Digital Media in the Classroom - Teachers College

National Standards - It's About Time!

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Thought you guys might like to see this: National Educational Standards

Bloggers Unite for a FREE IRAN on Mon. June 29th

noreply@blogger.com (sloperaly) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:01:00 +0000

A request of the blogging community... A compendium site illustrating the use of digital media to promote Human Rights: Bloggers Unite for a Free Iran
Source: http://www.bloggersunite.org

Objective:
Bloggers Unite for a FREE IRAN on Mon. June 29th.

Bloggers Unite to support Human Rights in Iran on Monday June 29th.

Violence, arrests, crackdowns and media blackouts continue to increase in Iran in the aftermath of the recent presidential elections.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests

To discuss this event: http://www.bloggersunite.org/discuss/entry/what-can-we-do-to-help-in-iran

Tweeting? Use Hash Tag #FreeIran

Reflections On This Class and My Project

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:01:00 +0000

I posted some final thoughts about the class and my project on my blog. Its been a pleasure interacting with everyone. Thanks for giving me so much to consider in my own use of Digital Media!

Alyson - I also posted info on my project to your "inbox" on the class web. Thanks for all your help and insight!

Dan

Wrapping Up "Digital Media in the Classroom"

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Here is my last entry specifically tied to this class. Enjoy!

Print vs. Blog: The Many Faces of Cultural Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:33:00 +0000

This event is tomorrow at the 92nd Street Y at 7pm. Thought any of you who are in the city might want to go. I would love to but not sure I can make it in tomorrow.

Print vs. Blog: The Many Faces of Cultural Journalism
Village Voice Publisher Michael Cohen, Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, Alana Taylor of Mashable.com and Jake Dobkin, publisher of Gothamist, discuss the current state of arts and cultural journalism. Has the rise of online periodicals and cultural blogs eroded arts reporting? Will alternative print newspapers survive the economic downturn? What will arts aficionados read in the years to come? Join us for this fascinating look at the changing landscape of arts journalism.

Political Twittering, Kindle Snobbery & more

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Hi guys,
My latest blog post is here. I'm beginning a series called "This Week in Social Media". Today's topics are Political Twittering, Kindle Snobbery and more...
Enjoy!
-Robin

A Twitter Love Story

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:24:00 +0000

This blog posting is both funny and relevant to our class. I think it reflects not only Twitter, but any Social Networking tool that we've discussed.

A Twitter Love Story

Blog postings

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:54:00 +0000

Hi there,
Here are my last two blog postings.

This is the video I created in class on Saturday: me on Digital Media in the Classroom.

This is my posting that I created based on my shadowing experience yesterday: My Life as a Shadow - Part IV.
-Robin

Class Videoblog Entry

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jochum) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:04:00 +0000

YouTube Symphony Observations

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:53:00 +0000

Hi everyone -

Posted some observations on last week's YouTube Symphony concert at Carnegie Hall. Looking forward to seeing everyone on Saturday.

Dan

Cloud Computing...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:56:00 +0000

I stumbled across this cross-platform "cloud-computing" OS. This is something we've not discussed or tried out. I tested it briefly and it seems promising... Any thoughts?

http://www.glidedigital.com/

Social Media Part 2: The Effect on Education

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:18:00 +0000

Hi guys,
The second installment of this post is now up. Check out the Social Media Effect on Education.
-Robin

Social Media Part 1: In the News

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:38:00 +0000

Hi guys,
My latest blog posting on Social Media. For our Music Ed teachers, there's a little something in it just for you... Please use IE if you want to view the embedded video. It doesn't seem to work in Firefox.
-Robin

Exercise Your Right To Vote

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:45:00 +0000

I think we talked about this a few weeks ago. Facebook, in response to the discontent of it's members, revamped it's governance documents based on all sorts of user feedback. They are now offering members a chance to vote on the new documents. This is participatory Internet at it's finest. Do your digital civic duty and vote on Facebook's proposed governance documents. You must vote no later than midnight tonight.

Webby WebQuests

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:21:00 +0000

My latest blog post is all about WebQuests... I believe it's relevant to this class because it's a good way to include digital media in a specific inquiry-based learning experience. Check it out...

Webby WebQuests

Facebook Music Video

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:52:00 +0000

I think you'll like this video clip about Facebook. Just a little fun for now. I'll be writing more posts tomorrow on my blog...

Thoughts on the class and final project ideas

noreply@blogger.com (sloperaly) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:32:00 +0000

We’ve devoted the last several weeks to the (hopefully) collaborative investigation of a group of Web 2.0 related tools for collaboration and communication. We wanted to experiment with social networking tools and learn to locate specific audiences in order to critically experience and discuss the possibilities and limitations for personal use and within an educational setting.

Now whether we as individuals used these tools consistently or sporadically, we thought it important that through collective inquiry we would not only collaboratively explore but question the meaning and the organization of our thoughts over these past weeks. From speaking with most of you privately and in our live sessions we learned this has been a real challenge! We had hoped to use this blog as a collaborative ‘classroom’ space to discuss various questions posed from week to week, and to have you use your personal blogs to develop your final projects, spurred by the readings, sites given at the outset, and your visions for the potential of these tools. In not all cases did it seem clear to everyone where comments should be posted or what the differences were(even when we’d say reply here to the weekly classroom questions!). So organization of our content on the class blog was our clear challenge to explore for future classes.

