and a little creepy. I added a face to the ad with his eyes agape in order to show how storage it must be to see that someone is watching you. When encouraging students to create online texts as well as writing our own, there are a few challenges that may arise when it comes down to feedback from others on the internet. These challenges persist through differences in culture, timezones, and overall quality and opinion through life experiences. Here are 3 points to think about BEFORE sharing text globally. 1). Be prepared for backlash! - especially when posting about a controversial issue. It is essential that each post is carefully constructed to say what you mean and to have it not be able to be interpreted in any other way. Recently in an online U.S. History pre-requisite class that I have been knocking out, we were obligated to post on the topic of slavery in which some students came off as extraordinarily arrogant However, when these arrogant students received backlash on their posts, they were shocked that people were angry with their post. 2) Think it through before you post! - given that once you post - it is there forever. Don’t say something that you don’t mean and think it through before posting. Do not write a blog post angry, and focus on the mission at hand. 3) Do the research! - don’t post information without consulting multiple resources that have come to the same conclusion. One site may be bogus and throw off your whole assignment! 4) Don't post anything you wouldn't want your parents to see... Fact of the matter is that despite popular belief - your parents know how to use the internet - and if they don't then one of their friends do. Following these 4 points, students should know what to expect when posting on the internet. It takes practice, but small tasks and scaffolding can lead to some amazing results.
Feature Article Model From: (http://stage6.pbworks.com/f/How+To+Write+A+Great+Feature+Article.pdf)
Students will be taught that:
1. Headline: Catches the readers attention, sums up what the story is about 2. Byline: Includes the writers name 3. Lead: Opening section, what the article is investigating 4. Body: Details of the story - true and accurate statements 5. Blocked Quotations: Blocked version of a quote. A quote from a witness or someone who knows about the topic that could add accuracy to the story
To Kill a Mockingbird Final Project:
- Students will create a newspaper using http://www.makemynewspaper.com/free-newspaper-templates. They will be required to choose a functional template and format materials to fit the assignment. Requirements: The newspaper must include: 1) Feature Article: The result of Tom Robinson’s court case. Feature article must include catchy heading, byline, full article, picture, blocked quote and picture caption. 2) The newspaper must include at least 2 advertisements from the time period of To Kill a Mockingbird. The advertisements can be for movies, concerts, products -- as long as it relates to the time period to To Kill a Mockingbird. 3) The newspaper must have a creative title, correct date to the time period, and be accurate to the novel. 4) Articles must be written in the same format that a newspaper would be written in. There is no use of “I” permitted. To complete this assignment, students will: 1) Read To Kill a Mockingbird 2) Research the 1930's -products -music -movies 3) Write a Feature article that includes a heading, byline, article, picture, picture caption, and blocked quote. 4) Compile a newspaper using makemynewspaper.com
Examples of Newspaper Layouts from makemynewspaper.com:
Examples of advertisements from the 1930's that students could re-design to make their own:
When expecting students to be able to evaluate the credibility and validity of a website, it is important to first inform them on characteristics of a valid and credible website.
For example, students should know to look for: 1. Is the author an authority figure within the subject that they are writing about? Where is the author getting their information? What is the authors qualifications? Knowing a bit about the author can help determine whether or not his or her source is credible. If the author is an Economics professor and he is posting an article about the current state of the economy, he is probably a credible source. If the author is a marine biologist posting about economics, his information might seem legitimate but be less credible because his time is not typically spent studying fluctuations in the economy. The more a person has studied the subject, the more credible they are. 2. Does the author have articles that are peer reviewed? Was the author published in an academic journal? If an article is peer reviewed, it is typically a credible source because other professionals in the field have agreed with the article or have been able to duplicate the results and conclusions that the article found. However, it is important to point out that anyone commenting their opinions on a story is not “peer reviewing.” Peer reviews are done by professionals in the field of which the paper is written. 3. What organizations is the author associated with? Is the author biased because he or she works for a certain organization? It is a key clue to see that an author is active in organizations relating to their fields. However, it is important to keep in mind both sides of the argument because articles written by these people may be biased. 4. What kind of website is the article published? .edu, and .gov websites are published by educational institutions and the government, while anyone can post on a .org and .com website. A website that is well known such as NBC, PBS, or New York Times is going to be more credible than a mommy blog, or Perez Hilton. (Sorry, Perez..) 5. Is there a list of works cited? If the author of the article conducted research of their own to make the conclusions that they did within their article, they should have a list of works cited. 6. Is the information recent? What is the publishing date? Checking the posting date of the article can help to keep you up to date on an article and prevent you from thinking an outdated article is current.
Example:
The truth of it is that not everything that you see or read online is true. It is important to cautious with sources that you are using and the people that you are communicating with. The MTV show, Catfish, is a perfect example of how online profiles can be completely fabricated. (See video below.)
I will admit that in the past, I have had to double and triple check online texts that I have come across while conducting research. However, by following the 6 steps above as well as using Google Scholar, I can ensure that I will always be using a scholarly article or journal for my research.
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Brianna KraynakGraduate Student. Team Leader. Future Educator. Writer. |