Monthly Archives: October 2018

Oct 30 2018
3 Comments
332wednesday12

Redlining: From Neighbourhoods to Networks

Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik’s article Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy draws attention to a very important, but—until now—unsaid issue. While most of us think of access to information as a right, this article reminds us that it is, in fact, a privilege.

Personally, I have never had to worry about being restricted in my research or access to information. I have been fortunate enough to attend post-secondary institutions that offer many databases and resources of information. I also always had access to the internet at home and even on the go, I have a fair amount of data for my research needs. Because of this privilege, I have spent most of my life being fairly ignorant to the struggles of others with restricted access to the internet and information. I have never known the frustration of being alerted that I am unable to access a certain webpage due to restrictions. That is what made this article all the more relevant to me because it really opened my eyes.

I would have never thought to make the connection between redlining maps in the United-States and the restriction of information at community colleges versus wealthy post-secondary institutions. Initially, I found the analogy shocking because I was not sure if it was appropriate to compare such a racially charged historical practice to this modern dilemma. However, as I continued to read the article it became clear that this was, in fact, the perfect comparison. As Professor Gilliard alluded to, many students attending community colleges face financial restrictions. In his lecture, Gilliard explained that unlike most students at wealthier institutions, many community college students do not have access to internet packages for their home or phone, meaning they only have the means to do research at school. This is problematic when their only online access is restricted. Community college should not be thought of as a lesser education and its students should not be limited due to stereotypes or the precedent that they simply need job training and therefore are not in need of research tools. All learning, at any level, should involve inquiry, which in turn requires research and research tools. Withholding these tools and deeming what limited access they have “good enough” based on an institution’s financial status is discrimination of its students.

Oct 30 2018
3 Comments
332wednesday12

Digital Redlining Say What???

Found below is a link to the Twitter Essay I created, summarizing the key points and my opinions on “Digital Redlining, Access and Privacy” written by Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik, published on May 24th, 2016. Here is a link to the article itself.  https://www.commonsense.org/education/privacy/blog/digital-redlining-access-privacy.

 

Gilliard and Culik discuss digital redlining in range of post secondary institutions, including community colleges as well as higher level institutions. The main purpose of the article is to make note of the filters in place between a student and the internet that block access to information within and throughout the different levels of educational institutions . If the school restricts information access, knowledge doesn’t simply become invisible, it does not even exist. This is the first time that I have ever been introduced to this idea in post secondary education. I knew of it in the grade school and high school levels to keep students off social media and inappropriate sites during school hours, which as someone who is studying to be a teacher I agree with, but I did not realize it existed at a higher level. I was under the impression that colleges and universities are supposed to be places with vast amount of knowledge and safe spaces for inquiry into any topic you want to gain knowledge on. I did not realize sources through the university are filtered, and this makes me question much of the past research I have done. What was I missing out on? Gilliard and Culik discuss that digital redlining is not a acknowledged problem in higher level institutions because many of the students come from a higher socioeconomic background and can access the internet at home rather than at school. I believe this is the category where I fall, I never thought much of digital redlining at school because a large chunk of my research has been done at home. Even when I did notice a difference in things such as the search results at home compared to school, I did not think anything of it until now. It is important that I know what digital redlining is and I can be aware of it while attending post secondary education. As well as, from the perspective of a future teacher, I am especially thankful for the information I have gained from this article, more specifically the possibility that knowledge may be blocked from my future students. I think more people need to be made aware, and it needs to be something we acknowledge and discuss as a society so we can work on changing the limits on information that students can access at all levels.

 

Here is the link to my Twitter Essay! By clicking on the tweet below, the first tweet in my series, you should be brought to the whole essay! Feel free to reply to my tweets and start a conversation!

 

Imbedded below is a video explaining my process using twitter and creating my twitter essay. I discuss the pros and cons to using twitter, some of cool things I could do with twitter as well as the difficulties that arose while I was working on my essay. I apologize for the quality, but I had to compress the video for it to upload to youtube. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Oct 30 2018
1 Comment
332wednesday12

Alright Stop, Collaborate and Listen

For my digital media reflection I chose to read and reflect upon Dr. Jacobsen’s ‘Teaching in a Participatory Digital World’ I also chose to present my summary/reflection in the form of a twitter essay (to view my essay click HERE). Enjoy!