In addition, as TC doesn’t offer a robust enough online learning/dissemination space, our use of tools was relegated to those in a commercial domain (Facebook for social networking has gone commercial, and Blogger is owned by Google, though Twitter for status updating is not for profit and there were many more possibilities for platforms discussed in our latest online session). School teachers face the same issues and more…some school districts entirely ban these tools from their networks which causes real barriers to those early adopters among you who want to teach using them. So a project which explores tools and barriers to their use would be a helpful project exploration.

In last week’s email, Howie sent invitations to try our site on Ning, and hopefully some of us will be able to contribute their thoughts on the differences, benefits and drawbacks. (This would be an appropriate project too by the way.)

We also thought it might be helpful that this part of our investigation and project follow through should give consideration to the initial questions posed in the syllabus based on the following premise; that a broadened spectrum of digital learning technologies brings along new possibilities for transnational education across cultural boundaries. Which of these tools holds the most promise to you? … this topic was the essential question with which to explore on your blog as a project foundation.

Social Networking and Communities of Inquiry

If social networking spaces such as facebook, Second Life, G-Chat, IM, Twitter, and YouTube, alongside handheld devices, cell phones, text messaging, email and voice mail -- have become an integral part of the lives of young people looking for new ways to engage in online digital sociability, we asked how education might tap into that collective and devoted this blog space as a community of inquiry to discuss this and other issues.

A community of inquiry depends on sustained communication and collaboration so that participants can share their insights- it is both a collaborative and iterative experience that prepares students for planned as well as unintended paths. Collaborative inquiry goes past simply accessing and incorporating information , and this concept seems a bit out of the comfort zone for many. One of the first articles by Prensky may have at the outset seemed to describe any number of us as digital natives. At the end of this class are you still in agreement with your initial opinion of where you fall in his continuum? Those of you who are interested in reconsidering might want to explore counter arguments to Prensky’s paper from David Buckingham in Children of the Technology Age? an article in the Electronic Journal of Communication (1998), Beyond Technology (2007) and Neil Selwin’s article Digital Native, Myth and Reality: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9775892/Digital-Native for your final project.

According to Dewey, educational inquiry is an iterative process of investigating problems and issues, not just memorizing solutions. Inquiry focuses on intended goals and outcomes that are self guided, self directed and task based. Our task at hand for the project asked us to:

1- Define the question(s) posed in the original syllabus as they pertain to your own experiences with Web 2.0 and social networking tools.
2- Search for relevant information and use the tools as an experiential base
3- Formulate new solutions, assimilate the uses you see modeled elsewhere
4- Apply those solutions as appropriate to a lesson plan or concept for using the tools
5- Reflect on solutions through discourse here and on your blogs

We also began and will end with the following quote from educational philosopher Maxine Greene:
“Passions, then engagements, and imagining. I want to find a way of speaking of community, an expanding community that will take shape as people speaking as who, not what they are, come together in speech and action, as Arendt puts it, to constitute something in common among themselves.” (Maxine Greene as quoted in Baldacchino, 2008)

As Greene’s notion of community implies taking the risk of imagination it was hoped that this class would be that imaginative space for inquiry and for sharing your ideas. What were the successes or challenges for you?

Referenced information on collaborative inquiry from: Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines
D. Randy Garrison, Norman D. Vaughan

Old Growth Media and the Future of News:

noreply@blogger.com (sloperaly) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:47:00 +0000

Fascinating speech entitled Old Growth Media and the Future of News: (From StevenBerlinJohnson.com
http://tinyurl.com/bq2tu8 and then the update to the speech written recently:

An excerpt: today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years.

You Tube and Colleges: Link to the Net

noreply@blogger.com (sloperaly) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:42:00 +0000

On the Net: College too expensive? Try YouTube
College classroom doors open on YouTube, offering free taste of higher education

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/On-the-Net-College-too-apf-14891018.html

The Facebook Revolt

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:43:00 +0000

"Do you own Facebook? Or does Facebook own you?" in this week's New York Magazine is particularly relevant to our class discussion. On my blog, I've posted the reasons why I think so.

Live Mobile Blogging Application on BlackBerry App World

noreply@blogger.com (sloperaly) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:06:00 +0000

CellSpin Launches 'Video, Audio, Photo & Text' Live Mobile Blogging Application on BlackBerry App World for All Major Social Networks and Blogging Platforms

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CellSpin-Launches-Video-Audio-prnews-14868918.html

Latest Post

noreply@blogger.com (Derek Cressman) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Hello All,

My week 4 posting are up as well as a lot of catch-up postings.

Reflections on Readings

noreply@blogger.com (BrownieD) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:16:00 +0000

Hi all -

Please visit my blog for current reflections on the articles in the NY Times. Thanks!

I'm Still Here

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Hello class. After somewhat of a lull in my online presence, I just wanted to call attention to my blog, where I have responded to some of the class readings and discussion topics.

How Tweet It Is

noreply@blogger.com (GadgetGirl) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:45:00 +0000

How Tweet It Is
I found this article and thought you would all like to read it, especially those of you who are still unsure about why you would want to use Twitter. It's an interesting read about how Twitter was founded and what it is has become. For me, the most compelling line of the article is this: "To its loyal users, Twitter is an invaluable part of their daily lives." I'm not quite there yet, but I can see myself using it daily as an educator.