Things I Don't Understand

There are many things people said, "You'll understand when you're older." I guess maybe I'm still not "old enough." There are also those things I thought I got, yet now I'm confused. Here is my list:

1. Why people hurt others when there's nothing to gain (like computer viruses).
2. Why friends separate over things that don't really matter (like the guy/girl you don't really like).
3. Why some people seem to think it's okay to let their kids run their lives.
4. How some women go back to abusive boyfriends/husbands and why they seem to think they "deserve it."
5. Why divorce and broken families are the norm, even in Christian families.
6. Why adults fight more fiercely for Christmas presents than for the time they have lost to be with family.
7. Why providing for the family became more important than keeping the family together.
8. Why kids have no respect for others or for themselves.
9. Why getting ahead is more important than building a relationship.
10. Why fake smiles go on at church, and come off once folks reach their cars.
11. Why yelling is the first defense in an argument.
12. Why women are so caught up in their weight, height, look, etc.
13. How people can afford what they want, but when it comes to fixing others needs it's suddenly "not in the budget."
14. When winning the game became more important than the fun you were supposed to have while playing it.
15. Why people forget important things like your birthday, anniversary, lunch box, picking their child up after school, other stuff.
16. Why friends make you choose between other friends.
17. Why people pick on others.
18. How certain events can just destroy other people's lives.
19. Why companies make it hard to navigate their systems.
20. Why paper (money) controls our lives.
21. Why honesty is so hard, yet so necessary.
22. Why cursing is so easy to pick up, so hurtful, and so hard to quit saying.
23. Why parents try to control their kids lives and pick out a life for them.
24. Why some parents care too much and others not at all.
25. Why people say things they never meant to do in the first place.
26. Why violence and sex creep ever more steadily into everyday life.
27. Why people ignore all evidence of wonder and notice only what proves their opinion.
28. Why kids get abandoned and left behind.
29. How love seems to take root even in the most diverse circumstances.
30. Why God hasn't gotten sick of watching humanity yet.

They list goes on, mostly not negative as this part has been, but I just picked the first 30 that came to mind. Maybe they were the first few just because I'm tired of how I see folks treating other folks. I may come back and add to this later, but there's my little rant of not understanding this world I find myself in.

Gem 5 - Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World

Content Collaboration is always a hot topic in schools and among general workers since group work will never go away. Some content collaboration tools are wikis, blogs, google docs, and zoho suite. These places provide students with appealing, collaborative, online environments that support questioning, engagement, and sharing of ideas. Each type of web 2.0 tool accomplishes their tasks in different ways, but each allows users create a space to share and collaborate in which encourages analysis and synthesis of information. This can be extremely useful for teachers since much of learning is focused on teaching students how to find information and use it effectively. In the chapter there are many examples of how these tools are used in schools to enhance students learning through collaboration. There is even a list of 10 ways wikis support learning:

1. supports planning, collaboration, and critical thinking skills
2. facilitates inquiry
3. encourages personal accountability
4. provides practice in peer editing and reviewing
5. empowers through shared authorship
6. encourages responsible writing
7. deters plagiarism by showing process
8. engages and motivates students
9. supports constructivist learning
10. provides practice in validating information

They even show how to make a wiki page and how to set it so that only some people can edit. there are a bunch of features that educators can use when making wikispaces like unlimited pages, permissions for only authorized authors, WYSIWYG editing, RSS feeds, multimedia support revision history, and templates. There was also a lot in the chapter about blogs and google docs, but I didn't really learn much from the book that I had not already learned in class.

Gem 4 - Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World

Managing and organizing information has always been a struggle in school and this book touches on that in chapter 4. On the internet there is an overload of information just because of the sheer volume of information available, the convenience of information access, the diversity of information, the continuing trend fo interdisciplinary research and the fact that more searching is being doing by non-professionals. In this chapter they mention 5 categories of tools that can be used to help manage work flow: start pages, graphic organizers, calendars, outliners, and list makers. Personally, my favorite online organizational page is iGoogle. I have my lists, events, and updates from my mail, calendar, and other places all in the same place. Google in general has been a great way to organize group efforts by keeping information all in one, organized space. The gist of the chapter really recommends students using places like iGoogle to organize their school events by syncing to the school/ classroom calendar and making to-do lists for homework and projects. I think that this would be best used in a school where students have access to computers of their own so that they can make these lists right on the spot and add events as they come up.