Article link: https://www.edcan.ca/articles/teaching-in-a-participatory-digital-world/

Reading Jacobsen’s article really opened my eyes to the true power that digital networks/platforms can really bring to the classroom. At the same time, it also shed light on the fact that school are not using digital networks to the fullest of their potential, and further transformation can be made to take full advantage and enhance the learning experience for students. Before reading this article, and even after my first practicum, I found myself feeling very ignorant in terms how new technology is used in the school systems. I think one of the most powerful aspects that digital networks provide is the ability to collaborate for both students and teachers. Collaboration allows for critical reflection and development, and provides a sense of community for students to share and critique each others ideas. Thinking back to my undergrad, I would meet up with friends to throw ideas around and to tackle problems I had with the material before almost every midterm, and this was always hugely beneficial. Looking back at my experiences in secondary education, most of these networks were not available and learning was dominated by overheads and templates/handouts. I feel my learning could have definitely been enhanced by the available technology today. This is a big reason I plan to integrate these tech options into my teaching pedagogy, doing everything I can to maximize my student’s learning experience. I think the importance of continuing education was also stressed in this article. Technology will never stop advancing. When I think back to my experience with tech in the class room, it went as far as the SMARTboard. This was a big deal, and today, seems almost obsolete. As professionals, we have been learning for the past 20+ years of our lives, and we will/need to keep expanding our knowledge for the next 30.

One prominent issue is the use of filters and restrictions in schools today. While these methods are place for students safety, they may also be limiting the power social media and tech networks offer for students and teachers. Jenkins explained that it would make more sense to allow students full access in a school setting where they are surrounded by professionals who can help them understand and unlock the full potential of such platforms. I think this is a very valid point, while most of what students use social media for is personal, allowing teachers and students full access could aid in the transformation to more effective participatory environments. This is a concept I never really thought about before, and I think it’s mostly because when people hear ‘unrestricted’ they automatically associate the negative that free access to the internet could bring into schools. In my experience, students will always find a way around these restrictions, so why not embrace them and do the best we can to educate them on the positive effects technology can have on their education. We need to bridge the gap between educational systems based on standardized testing and the educational system we hope to enforce with the help of the brilliant networks and collaborative opportunities digital technology can bring.

I chose to complete my reflection in the form of a twitter essay. This was very new to me, as I have not been active on Twitter for a few years. I felt this method was very effective in forcing me to summarize my points effectively into the allotted character count. I also enjoyed using GIFS to enhance the points I was trying to make. I found it actually made the article a bit easier to read as well. Each time I read what I thought to be a major point, I began formulating a tweet from the info. and this gave me the next portion of my twitter essay. One thing I struggled with was making sure that there was decent flow from one tweet to the next. I found myself starting new threads may have been unrelated to the previous one, and this could cause some confusion when reading through. Overall I feel like it was a positive experience and I would definitely use this method again. Moving forward I’m excited to try some of the other reflection methods and continue to expand my horizons in the world of digital technology.

 

Oct 30 2018
6 Comments
332wednesday12 Image

Get with the Times and Embrace Participatory Learning Possibilities!

Hello there,

Today I chose to do my multimedia reflection on the Jacobsen article/Jenkins video, which discussed the idea of incorporating participatory digital methods into the classroom. I personally found these sources quite useful because although we have discussed how to incorporate technology into classrooms, I sometimes failed to see the benefit of it or the extent to which it can be useful. Therefore, they were extremely helpful in providing me with some context on just how effective incorporating technology in the classroom can be. One thing that really stood out was that nearly everything that was claimed within it was backed up by facts, with the majority of them dealing with the idea of integrating these student based/technological methods into the classroom. Overall, it seems as if allowing students to fully utilize the technology they are given, collaborate with themselves and their teachers, and become heavily involved in projects online while interacting with learners/resources on the web can be extremely beneficial. There is a constant juxtaposition participant focused learning to that of the traditional recall and regurgitate method often employed within schools, which I believe was an important contrast to make in order to truly understand how kids effectively learn. Collaboration was heavily stressed throughout the article, which I believe is important to make the most out of the learning opportunities that present themselves within a classroom. Without this aspect of constantly learning and bouncing ideas off each other, things would definitely stagnate quickly within the realm of education. These resources are definitely something that all teachers should read/watch to get a better grasp of how to get more out of their students through technology and provide themselves with a variety of resources that can assist them in the process, including Galileo Network and Second Life. It is definitely something that I will personally attempt to explore more throughout my career to give my students the best learning experience possible.

