Category: Weekly Blog

Reflections on myself as a learner in digital culture-Taking the next step in participatory culture

What has been intriguing between last week and this week, is that I realize I continue to make steady progress towards participating comfortably in the social media world. Through the process of being more intentional about who I follow on Twitter, I branched out to find things related to Health education. I stumbled upon the topic of mental wellness. There are many resources and people out there who provide excellent information on mental wellness, which I will be using to support what I teach in the classroom. This directly relates to the story of a woman in “Networked” by Raine and Wellman (p.258), who discussed the process of “grabbing all the people and things that would help her, each step of the way.” My Twitter news feed is now being flooded with new ideas, concepts, tweets, and general information that are specific to Health and physical education. Related to my increased level of comfort with participating in social media, a challenge for me is when I am rebuked by people on social media when I post information that is “wrong” or “incorrect.” For example, I retweeted a scheduled chat along with saying “looking forward to this chat” and not even five minutes later someone commented that it would not be the same as a regular chat. My shifting understanding of teaching and learning is that I must continue to participate in social media in order to grow, regardless of whether I am uncomfortable. The idea that it is alright to participate and be wrong every now and then. That is how we learn and grow! I still yet have to figure out how I can move participatory culture into the classroom that I work in, as cell phones are banned. I am not comfortable with the idea of using tech such as blogging to supplement my teaching either. What other ways could I create a participatory culture in my classroom, besides blogging?

Reflections on myself as a learner in digital culture-Week 3

In our third week of class, I have experienced a plethora of emotions with regards to learning social media. For example, hypothes.is. I would click on “comment” after highlighting a specific quote. What ended up happening was I made duplicate comments as a result. After 30 frustrating minutes of trying to figure out how to delete the duplicate comment, I finally figured it out! I went from feeling annoyed to feeling elated that I am now able to use hypothes.is correctly. It has been intriguing to see the sheer amount of information that is shared and passed around on twitter! At first, I felt overwhelmed that I was constantly being fed new updates. Now, I love that I get regular updates and relevant material that pertains to my interests. I would like to learn more about what it means to follow someone, and “Cannibalize” follow lists of people I am following. What information can I glean from these people that I am not already getting from the people that I am following? Some challenges that I have experienced with regards to participatory culture into the classroom is internet safety. Educators are held accountable for all internet activity that takes place in the classroom. This has led to some educators adopting a one size fits all rule, completely banning electronics in their classroom. I would like to pose a question to my readers, what is our role as educators with regards to teaching safe social media use? How comprehensive should we get with regards to teaching safe social media use? What are some issues with regards to safe social media, that are best left to parents to decide whether to address?

Weekly Play Reflection-Meme

As I completed the meme creation assignment, several things were going through my head. What picture do I want to use? What kind of message do I want to send with this picture? Do I want it to be funny? Sarcastic? Adorable? I decided that I would use a picture of my girlfriend’s dog “Bella” who begs for food from time to time, in an adorable manner. This meme summarizes Bella perfectly with regards to her personality, and what to expect if you are eating food around her. It was a bit tricky for me at first as I attempted transfer the meme from the generator page to this blog. However I figured out that I could simply copy the picture and paste it onto this page. My questions from this assignment have to do with the embed codes. In what situation would I use a particular code such as image link, BB Code, or image HTML?