Lesson on "The Masque of the Red Death" Pt. 2

After creating this small series of instructional videos, I would definitely consider using some sort of instructional videos in my future career as a teacher. I think instructional videos can be great because they are not overly complicated to create - although I am technologically challenged and had major issues trying to upload my videos to Youtube - and they can serve a great purpose. They could be convenient to use in teaching my class if I were to have to miss class one day or during a long break from school. I could still give my students direct instructions without having to be with them in person. Another thing I would consider utilizing instructional videos for is to teach my students how to use certain technology. This way, I could open up more options to the students on how they can create their assignments without having to take precious class time to teach them how to use these different types of tech. In addition, these videos would be optional, so the students who already know how to use these technologies can avoid wasting their time on a pointless lesson.

While instructional videos could be useful, I definitely wouldn’t use them to replace face-to-face instruction. First of all, students couldn’t directly ask me questions if I were to do this. Even if we happened to be online at the same time, other students would not benefit from those questions because they wouldn’t know the questions were being asked. Also, if instruction was entirely online, some students - like myself - would struggle with having to deal with technology 100% of the time without having someone in the room with them to help them out. If students’ instruction was online, they could easily skip or skim through lessons, instead of sitting through their entirety and learning about everything I would want them to. Finally, one huge part of teaching is building rapport with your students. If I couldn’t see my students face-to-face everyday, it would be extremely difficult for me to build a strong bond with them.

Honestly, the 21th Century Digital Fluencies came naturally with this assignment, probably partly because my initial creation of this assignment was based off of SAMR and ISTE standards. I think this assignment demands the Creativity Fluency. First, my instructions will serve as an easy “problem” to identify. Then, my students will need to inspire in order to come up with their stories.  Next, they will interpolate to fit their stories into patterns and shape them into workable pieces. After that, they’ll imagine in order to start working at building their videos. Finally, they’ll inspect their final products by 1) completing a self-evaluation and an evaluation of their team members’ contributions, and 2) by reading the comments their classmates will leave them online.

A second 21st Century Digital Fluency I think my assignment requires is the Collaboration Fluency. The students will have their groups established for them when I put them into their teams, but they will have to divide the roles and responsibilities among themselves. Next, they’ll have to work together to envision the final outcome, or their story that will turn into a movie. Then, they will have to engineer their plan on how to create this story and video. After that, they will have to collaborate and complete their individual responsibilities in order to execute their plan and create the video. Finally, they will examine their group work by evaluation the contributions of themselves and their group members.

Integrating these fluencies didn’t really shift my assignment at all. As I stated previously, my assignment fit pretty neatly into the requirements for these fluencies.

See below for the link to my video on the specifics of my assignment, the link to my video on how to use Screencast-O-Matic, and my rubric for my assignment:

https://youtu.be/8EUeCFQK0bQ (Assignment Details)

https://youtu.be/hVLxbCT9Ro4 (Screencast-O-Matic How-To)

Pinterest as a Personalized Learning Network

I decided to explore Pinterest as a professional. I created an education board
 and searched for “high school education” posts. From there, I looked through 
the posts that came up, clicked on links to bring me to informational websites, 
and saved the pins that I found to be particularly interesting or potentially 
useful to me as I look forward to a teaching career.

As I first began searching for posts, I realized that there was a ton of different 
things that came up in my search. There were some general education posts, 
some secondary education posts, some posts specific to different subjects, and 
even posts meant for homeschoolers. There were some posts from experienced 
professionals and some that seemed like a random person wrote it based on 
what they think teaching entails. There were posts with specific lesson plan and 
activity ideas, posts about decorating classrooms, posts suggesting materials to 
cover, posts about disciplinary plans, and advice posts (especially for first-year 
teachers). Some posts offered free materials and others made you pay for materials.

With all of this variety comes both negatives and positives of this particular PLN 
(Personalized Learning Network). As I mentioned, some links required you to pay 
for any help they would provide. Also, there were plenty of posts by people who 
didn’t seem to know anything about education, or people who recommended 
teaching tactics that go against everything I am learning about creating an inclusive 
learning environment. On the other hand, using Pinterest in this way would be useful 
because it would allow me to see what some other teachers are doing. Also, it would 
spark some creativity and give me ideas for lesson plans. Even for some of the posts 
that required you to pay in order to access the materials, I was able to take a sneak 
peak at those materials enough that it sparked some ideas on how to run similar 
lessons that I would create and customize on my own.

As an emerging professional educator, I think the pros of using Pinterest definitely 
outweigh the cons. As is with every resource, I feel that anyone using this tool has to 
take everything with a grain of salt and realize that some things will be useful while 
others will not. I think that if I were to keep an eye out for poor advice and information, 
Pinterest could be a great way to harvest new ideas and stay tuned with those who have 
been gaining experience and knowledge about this profession for a lot longer than I have.