I chose to do a mindmap because it is something I’ve never really done outside of some sketches in various classrooms throughout my learning career. I enjoyed using this platform (Coggle) for the most part, but I found that it was extremely difficult to get all the information that I wanted into the mindmap. There was a lot of stuff covered within the article, so fitting it within a series of branches was a bit challenging, but I found the process rewarding in the end. However, I do feel that branching the various topics covered within the article made it easier to collect my thoughts than if I had to simply summarize everything that the author talked about. I also added some visual aids to get across some main points that I wanted to stick with whoever happens to see it. Overall, I would recommend the platform for anyone looking to escape their comfort zone and try something new, especially considering the fact that it is not as time consuming as some of the other platforms. Without further ado, here is my mindmap! Enjoy, and feel free to give me any feedback to get those marks in.

 

Oct 29 2018
2 Comments
332wednesday12, Uncategorized

You must be at least this tall, wearing a lavender sweater, and have yellow eyes to read this post about Digital Redlining

Well now, after doing our little twitter discussion last week I just could keep myself away from the little cyan birdie, so I’ve decided to compose a twitter essay to express my thoughts on Digital Redlining. The article in question, Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy, is  written by  Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik and discusses a concept called Digital Redlining, which essentially blocks users from accessing certain information based on predetermined rules and regulation. If a student were to research a certain topic that these rules and regulations deem ‘inappropriate’ the user will not be given access to the site, or in the instance of scholarly Journal databases, will not be shown all the results. Herein lies the issue, if a student is paying a institution for access to all of these sites they are doing so with the impression that they will have infinite access to whatever they need. To them, a lack of results means the information they are looking for does not exist. The authors mention three instances in which students attempt to research topics they find interesting, only to find virtually no information on the topic, dissuading them from pursuing said topic any further. The information was there, they just didn’t have access to it. In post secondary education, self-discovery, self- inquiry and self driven education is extremely important in helping someone learn and taking away or denying that innate curiosity that we all have is very dangerous indeed.

As I said earlier, the little cyan birdie and I became close friends over the course of the past week and I saw it fitting to express my thoughts through a twitter essay. The original plan was to make a stop motion film to honor my all time favorite movie Nightmare Before Christmas (tis the season afterall), but gravity decided to break my camera instead, so the stop motion will have to wait. One thing that inspired me to tackle this article in particular was something that occurred last week during our twitter conversation. I made a tweet which mentioned the video game ‘Runescape’ and found myself assaulted with ads for the game. Whether it was twitter accounts associated with the game or ads for the game on the side, they were there and they were in full force. It was convenient then that the article in question discussed not only what we have access too, but what our information is used for. It was…difficult to keep my thoughts limited to 280-characters per tweet, and even at 17 tweets in total I still found myself limited by the medium. The learning curve here was trying to figure out how to really condense my thoughts  without losing the meaning of the article. That said, I found incorporating images and gifs to be a fun little side activity which in my opinion really elevated the twitter essay as a whole, as they add a sense of emotion and feeling to each individual tweet, something which you cannot emulate in any academic paper. Take a look at my twitter essay below and tell me what you think!

The Article: https://www.commonsense.org/education/privacy/blog/digital-redlining-access-privacy

 

Oct 29 2018
4 Comments
332wednesday12

Finding a Way to Educational Equality

For my multimedia reflection, I chose to read and respond to the article Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy by Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik. I found the article very interesting as it brought an entirely new issue to my attention, I really had no idea(s) on this issue before I read the text. The authors explain the history of digital redlining and how it is implemented at the community college level. Redlining began back in the U.S.A in The Great Depression era as neighbourhoods were segregated by race. Essentially, digital redlining is reducing access to information on the internet via Accessible use Policies, which are implemented to block certain cites. For example, if a student wishes to research anatomy, the website may be blocked, leading the student to believe little access on the subject is available. This then affects the student for life as they are pushed away from their natural curiosity to explore inquiry-based learning. I found this to question my own beliefs about college students; just because they chose a different route does not necessarily mean they are not as “smart” and deserve to have less access to information. I found it extremely eye-opening to consider that these students have no idea this is happening to them, that some IT developer is deciding which students are  “good enough” to access information. Furthermore, the article made me question my education, while there are great resources available through the Leddy Library website, I am sure there is plenty of information out there that I cannot gain access to. My beliefs that made me react in such a shocked way include my belief that everyone should have an equal opportunity to learn and explore their own interests.

