“UM EXCUSE ME MADAME, I’LL NEED TO CHECK YOUR BLOG BEFORE I CAN REGISTER YOU FOR THIS UNIVERSITY COURSE.”
The assignment I most enjoyed for this course was definitely being given the opportunity to create and use a blog. If you can’t tell by the number of postings, I really went to town on this one! And I am thankful. If I weren’t forced to make the blog for this course, I never would have embraced the world of blogging.
That’s why an article in the winter edition of my Canadian Family magazine caught my attention. The article entitled “Blog, blog, blog” was written by Shelley Divnich Haggert. In the article she gives a two-sided debate on the topic.
It talks about how teenagers love feedback left on their site. The author quotes Warren Nightingale, of the Media Awareness Network. He talks about how teens love something even as simple as “cool post” or “I know how you feel”. I can attest to this because I also love receiving feedback on my blog.
This year, I introduced a student to the world of blogging and he’s successfully posting his daily journal/reflections to his very own blog. He’s submitted comments to my blog and I have posted comments on his. It’s great to see someone using this tool for all the right reasons.
“Some university admissions departments, employers and even car insurance brokers are using web sites and blogs to screen applicants.”
Then I thought about it. Yes, blogs can be used against you. But it is just another reason why children and young adults need to understand that whatever they write, can be traced and used against them. All the more reason to abide by the rules of the classroom and the rules of cyberspace.
http://www.adobe.com/education/digkids/tips/index.html
Lori Miller’s comments
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech147.shtml
Know Your Community Activity
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ucfcasio/combroch.htm
Linda Star’s Education World Article
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech148.shtml
Arts and Craft Ideas
http://www.wacona.com/digicam/digicam.html
Anastasia Rioux
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/olympus/7123/camera.html
Here is my summation of an article entitled "Go for IT, conference tells grade-nine girls". This article was written by Patricia Pickett for IT World Canada in February 2005. | ||||||
| The article introduces readers to Lasha Dekker. Dekker got her IT job by chance. She is the VP developer and platform evangelist at Microsoft Canada. She spoke at the Explore IT conference. She noted that 20 percent of grads from college or university computer science programs are women. She says many women feel that the IT route is geeky and not very social. | ||||||
| http://www.itworldcanada.com | ||
I visited the site that Peter suggested as a starting point. There were TONS of ideas. I am a big fan of the digital camera. I keep mine at school all the time and use the pictures for all sorts of things. Here are some of the best ideas from this particular site. (http://www.wacona.com/digicam/digicam.html)1. I like this idea because they used to do this in Northern Lights magazine for kids when I was younger and I had so much fun guessing what each picture was about.
“Give students a portion of a digital picture and have them guess what the picture is of.”
2. A whole new meaning to the scavenger hunt. Give students a list of items they need to find and then they need to take pictures of each item as proof.
3. More obviously, take pictures of events, field trips including sporting events. I always send the pictures to the local newspaper by email. Our paper is pretty small and they usually print anything and everything.
4. Have students take pictures of their community and then create tourist brochures. These brochures can be left with the Chamber or another community organization when completed.
5. For kindergarten, have each child use a letter and then have them snap pictures of things they find at school that start with that particular letter.
6. In science, take pictures to document growth or change. (plants, butterflies)
7. Have the students make trading cards of themselves The front could have their picture, and the back side could contain information like hobbies, birthday, etc. These would make great gifts for parents too!
8. Use the digital camera to make crafts such as: locker magnets, thank you notes, use with pen pal letters, name tags etc. One teacher I know used digital picture shots and then changed background colours to make Andy Warhol representations.
9. Use the pictures for the classroom website.
In 1986, women were 29% of the employed science and technology labour force in
Chipman and Thomas find that “interests,” which emerge early, are a
Attempts have been made to clarify such findings; for example, some studies suggest that boys “call out” more, and teachers respond more to them (Sadker); or that it is particular children, especially those boys who present a discipline difficulty, who get the most attention.
Other researchers have identified a boy-centred “computer culture” growing up in schools or within classrooms. Carmichael, Burnett, Higginson, Moore, and Pollard (1985), who observed computer use in 18 Ontario elementary school classrooms over two years, report some particularly disturbing findings. End-of year tests of computer knowledge showed boys at the junior and intermediate levels had higher average scores than girls. Classroom interactions at the Grade 7 site that produced the largest differences were examined in detail. The researchers reported that girls found the “challenge” assignments the teacher created uninteresting and sometimes missed their computer time because they were worried about completing their other school work. But a greater problem was the behaviour of the boys. “When it comes to computers, they are sharks,” said one girl (p. 83). Aggressive strategies, such as starting to print when it was a girl’s turn to use the keyboard, or telling the teacher if a girl’s disk was left around the classroom, so that it would be locked away for several days as punishment, were reported. There was no sharing of knowledge or materials between the sexes.
Hughes, Brackenridge, Bibby, and Greenhough (1989) found that girl pairs did worse at operating a computer-controlled robot than did boy pairs or mixed pairs. In subsequent individual testing, girls who had first been in a mixed pair did significantly better than girls who had first worked with another girl. Other projects, for example, one in which children write notes for themselves and to one another via a communal computer data base, have successfully involved both girls and boys (Scardamalia et al., 1992).
Individual school boards in
http://www.csse.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE18-3/CJE18-3-06Acker.pdf