Technology Podcast Featuring my Mom, Sharon

I decided on who I was going to interview before I decided on which topic 
my interview would be. I don’t have a lot of close friends or family who live 
near me anymore, but I wanted to interview someone who I felt comfortable 
with. I call my mom often, so I figured I could easily work the interview into one 
of our phone calls. I decided to interview her about technology for a couple of 
different reasons. First, it is relevant to me as a future teacher and as I go 
through this particular class. Second, because it is relevant to my mother as 
she uses technology everyday in order to do her job. Finally, because it is 
relevant to just about everyone in our modern world as technology becomes a 
bigger part of average life everyday.

To begin the process of creating this podcast, I asked my mom if she would 
volunteer to be my interviewee. Then, I wrote up the entire script of my side of the 
interview. Next, I sent a basic copy of my questions to my mom and asked if she 
had any questions. After that, I recorded the interview on my laptop with 
Garageband. A few days after everything was recorded, I listened to the recording,
 added a couple more points of narration, and cut out unnecessary or awkward 
moments. When I was done cutting everything down and creating small breaks in 
places, I Googled “music without royalties” and downloaded a techy-sounding song. 
I placed the song on the track and adjusted the volume level at many different 
moments so it would function as background music and not interfere with the sound 
quality of the interview. Finally, I uploaded the podcast to Soundcloud and posted it 
on my blog. 

I have been a fan of podcasts for the last few years. I’ve listened to podcasts for 
entertainment, to learn how to live a better life, to gain teaching tips, and more. After 
creating my own podcast, I am even more enthusiastic. After seeing how simple it is 
to actually create a podcast - I’m not saying it doesn’t take a lot of work, just that 
someone as technologically inept as me can do it - I think this would be a great 
activity to bring into a classroom. I think many students would enjoy the process of 
dictating the topic of a podcast, creating their own layout, and putting together a 
polished product that they can share with their classmates.

https://soundcloud.com/user-939001709/tech-interview-with-my-mom

Story Corps Introduction

https://archive.storycorps.org/?post_type=interviews&p=513077

Check out this super awkward audio recording about one influential person from my youth, my middle school/ high school band teacher.

Lesson Plan on Symbolism

Here is a narrated presentation of the first outline of a lesson plan I've ever created. This is a lesson on Symbolism through the use of the short story, "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe.

Media Ethnography Reflection

The graphs and documents below show the results of my two-day observation of 
my usage of media and technology. The day before I began this observation project, 
I spoke with my mother about it over the phone. I explained to her that I thought the 
project would be interesting, but I didn’t think it would surprise me in any way. I 
told her that I knew that I used different types of media and technology everyday, 
in almost everything I do. From the obviously tech-centered activities, like using 
social media or Netflix, to the less obvious, like looking up chords to songs to play
on my guitar or even doing homework, I knew that I could barely make it through 
a normal day without my devices. While I was not surprised by how much media I
consume and utilize in a day, I was a little taken off-guard by what I used it for. 

As you can see on my graphs, I broke down my information into three important 
categories and took a closer look at the media I utilized, the devices I used to access
that media, and what I used the media to do. I was a little bit surprised that I spent 
over 32% of my time watching shows and movies. Part of this surprise came from 
the fact that I initially didn’t think about how much free time I would have this week. 
Due to Independence Day, I only had three hours of classes this week, when I usually 
have four times as much. As a result, I was able to spread my (also diminished) 
homework over several days. Instead of spending most of my time in classes or doing 
homework, I spent a lot of time each day playing games or watching movies. This 
week was also out-of-the-norm because I usually would spend more free time outdoors,
but it was so hot and humid outside - and I hate the heat - so I used a lot more media 
instead.

Honestly, if I were to pick one word to describe the experience of recording my 
media usage, it would probably be tedious. For me, a lot of my use of media is 
brief and fairly frequent. I tend to check my email, Facebook, Snapchat, ect. 
frequently, but for only a few seconds at a time. I believe I probably didn’t check
 these media as much over the course of these two days, mostly because I didn’t 
want to take more time to write down my usage than I did actually using these 
media. 

If I were to assign a project like this one in one of my classes, I would try to assign 
it on a regular week, rather than on the week of a holiday. As I mentioned above, 
my use of media differed from an average week because I had a lot of free time. I 
think it would be more beneficial to me, as well as to my future students, if the 
information collected pertained to an average week. I think this project would be 
beneficial to assign to students because it could encourage some awareness about 
how - and how much - they are using their devices, or even what they tend to use 
them for. Logs like this are great for promoting self-reflection. On the other hand, 
this project might not always be useful because it would be up to the students to 
record their information on their own. They could forget to log some activity, or 
even lie about what activities they pursue, and the entire set of information could 
be skewed. 

Looking at my results, I think it is more important than I ever have that I find ways 
to incorporate technology into my classroom. Our modern world runs around new 
technology, and my results show that my life is no exception to this. Technology is 
often seen as a bad thing, but if used properly, it can be a very useful tool for teaching.