To reflect on the article, I chose to do a Twitter essay; it was a very new experience for me to use Twitter as an academic tool rather than a entertainment platform. While doing this essay I learned new skills such as how to link an article or GIF to a tweet. I also learned more about how hashtags worked, that people around the world link themselves to common interests with them. All of these factors made it a very good experience for me, while the learning curve was a little sharp at the beginning, I eventually became more adept at fitting what I wanted to say in the 280-character count per tweet. I also couldn’t help but think how difficult it would be with the previous 140-character count limit, so I was thankful I had more room to work. Lastly, on a more personal note my mom is a college teacher/prof and I brought the issue to her attention and she couldn’t believe the info in the article. She too had never realized this happened but after reflecting on the reading was shocked by its relevance. We talked specifically about how community colleges see their education more as formal “job training” (this is also mentioned by the authors) while universities practice more theory-based learning; this is the great divide of post-secondary education. I questioned; why can’t community college students practice inquiry-based learning, why should they have their innate curiosity shutdown? And that is the question I leave you all with.

Lastly, in my own future teaching and learning I plan to make my students aware of this issue. Making students aware of this will help them realize that if they search something and it is blocked, that does not mean the information does not exist. Furthermore I believe if my students know about this they will not be able to affect their futures after school; the authors stress how community college students may not have great internet access away from campus. If I teach my students about redlining I will give them strategies on trying to search on a different server such as a library or friends home.

Article link: https://www.commonsense.org/education/privacy/blog/digital-redlining-access-privacy

Additional information video: https://ca-lti.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/playback/load/a79de2788c22445da32aa5e6e69577a1

Twitter Essay: https://twitter.com/jaredhansen321/status/1055871887904071680

 

Oct 29 2018
5 Comments
332thursday10

Let’s Start Digitalizing Classrooms!

My reflection is based on the article Teaching in a Participatory Digital World by Dr. Michele Jacobsen. In the article, they are mentioning that educators who teach using paper and pen should incorporate technology into their classrooms. The students that are now in school are growing up in a digital world and schools should prepare them for this. Students already know how to use technology, but it is the teacher’s job to guide students to use technology in a beneficial way for the 21st century. By incorporating technology, students can analyze information, solve real-world problems and successfully work in a digital world.

It is up to the teachers to provide students with the right tools to learn.  Teachers must constantly engage in professional learning to strengthen their digital competencies. They need to make authentic tasks that allows active learning for the students.  This include coming up with new learning methods and ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. Students and teachers must work together to allow student’s knowledge to grow constantly. When they work together, students can improve their ideas and learn actively instead of having them memorize and learn with paper and pen.

However, this is not something that can happen overnight. There needs to be support from principals, school legislations, and other teachers. They all need to work together for the incorporation of technology to be attainable n the classroom. I decided to make my reflection on supporting one another. Throughout the article, they mentioned that there needs to be support from others to help students use technology. I used Piktochart to make my infographic. I decided to make my infographic from scratch, without using a template. They did not have a lot of templates to choose from and I could not find something that would work with the layout I wanted. The layout that I used included an order of steps. Based on the article, there are steps that need to happen to make sure that educators can teach students about the digital world.  The 1st step must begin with the school legislation. If the school is not provided with internet and there are blocks to certain programs that the teachers want to use, it will be hard to incorporate technology into the classroom. The legislation needs to provide teachers and students with powerful tools to use technology. The 2nd step would come from the principals. They are the ones that need to engage in professional learning to provide support to the teachers. They need to make sure that teachers have the resources to teach technology. The 3rd step is teachers. They are the ones that must to make lessons to help students use the technology. They need to come up with authentic tasks that allow for active learning. Teachers can work together to bounce ideas off of one another and find new ways to make learning interactive. Finally, the 4th step is students. Without the first 3 steps, the students will not be prepared for the digital world. Once there is support from every step, that is when students can use technology and learn from their teachers on how to inquire, problem-solve and learn to work in the 21st century. It involves a community to make sure that students get the correct resources to learn.

