Wednesday's Blog Post on Final Project

For my final project, I have a few ideas circulating around. To get the ball rolling, I want to play around with some of Spiegel’s findings as she urged the importance of explicitly teaching students how to use technology in professional and academic ways. I totally agreed with her stance that students cannot be expected to understand how to use technology in all of its functions due to them being youth and being raised with technology at their fingertips.

With this in mind, I would like to create change in my classroom where students are explicitly taught a technology skill they need to succeed. What first came to mind is explicit instruction of typing. Although in my opinion this currently seems basic, I have come to understand that if I do not give my first going into second grade students explicit instruction on how to type properly, they may go into third grade with very little experience typing essays which is a necessary skill for the RICAS and rest of their lives. 

I want to take this a step further, as I believe that students are capable of learning through social interaction with their peers. While typing is a personal skill, I would like to give the space for my students to use their typing skills to interact with each other and develop their literacy skills in a communal way. One way I am thinking about this is by creating some sort of community chat room where my students can practice typing messages to each other and reading them. I would leverage this as a necessary skill because I am very much aware that my students are obsessed with Roblox, and by learning how to type messages they will be able to communicate with their friends through the chat function of the game. By creating space in the class for students to engage with each other through typed messages, they are practicing the technological skill of typing, increasing their literacy development by practicing reading and decoding messages, and becoming more connected as a class community. 

Tuesday Night's Blog on Christensen

Linda Christensen writes a compelling piece about the importance of developing students’ critical awareness on childrens’ media so they are able to analyze the messaging of hierarchy and inequality often found in stories. There is a “secret education" that children learn as they consume over and over again with the same media they view in the comfort of their homes, and without proper education on uncovering stereotypes found in media, students are being taught to accept their world that is portrayed to them at face value. 

Throughout my childhood, I was raised on Disney and Nickelodeon. After school, I always remembered watching Disney Channel and Teen Nick TV shows and aspired to live my life like some of the characters I was seeing on the screen. My dad worked all of the time and my mom was a stay-at-home mom who was a nanny for our neighbors and relatives. This left me to occupy myself most of the time and I didn’t really have an adult who was aware of what media I was consuming as a child. It wasn’t until middle school when I had a social studies teacher who used similar teaching strategies and intentions to Christensen who really opened my eyes to developing more critical literacy skills with Disney movies. I remember we watched Pocahontas and Hercules as they were both historical figures we learned about in class. My teacher had us watch the films and jot down what the movies “got right” and what the movies “got wrong" (here's an article for some of the inaccuracies in Pocahontas if you would like to know).  My first time watching both of these films was in school and I remember my pencil was MOVINGGGGGG on the “got wrong” side. I think this was a formative exercise to recognize that Disney values entertainment over depicting historical accuracy. 

While I do think that there are aspects of nostalgia and wholesomeness found in children's media, I totally agree with Christensen’s view that teaching students how to critically engage with the media they consume is necessary for them to be changemakers in the world. 

Monday Night's Blog on Prensky and Spiegel

 After reading Jennifer Spiegel's article that evaluates the usage of Marc Prensky's terminology on digital natives and digital immigrants with today’s learners, I am of the belief that these terms are slightly outdated. I acknowledge their purpose for when Prensky initially coined these concepts as a way to juxtapose the generations that have been immersed with technology since birth versus the ones that were introduced to it in adulthood. For example, I would consider myself to be a digital native according to Prensky’s definition, as I feel as though I have grown up since day 1 being around video games, television, computers, etc. and learned how to navigate this world on my own. However, with my grandma for example, I have had to teach her many different functions on her iPhone, like how to Facetime me and how to upload a picture to her home background. I think the terminology digital immigrant could be applicable to her as she was not raised in a technological world and is still finding ways to adjust to it. I totally agree with Spiegel on several of the points she made about the way these terms are used. Firstly, just because our students are “digital natives” according to the definition, do they have access to technology at their house? Are they being taught responsibly how to use it? Are they being monitored by their family on their usage? Especially as an elementary educator, I really resonated with her point that students cannot be expected to know the “professional” or “academic” usages of technology just because they are proficient in it with their social lives. I totally agree that it must be embedded into the elementary curriculum for students to learn how to type and manage files so students can integrate technology more efficiently with content related assignments in future grades. It really bothers me that the school I work at instructs students in grades K-2 to hand-write all writing assignments, and then in grade 3 have to switch to typing because it is a requirement to type paragraphs for the ELA RICAS assessment. How are students able to do their best work on RICAS if they are not given explicit designated instruction on how to type during school? I also agreed with the point that students love to use technology to communicate in private spaces with their friends. I was SHOCKED the first time my students used Dojo Island in class, essentially it is kind of like the modern day of Club Penguin or Webkinz where students can have their own avatar and navigate a world and see their friends. These spaces are so important for kids to connect with each other online. They were literally screaming across the classroom when they would find a friend in the game and be like “X I SEE YOU!!!!” This reading is making me recognize how I channel their excitement that they already demonstrate with shared technology into productive learning, like for example using technology to teach them how to send messages through an online learning platform to each other as they are developing early literacy skills.

Here is a link to a blog I found that highlights the importance of online spaces like Club Penguin for kids.

Michele's Introduction Post

Hi class, my name is Jacob Michele but I go by Michele :). I am 23 years old and just wrapped up my first year of teaching at Achievement First Iluminar ES teaching first grade! I went to George Washington University and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in 2024 in International Affairs and Geography. I moved to Providence about a year ago and could not be more happy to get out of DC when I did. This Digital Media Literacy course is the last one I am taking to get my Master's from RIC in Education! I am very excited to learn more about technology and its integration in the classroom.  

Outside of work, I love to have fun! I enjoy going out with my friends on the weekends, playing board games, doing karaoke, and watching theatre and music performances. I used to be involved a lot in theatre but this year I have been very focused on my  job and studies. Recently, I have been experimenting with fashion and makeup and trying to be more of my authentic self. Here are some pictures that represent me! 

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