Digital Literacy

Chapter 9 in Chayko's Superconnected was an interesting read. It left me feeling slightly more informed but also wanting more. I found the parts about health to be the most interesting because being a "Millennial" I am constantly hearing the nagging of older generations about our use of technology and social media.The idea of it being an addiction often comes up as well. In the reading the comparison of digital media use and excessive reading bring up a great point about the idea of digital use "addiction".  "The same could be true of internet and digital media use, which is also sometimes dismissed as frivolous but is obviously used for a wide range of purposes with vast range of effects."-Chayko I find it tremendously unfair to call excessive digital use as an addiction. I think its use gets confused as the problem versus some of the pages of types of sites being used. The blame should rather be on a more direct type of site such as porn. Thei...

One thing to know about me I LOOOVVVEEE Teachers Pay teachers! Reading Chapter 4 this week in Rheingold's Net Smart I couldn't help but think about all of the online collaboration opportunities for teachers out there. I am an open door teacher. Any one can come into my classroom looking for resources or advice at any time. The kindergarten teachers in my school are all this way. However I have been at schools that are not like this. They hoard their resources for fear of never having enough or because they bought it. I don't understand that!The more the merrier for me. If I can save someone from paying a couple bucks on TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers) and they get to use it in their classroom I am going to share willingly. Now for any one reading this that hasn't heard of TPT it is a website where teachers can sell or give away resources they have put together. It can be in any subject and teachers all over the world can use it as a customer or a seller. Teachers that b...

For my play this week I used the Daily Create website and I had the website choose a challenge at random. I saw a perfect opportunity with this challenge to advocate for something I feel is extremely important for children to experience at school throughout early childhood. Play is one of those areas in education that we have fluctuated on over the years. For a couple years it is very popular and many districts make an effort to include it in their daily schedule and then we hit a span of years where it no longer made a priority. I have felt very fortunate to begin my teaching career in a time when my district has embraced all of the research on play in early childhood. It is expected that I include at least 45 minutes of play each day. We call it play to learn. As a kindergarten teacher I know how much children learn from play. My students are currently learning social skills, problem solving skills, and currently learning how a restaurant works with my dramatic play center. But ...

Motivated by the video Challenging The Algorithms of Oppression I decided to do a search of my own today. I didn't know exactly what to expect but the above picture is what I got when I searched female teachers, female teacher sex scandals. The first chapter in Net Smart discussed the high usage of use by the younger generation and it sparked a thought about how many might be female. With women historically being oppressed it felt like a natural connection once I heard the following quote from Reingold.  "This interest by U.S. youths in media production practices might well be a function of adolescents' needs to explore their identities and experiment with social interaction." -Howard Reingold For comparison purposes I decided why not search male teachers and this is what I got. Essentially all about why we need more male teachers. Such positive first results. Could it be because female teachers are sex offenders (haha just kidding)? I find this so te...

Reading the introduction to Net Smart I immediately began thinking about my own "digital treadmill "that I had begun to "go on" as a young child. It motivated me to think about the introductions to technology I had, the main staple social media and technology platforms that got me here today. As new social media platforms take shape and gain popularity it is often difficult to remember just how long we have been going on the treadmill. One of the largest contributing factors for me continuing further and further was the reliability. My first introduction to computers was frustrating and unpredictable. Dial up internet took forever and often there were times it wouldn't connect at all. I only relied on a computer for occasional fun playing games and nothing else.  My families very first computer actually broke within the first 5 minutes of setting it up because a CD we inserted shattered inside and trickled through out it. We had to wait at least a week until we...

Hip Dysplasia awareness is a very important thing to me. I knew nothing about it before I had my daughter.When my daughter Nyah was born the hospital very casually mentioned that she would be checking her hips to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary. The first few days she is poked and prodded so I didn't really think much of it. They didn't seem to say much about them when she was first born but then at one of her early check ups at about 3 months her pediatrician said she was feeling a click in her hips. She referred us to Seattle Children's Hospital so we could see a specialist. The day came for the appointment and I went in so positively. After all she look perfect and nothing seemed off. After the x-rays the doctor came in and told us our daughter had Hip Dysplasia and that one hip was worse then the other. She was going to need to be in a Spica cast that went from her chest down to her ankles for 3 months. I felt like I had been hit by a train and ther...

"Some consider fake news to be simply information with which they disagree. Others claim that we can no longer regulate truth in an era where fake news spreads so easily and that we therefore live in a "post-truth" society." -Mark Chayko The idea that some consider fake news to be information they disagree with gives me great concern. In a country that prides it self in being some where with freedom of speech it strikes me as petty to then  hold information as fake if they are unable to support it. Don't get me wrong there are a lot of things I read and hear that I don't like or really want to hear but I feel that the term fake news is a phrase spread like wildfire now. With the election of our newest president this phrase has been everywhere. I didn't think much of it until it was thrust into our faces everyday. I grew worried because I know as an avid celebrity gossip follower that I maybe gullible enough to fall for fake news. Chayko says "...

"People do not benefit equally from the affordances or opportunities that technology can provide. People are not all in the same position to access it, learn about it, use it, or even invent it in the first place"-Mary Chayko  Equity in education and resources is a topic I take great interest in. I think it stems from the fact that I grew up in a small agricultural town in Eastern Washington with virtually no diversity. There were essentially Caucasian families and Mexican families. Initially I had a very privileged view of my access to resources. When applying for scholarships to attend college I was increasingly frustrated with the stipulation in so many scholarships that you must be related to someone working in the agricultural industry or child of a migrant worker. I was spending my time saying poor me I am none of those things instead of realizing why those stipulations were on those scholarships in the first place. They were necessary for equity. I unknowingly had ac...

As a new teacher fresh from subbing for half a year one of the things I was not ready for was the mix of different types of teachers in my school. I started out eating my lunch in the staff lounge as a way to get to know my colleagues. That soon stopped when I realized what a negative space the staff lounge was. While there were times of sharing about our lives and families it was far less than the times with negative rants about students and situations in the classroom. It is still this way which is why I continue to eat my lunch in my classroom even after 5 years at the same school. I was finding myself complaining and joining in to have something to relate to. I don't like the teacher I become when I go to the staff lounge. As teachers we have times when we had a student be extremely difficult or situation that comes up that drives us crazy. How should we handle it? First, I think we all need something OUTSIDE of school that helps us release stress. Maybe its the gym or get...

Hello, I am Sierra D'Amelio. I am a kindergarten teacher, mother, and wife. This quarter I am looking forward to learning more about the opportunities the internet and technology possess for not only my students but my own child as well. Having a young two year old daughter I am consistently feeling the guilt of using too much technology while also worrying about lack of exposure to it as well. With my students being so young I also feel the pressure to incorporate technology in a developmentally appropriate manner. Figuring out what this is has been a challenge and one I look forward to learning more about.