Reflecting on this article, I found it important to have almost of a “chain reaction” effect with incorporating technology in the classroom. They are only as strong as the weakest link. While making the Piktochart, I found that using numbers to portray the order in which support needs to come from is important. Teachers can try to incorporate all the technology they like, but without the support and guidance from principals, school jurisdictions, and municipal government, it becomes very hard. Like the article mentioned, if the school places blocks on certain programs, that makes it harder for the teacher to incorporate the use of those technologies.

Before reading this article, I did not really pay attention to the issues. I know that the world is becoming more digitalized every day and that technology should be incorporated into the classroom but looking at how you need to have support will make it difficult. A lot of teachers like to stick to their old-fashioned way of teaching with the overhead projector and chalkboard because they are retiring soon and do not see a point in updating their teaching methods. During my placement, my associate said she has tried to incorporate technology into the classroom but the issue is with the wifi connection. She has done Kahoots in the past but the wifi connection is not strong, or cuts off in the middle of it, making it very frustrating for both the teacher and learners. Even something as simple as having them watch the movie, Osmosis Jones, on YouTube Premium would not work for her. She had purchased the movie for the students to relate to their osmosis unit and had them work on a worksheet during the movie. The wifi stopped working midway through the class so she had to start a new lesson. When she tried again the next day, the wifi still was not working and she had to bring in an older TV and DVD of the movie. This shows that without support, teachers that want to incorporate technology in the class will  find it to be very difficult.

Knowing how there are certain support programs for teachers to come together and learn new techniques about using technology gives me hope for the future. I hope by the time I graduate and have a full time position, that technology can be incorporated into every classroom but not just in a way of SAMR learning, specifically substitution, but in active learning and teaching. I hope that students can make the best out of technology and use it to help them excel in the digital world.

I personally did not enjoy using Piktochart and would prefer to do the Sketchnote like I had done for the first reflection as it was much easier to work with then using technology. With this program, there was always things glitching up, like the font sizes. If I tried to add a word, the font size would become larger and I would have to find the right font size to correct things. There is not a lot of freedom when it comes to changing the pictures that they already have in terms of colour coordination. So, I had to make sure that I found text pictures that were not clashing as well as cartoon like images from google that matched my layout. Once I was able to get past all the glitches and frustration, I found the program easy to navigate. For my next reflection, I will not be using Piktochart. I will try to find something with a bit more freedom in terms of styles and templates. All in all, I feel like through trail and error, I was able to get a result I was happy with.

Tagged
Oct 29 2018
5 Comments
322monday21

Should we shut down Facebook,what a big question ?

Should we shut down Facebook,what a big question ?