Gem 3 - Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World

Chapter 3 is about social bookmarking. I mostly read this chapter because I had never really heard  that term. After reading approximately the first paragraph I figured out it was just tagging and all tagging related activities. Most people have been apart of tagging, tag clouds, and folksonomy. I remember when a little while back Google was using people to help them tag images by partnering people up and seeing how many matching terms you and your partner could get. Even in that context, I could tell that there were some problems with the system of normal folks tagging pictures. Sometimes there are errors, not every one is great a coming up with a one or two word description, and sometimes they didn't even know what the picture really was and labeled it wrong. This chapter does say why social bookmarking can be used in education because it:

1. proveds a free, efficient, effective, and reliable way to save and organize web sites, podcasts wikis, blogs, articles, images, and other media.
2. creates a collaborative environment.
3. supports a discovery/ exploration process.
4. allows users to tap the "collective intelligence" of the web.
5. provedes the opportunity for "sense making" through tagging, annotation, critiquing, or adding descriptions, highlighting, and adding sticky notes.
6. provedes and effective frame work to collaboratively evaluate web sites.
7. encourages students to analyze the web site content.
8. offres either public access ro complete privacy for a class or group of students.
9. supports anytime/ anywhere learning.
10. Integrates with other newer technologies.

One of the social bookmarking tools for education that is highlighted in this chapter is Diigo. It supports active learning by organizing tags and books marks and allows them to make up web pages as they would a book with sticky notes, highlights, and comments, and then they can share those notes with others. I think this would have been a handy tool for our classes since we went through so many web pages and links.

Gem 2 - Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World

The second chapter in this book is called, Searching the Web. As I figured going into the chapter, it's mostly about search engines. It does touch on the difference between using a search engine to find "the answer" and discovering a lot of information about a topic. In education there is a use for both since sometimes students need to know specific information and other times it only needs to be general and can be a discovery experience. One list I saw in there that I really liked is the five facts students need to know about search engines:

1. One search engine can't do it all.
2. There is an invisible Web that search engines can't penetrate.
3. Search engines can't read your mind.
4. Search engines do not evaluate the content on a Web site.
5. and One search engine can't search the entire Web.

There's even a chart on how different search engines can be useful to students. Some examples are that Exalead offers support through phonetic spelling, truncation, etc and Quintura encourages exploration by presenting information through a dynamic cloud. It's a pretty handy chart for educators because you can have students use the one(s) that fits your project best and pretty great for students because they can evaluate which one they want to use based on how it can help them. This chapter also tells you how to go beyond a basic search like doing a synonym search and a word definition search. There is also a whole list of search engines that will do a multimedia search like youtube, skreemr.com, live.com, and dogpile.com. 

This chapter was a good resource for different ways to search/discover information on the internet for teachers and students.

GEM 1 - Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World

The first chapter of this book, Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World, is all about learning, literacy, and web 2.0. It introduces what web 2.0 is and how it is different from web 1.0. The big difference I can see is that web 2.0 is a web platform where everything is built rather than needing to use packaged software programs that are different for each individual computer. The big draw of web 2.0 is that it uses a lot of collaboration and user participation to make the applications better. Something I like about this first chapter is that it gives 10 immediate reasons why web 2.0 applications are good tools for education. These 10 state that web 2.0 tools:

1. Motivate and involve students in learning, using tools that many are already using for personal purposes.
2. Align with the American association of School Librarians' Standards for the 21-Century Learner and International Society fo Technology in Education's National Educational Technology Standards.
3. Prepare students with authentic skills from working in the real world.
4. Encourage collaborative learning strategies.
5. Support learning as a social process.
6. Allow for interactive learning.
7. Provide student with authentic audiences.
8. Are free and fun to use.
9. Provide an anytime, anywhere learning environment.
10. And connect students to a global community of learners.

Another tool out of this chapter is the Inquiry and Web 2.0 Integration Guide. It takes you through the Stripling Inquiry Model to help students learn and apply new information through technology. The chart I found takes you through the 6 different phases of inquiry, connect, wonder, investigate, construct, express, and reflect. It then tells of different teaching and learning strategies that can be used. The chart also has a section for what kinds of technology and tools/resources could be used to help express that phase of inquiry.

This first chapter is a pretty good introduction to web 2.0 and has some pretty nifty tips for how to start using it in the classroom immediately.

Take a bite out of cyber crime?

http://www.mcgruff.org is a cite for bullying in general. It is mostly on face to face bullying and also touches on cyber bullying. It is a site for kids and has games, downloads, and an easy to maneuver site. The games are not extensive, actually there are only eight, but they have an easy to interpret message which could be used for younger children. There is one video, but it is about girls and ballet so it is not very appealing to boys. There are posters and cartoons that can be read and printed out in the download section and that seems the most applicable to teachers and parents because they can used it as a resource for things to do with their kids and the posters are kid friendly in content and presentation. There is only one section on cyber bullying which is tucked away in the advice section. The advice section is large, compared to all the other sections, but focuses on face to face bullying. Not that the face to face bullying tips can't be applied to cyber bullying, but it is a bit of a stretch for elementary kids to make that connection.

I like the cite for it's kid friendly look, but it is only really good for face to face bullying. Cyber bullying looks like a second thought on this site. There are some good teacher/ parent resources, but I'm not entirely sure that kids would look at that section of advice and downloadables and really use them. Maybe if they update the site and make some better games, it will be a really great site for kids to go to and learn. Maybe they will get more on cyber bullying some day.