Journal Entry #9

Teaching Green (NETS-T1-5)

Waters, John. (2011). Teaching green. The JOURNAL, 38(4), retrieved from http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/1105/journal_201104/#/12

     In this short but packed article the author John Waters discusses the evolution of green in education. He begins with explain how green began with the development of Earth Day over 41 years ago. Since that time education has embraced the idea of green and now is focused on making green a priority in every student’s education. The article provides a number of online sites to use for green education for children of all ages. It also provides information for the educators to ensure the sources are not only available but useful. As parent and educator I am extremely excited about these types of resources. As funding has become depleted, time restraints more compacted and standards higher, students are not taking field trips and exploring the world at school as we once did. Additionally, as life is more demanding at home and many times, social settings not as safe as they once were, children are not exploring at home either. With resources provided by Waters in his article, children can begin to explore beyond our current restraints. Through using these sites, students can first explore online, then determine where they want to physically explore, creating their own learning experience. I am not only excited to use these sites with my students but my own children. Any tool that promotes learning and excitement about learning, nature and life is great and useful in my view.

Question 1: What are the benefits of the green education movement?

I believe that through the growth of green education students may be able to reconnect to what life was years ago. In many ways I hope that green education will allow students  to use the tools and technology of today to enjoy the beauty of nature year past. In many ways we have destroyed our surroundings and environments, hopefully with these new teaching focuses, we can restore nature to what it once was.

Question 2: What is the value of green teaching to you?

As a parent and educator I have many times fallen short in my role as an advocate for nature. I have been “too busy, not had enough space” or a number of other excuses as to why I wasn’t recycling, reusing, reducing. Only in the last few months have I embraced the green movement. This is not to say I was polluting the world before, but I didn’t go out of my way to fix things. I have found that through listening to my own children, the lessons in the schools about being green and making an effort, as a whole we really can make a huge difference. Additionally, green teaching is promoting social awareness and involvement by our youth. While the cause may change, creating awareness, action and involvement for our future leaders in any productive cause is a wonderful learning experience in itself. It is great that the cause is so wonderful to benefit us all too, though…

Journal Entry #8

Point/Counterpoint: Should Schools be Held Responsible for Cyberbullying? (NETS- T 4 & 5)

Bogacz, Renee, & Gómez Gordillo , Miguel. (2011). Point/counterpoint: should schools be held responsible for cyberbullying?. Learning & Leading with Technology, 38(6), retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/issues/Point_Counterpoint_Should_Schools_Be_Held_Responsible_for_Cyberbullying.aspx

  Point/ Counterpoint is a quick read asking the question if schools are responsible for cyberbullying. Whether the reader agrees that schools hold some responsibility or are not at fault, the article provides a number of useful suggestions for teachers, administrators, parents and students. It is identified that while the action of cyberbullying may not take place on campus, educators need to be aware of the students’ needs concerns and the laws protecting students. Additionally, the article identifies that raising children starts at the home and is continued in the school system, therefore a team effort is needed for success. Finally, the article identifies appropriately that many parents today are not intentionally lacking in preventing cyberbullying and other cyber issues, but that parents themselves do not have the knowledge to help or prevent issues. The article promotes not only open communication with parents and schools, but that the educators educate the parents in areas of such importance. While the counterpoint of the article states it is not the responsibility of the school system to raise children, as educators, it is the school system’s responsibility to protect children, foster a positive learning environment and assist parents in educating children. This is a complex issue, but as times have become so much more demanding for our youth, it takes a village to raise a child. Placing blame on one group, rather than placing the responsibility on all is flawed and does not prevent the problem or help the children.

Question 1: What is your role of an educator? With this in mind, does responsibility lye with the school system and educators to prevent cyberbullying? 

I have always considered my role as an educator as a guide, helper, role-model and at times a caregiver to the children I work with. In some of my teaching experiences, I know that the classroom where I worked was the only “safe” place for some of the children. They had no parents who cared, understood or were able to give them positive guidance in life or education. With these experiences in mind I firmly believe it is at the very least partially the responsibility of the educators to educate about these issues as well as protect those who cannot protect themselves..

Question 2: How can the schools help parents effectively monitor student cyber activity? Why would these suggestions be helpful? 

I believe that the schools could initiate a few simple steps to help prevent cyberbullying and promote more productive learning for students. First, the schools should create a newsletter for parents to read not only about upcoming events, but issues of importance within the community and school itself. Parents should know what is taking place in their children’s schools, provide the information. Second, there should be an open door policy for parents to contact a school official when concerns arise about bullying of any type. Parents should know who to contact and know what the procedures are to ensure action/investigations will take place when a concern is expressed. Finally, schools need to educate parents about current issues of concern. Times have changed greatly since today’s parents where students. The concerns, challenges, and pressures are in many cases more different than they may expect. As a result of so many social changes, parents need educated on not only what their children are learning, but what to look for in behavior, technology, and current social pressures. If we as educators expect parents to create a strong foundation to build upon, it is necessary to keep those parents informed.

Journal Entry #6

Growing Your Personal Learning Network (NETS-T 3 & 5)

Warlick, David. (2009). Grow your personal learning network. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(6), retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-march-april-2009.aspx

     This article written by David Warlick discusses the changes taking place in professional and personal information gathering. Not so long before this article was written, the process of gathering new ideas, helpful tools and resources was a long and tedious process. Many times we needed to research books, friends and mentors to find the answers. With technology, this all changed. Warlick discusses that while the idea of creating a resource pool is unchanged, the methods used to contact those in our pools of resources has changed. He first discusses that we still use friends, co-workers and others we come into contact with. What has changed is that now we have differing methods of how to remain in contact with those we deem beneficial to our growth. We now maintain relationships in three differing methods. The first being personally maintained synchronous connections which may use Twitter, Skype and teleconferencing. The second are personally and socially semi-synchronous connections create discussions that are maintained by the individual, but may not be real time, tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and texting. The final method to create a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is with the use of dynamically maintained asynchronous connections. These tools allow the user to specify guidelines to a chosen site or tool and have the “researched” information delivered to them, rather than searching personally. Warlick then discusses how to begin creating a PLN of your own without becoming overwhelmed. Most of the tips he provides are smart, organization based and easy to follow. He advises to first start small, create lists, devote appropriate amounts of time and find individuals who filter data well to do some of that work for you. Overall, the article is a brief discussion of what PLN’s are, how they have changed and simple unintimidating steps to follow for a novice PLN creator to follow. 

Question 1: How has the use of technology based PLN’s changed education?

Answer- As a result of the changes in technology, teachers and students are now exposed to many more ideas and topics to discuss. As a result of the vast amounts of information, educators are able to create more dynamic meaningful lessons without spending the huge amounts of time needed to research and create them. As a result learning can be more enjoyable for the students and educators. 

Question 2: What are some ways a beginning educator or student of education could use a PLN?

Answer: From my experience in this course and exposure to the social networking tools available, I plan to use sites such as Twitter and Diigo to help in finishing my Master’s thesis. I have a huge amount of data to collect and using others to help me gather promising information is a great use of technology and my time.