Facebook is the world largest social media and the app is used by over 204 million users in USA while India is the world largest user of Facebook with over 294 million users according to data from (c)statista 2018. It shows a global active user from 1 billion in 2012 to 2.23 billion active users in second quarter of 2018. While the number of active users has continue to decline in north america,the opposite is the case in other parts of the world.
Matt Rosoff’s article; should we shut down Facebook entirely due to privacy concern makes an interesting reading,especially when you take into account the global damage the platform has created in the world politics,domestic affairs,social and inter governmental cooperation. The west has been hugely affected where information dissemination has no restrictions unlike other parts of the world where information is guarded,and in some nations it comes with severe punishment.
The Pew survey carried out in the united states gives a graphic detail about the decline in the use of Facebook app in north america. There is no doubt the average age of 18-30 are the ones that spend 1/3 of their daily active hours on social medial,when such a cluster of people account for about 44% abstinence from the platform especially in north america, it calls for concern.
The good news though is the huge number that decided to adjust their security settings on the app to reduce hacking in their personal data.
The debate on the desirability of social platform especially Facebook will continue to generate interesting readings.We have witnessed a tremendous leap in global information dissemination in the last 15 years,the world has become a global village no thanks to all the social network platforms.The world has gained a lot and has equally lost a lot
In the recent report on PCWorld,Facebook has been cited in one out of every five divorce petitions,Divorce- online.Married men and women engaged in flirting,sexual chat and other inappropriate behaviors on social medial despite being married.Cambridge Analytical,a British data mining,data brokerage and data analysis firm has been indicted in several law cases of hacking and obtaining personal information without a permit,and only recently Facebook was confronted in its role in the United States 2010 presidential election where the FBI report that Russian operatives were using the platform to spread false news and information to influence the election result.
On the other side of the argument, Facebook has brought tremendous changes to our social life,it has connected various people who have never met before and in some cases ended up living as husband and wife.The platform has brought huge cultural integration in the globe and the social revolution is unimaginable.It has become a platform to market issues,enterprise,government policies,social and cultural issues and the cheapest platform for advertisement with huge readership.
Some of my high school classmates i have not seen in almost forty years we meet on Facebook group chat we created and share ideas.
In schools, we use the platform for learning when we use other Facebook apps like,Instagram,WhatsApp,and Messenger.
My info graphic visual shows lots of live activities like marriages,entertainment,social networking,leisure and several other platforms that social networking brought with just a tap of a Burton rather than the analogue ways we do things in the past.We are all affected one way or the other.
We all have a story about Facebook either good or bad ,but should we overlook the good and crucify the platform ?My own answer is NO, we must collectively ask for more privacy settings on the app.

Personal Reflection;

I am a strong believer in social networking and appreciate the fact that we are in the digital age.Facebook is a revolution in social networking and ever since the platform was introduced sometimes in 2005,the media has witnessed tremendous shift in global interest and usage as both the old and the young has become active users of the app.like in any good innovation,nothing comes without the ugly side and so is the case with Facebook app. Efforts should be more on a Robust private setting that we protect our information exchange and make it absolutely private.

Oct 29 2018
10 Comments
332wednesday12, Uncategorized

A Fresh Education That’s Totally Fair (Say What!?)

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: I’m coming for your gig.

For my reflection of the Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik article Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy, I attempted to make a rap. I decided to take the key points of the article on access issues of digital redlining and rewrite the lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air-theme song. To be honest, I regretted this decision when it came down to filming part of the process (I’ll explain more about that later). I have since realized two things: 1) I have no chance at a future career in rap and 2) this process is much more lengthy than I anticipated.

The experience of reading the article and opening my eyes to such a prevalent issue was pretty incredible. I had no idea that such a policy existed once upon a time and that it would carry such weight in the digital world years later. I have never really taken a moment to question the online resources that I may or may not have had access to in my education. I do recall having certain applications blocked in high school when using the school Wi-Fi such as Snapchat and YouTube, but I never really thought it blocked my limit to learning. In my undergraduate degree, I found that often there was a lack of resources available online. I cannot even recall the number of times I had to go to the library to pull out extremely old books to get the information needed for French literature assignments, but I’m not really sure that it was a question of access issues.

The belief that underprivileged communities are still facing access to a fair and equitable education makes me quite angry honestly. The fact that there is not more awareness being spread about this issue is shocking. Before I read this article, I really had no idea that digital redlining was a thing. The whole article gave me new information on the history of redlining and how it still impacts our society to this day. Even though many do not see post-secondary access issues as viable, it completely is. I am interested to see how this message will be spread in the future.

What I have learned about this issue truly only comes from this assignment. I created each verse to reflect on a main message of the article. I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of someone who is aware of access issues in a participatory world and who comes from a group that is discriminated against. The first large verse focuses on the history of redlining policy in Detroit, and the second half of that large verse focuses on the limits that digital redlining places on this student’s education. The final large verse then moves into what needs to be done in order to have fair education. Essentially, the rap takes us through a story that goes from having a completely unfair education to having great changes made where digital redlining is no longer an issue that exists (which I sincerely hope happens sometime soon).

When filming and editing my rap, I realized that my resources to do so were pretty limited. I ended up having my mom film me on my iPhone which was just embarrassing and awkward even though my mom is my biggest fan. I just knew the quality was not going to be where I wanted it. I’m not thrilled with the outcome of the video itself, but I sincerely tried my hardest with what I had. Unfortunately, it seems that the University of Windsor lacks applications for editing videos and any tools for students needing to film. This is something I probably would not have noticed had I not just thoroughly read and reflected on the Gilliard/Culik article. Although I love our university, I do question the amount of resources we have access to. Which fields have more resources than others? Why does the French department have to put books on course reserve while chemistry students have access to everything online? Are certain departments prioritized over others? My research is just beginning on this topic.

