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Chapter 8 & 9 Reflections

Reflecting on Chapter 8 made me laugh a little - Maloy et al focus their discussions on using computers and other technologies to share information in online learning environments, and that is the purpose of our blogs for EDU7266! It's like I'm living out the purpose of the chapter as I type this! 

One point that especially resonated with me was that adolescents and children are the "largest consumers of email and instant message technologies" (Maloy et al p.215). In our discussions of digital citizenship thus far, I feel as though we haven't sufficiently addressed this point.  As teachers, I feel we often focus our attention on the ethical use of and information obtained from internet sources and forget about the interpersonal communication that also occurs because of these technologies. Email, notes Maloy et al, is used for "workplace communication, business networking, online shopping, family talk, and recreational pursuits (p.215)."  With such a variety of uses and purposes, it can be difficulty to navigate the appropriate structure, language, and tone necessary for composing an email to a particular recipient.  In our 21st Century classrooms, I feel it is necessary to provided direct instruction addressing this. 

In my own classroom, I use email to communicate with parents regularly.  In fact, we encourage parents to communicate via email rather than by a note in their child's folder. In using this media, we have set clear guidelines as to how often teachers in our school check their email and when parents should expect a response. With smartphone technology it is easy to read and respond to emails anywhere and at anytime, making it hard to "leave work behind" at the end of the day.  By specifying that we do not check our emails after 3:30pm and not over weekends or vacation times, we are able to set clear guidelines and expectations for families and keep "work" at work. We are also expected to email a weekly newsletter to all families in our class with updates about what we did academically and reminders for the following week.  All these class newsletters as well as reminders, notices, and homework assignments are posted on our class pages for families convenience. Our principal continually reminds us that as public information, our class pages are also a huge marketing part of our school.  Perspective families use the newsletters and class pages to gain insights into our classroom and school community. 

Questions for the group: 

1. Teachers around the world use blogs as a way to share ideas and stories from their own classrooms.  Do you follow any teacher bloggers? Would you consider starting your own blog about your (current or future) classroom?

2. Chapter 9 highlighted some disadvantages of PowerPoint presentations (p.246). In your experience as a teacher and/or student do you find the use of PowerPoints advantageous or disadvantageous? 

TakeAways 4/7

Tonight's discussion focused on the various aspects of a digital portfolio.  Revisiting my undergraduate portoflio was very insightful. I saw a few formatting and ease of accessibility issues that I would like to fix.  As far as content goes, I feel that I have several pieces that better represent my abilities as a teacher and learner that I would also like to include. Uploading the assignmetns from this couse as well will make my digital portfolio even better.