I have come to realization that one common message was brought forth in this article: equality and fairness has not yet been achieved in education. Those with a greater social capital are privileged in ways that we often do not often see.

While watching my video, I hope you focus on the words that I am saying because I believe it summarizes and adds clarity to the issues that the article brought forth. I am most proud of the lyrics I came up with for this reflection. I hope that opening up this conversation will allow us to further understand how we can change to ensure fair access to online resources across schools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzmsMsXwuas

Digital redlining: #UWinDig is here to expose you.

*mic drop*

– Amy

Oct 29 2018
2 Comments
322monday21

Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wives, ClassDojo want to steal your privacy information

I chose to analyze the Privacy Concerns for ClassDojo and Other Tracking Apps for Schoolchildren article by Natasha Singer. Since I am not very good with keeping up to date using social media, I decided I would do a Twitter Rant. One of the things that stuck out the most to me was the fact that you cannot just go back and make edits to your tweets after the fact. I noticed this only when I realized that I did not add the #UWinDig tag after each tweet but with time, I will become more efficient at it. I don’t know about everyone else, but I am really enjoying the idea of exploring a new multimedia artifact and making an attempt to create something.

The article introduces an app called ClassDojo, which is an app that lets us track the behavior of our students by awarding or subtracting points based how we feel the students are conducting themselves. The app allows us to project it onto a smart board which shows the student’s cartoon avatars and the scores that they have achieved for the week. When we take away a point from a student, the app omits a rather disappointing sound whereas rewarding a point omits a positive sound. The app even allows teachers to send out notifications to parents whenever they would like to keep them in the loop.

When I think about this in my classroom experiences growing up, I think that having something like this would have been rather beneficial because it always seemed as if teachers were always trying to find ways to hold students responsible for their action while keeping track of it. As well, as a teacher I can see so many different ways to apply this in the classroom other than just the way it’s meant to be used. The capabilities of keeping parents informed about their children helps to bridge the gap between the crazy busy teacher and all of the parents wanting to know more information about how their child is doing.

However, some say that the app is being used without consideration of how the data being collected will be used later on. Some say that this type of classroom management method is out dated and that these apps are too subjective and might harm a student’s reputation by grouping them with the “wrong” kind of people. To me, I think that every type of technology is gathering some type of information and unless we want to go back to killing the environment by printing of more and more paper, then we have no choice but to use apps like these. As well, the company has put a statement in their Terms of Service that says they do not provide outside sources with the data collected. In regards to being out dated, I believe in the saying “work smart not hard” and so far, I have yet to be shown a more efficient way to teach students about being responsible for their action.

The last large concern that I am going to talk about is the thought that some teachers might not be getting permission from their schools or school boards to use these apps and how a parent either needs to have the teacher remove their student or email the company to have them removed. From my experiences thus far, I think that most schools have become aware of these types of apps and have either developed some way of vetting them or are in the process of developing ways. Yes, there are some places that do not track these things, but it seems like these are also the places who are stuck in the 1950s still.

Before reading this article, I would have found an app like this, and used it exactly how it would be suggested. I would probably have made little effort to come up with creative ways it can be used because of how terrible I am with taking something new and thinking outside the box or reading more into it through outside sources (youtube, blogs, reviews, etc.). As well, I never though to consider how the data might be used once collected or the effects that come after the fact. Thanks to this article, I have gathered a lot of ideas and information that I will carry forward.

Although there is a lot that can be done with this app and there are lots of concerns with it like the use of date collected, schools being more on top of tracking who’s using them, and how teachers are using them, I think that apps like these are allowing educators to become better organized and creative with their classroom management skills. I think that as long as we can continue to adjust and modify how we use them so that we can set goals for some students, motivate other to continue to progress, keep them on track or show progress, then I’m all for these apps.

You can either click on the hyperlink near the top, or scroll down to check out my Twitter Rant!

Cheers,

Jon

 

 

 

 

 

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