Creative Commons and Digital Citizenship

We just finished up a project where we made a website about digital citizenship. A major part of this website used creative commons to display images and videos. Creative Commons is a place where people can share and use media from other people. It allows someone to remix and edit pictures to make them fit better to what they need. It is awesome for projects and it keeps people from getting in trouble for using other people's works. The skills we learned in the project and this class are skills that we can use for the rest of our lives. No matter what you do in life, you are going to need to know about your digital profile and how to maintain it. This class has taught us how to do that and I believe that every student should take a class like this so they can acquire these real world skills and help them learn about their digital footprints. I will always use this information so i can keep myself safe and eligible for schools and jobs that i want.

'Old School' School

In Los Altos California, there is a chain of schools that are not trying to build technology into their curriculum but stay away from it completely. The Waldorf Schools are private schools, kindergarden through high school. The school believes that technology is not ideal for learning and they say they need more human contact and interaction. Paul Thomas says, "Teaching is a human experience. Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy and critical thinking." There are over 40 of these Waldorf schools and also some similar type schools around california and it is very popular among employees of large corporations like Apple, Google, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. They say that the children do not need to be drilled with technology as a kid and can easily acquire the skills to use them when they are older. Tuition to these schools are between 17,000 and 25,000 depending on grade.

I am not sure if i agree with this whole method of completely disregarding technology. I can see their point about human interaction and all that but you can sill have that with technology. Just because you use technology does not mean it has to be every second, it can be used for a little while and then the 'old school' approach can be used too. These parents are working in the technology fields and they know as well as anyone that technology is here and there is no way around it. They can try to be  naive and think that they can have their children learn the way they did but the world is not like that anymore. If the children just try to learn it all when they are older they will be at a disadvantage to the rest of the world who had the chance to grow up and learn with the technology; the ones who kept up with the ever growing world. Our world is technology and it is not fair to hold kids back from living in the world we live in today. I also this it is ridiculous that this type of school costs so much money. If they are not buying any technology they should not be spending a lot of money and therefore should be a cheap school to enroll in. It does not seem logical but i guess if that is what these people want, they have the right to do it.

Trouble in Internet Paradise

Many people use the Internet for everything they do, from looking something up to posting their lives on Facebook. Most of the time ey can do this without a problem but sometimes people get careless and things go bad. One story tells of a girl who's identity was stolen and someone made a fake Facebook about her and told lies about her life. This affected how people saw her in her real life too, not just on the Internet. Sometimes things happen and they're is nothing you can do but she should have made her account more private. It's scary that things like this can actually happen and I think it's a good lesson for everyone else. Another story is about a police man who carelessly posted pictures of his cruiser at an unrelated event. This was his fault and he lost his job because of it. He should have been more careful and it shows that when you post on the Internet, anyone can find it. These stories are very sad but are good to learn from so others don't make the same mistakes.

http://www.reputation.com/how_to/how-three-online-reputations-were-ruined/

Independent Project

The Independent Project was a video about a school where a few of the students decided to teach themselves instead of using the traditional classroom. This was a pretty cool idea because it allowed them to learn in a way that worked for them instead of being told wheat to do. They seemed to enjoy school and learning more this way because they would learn what they wanted and did not have information forced upon them. Another good part about this was that they all worked on their own project throughout the year.  It depended on what they were interested in but some of them would write novels or make movies or produce music. I think it was cool that they were able to focus on what made them happy. They learned things that would be relevant to their lives and actually help them for the future and not just memorizing useless information. I thought it was a really good idea for them but I do not know how well it would work with everyone because the students need to be able to teach themselves and work on things that mean a lot to them. It might not be a good situation for everyone but I think it's awesome if it works. 

As we were watching the video, we had a back channel on twitter going on. People would say their opinions of the movie and ask each other questions. This can be good because it allows you to see or understand things you may not have noticed without it. I also think that it might be not a great thing because it can be distracting for some people. Like for me, its hard to read the tweets and respond to them while still paying attention to the video. I missed some of the movie while i was looking at my computer. I think that these back channels are a good thing but maybe not for everything. I do like hearing others views and reflecting on what i watched but I would rather do that after the movie is over. 

Who's in Control?

Everything we do on the internet does not go unnoticed. From Facebook to Google, the internet will base its results on what we do. It narrows things down because it thinks it is helping. This is not always a good thing because not everything we search should be customized to us. Say you are doing a project or paper where you cannot be biased, it will be hard to find neutral information because everything you find will be geared towards how you feel. Also on Facebook, it shows you what it thinks you want to see. Computers do not know what you want and you could miss important news and information if you are not seeing everything. In the movie we watched there was a quote by Eric Schmidt, "it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them." He is saying how people will just become so used to everything being created for them. If they were to see something different they may be upset or ignorant to it because they are not exposed to everything. It is good to have to look through many different things to find what you are looking for because then you can come across other information that you many not have seen otherwise. I do not think it is a very good idea to have everything created for you because people can change and you need to know everything thats happening around us, not just the things you want you to hear.

Other Schools Using iPads

In south central Minnesota, the Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop High School introduced 375 new iPads into their classrooms. The are to be used as educational tools and to help them focus, the administration blocked Youtube. The goal was to help teach teachers and students to utilize the technology and learn about different ways to use them other than just toys. One thing they ran into was that students thought they could contact the teacher at anytime out of school and they expected the teachers to answer right away. The school had to set rules to make it so the teachers would not be on call all the time. The iPads were used to help reinforce what the students were learning. They watched videos and learned how to do new things such as better research. Even though there were 13 dropped and broken iPads and 9 lost or stolen ones, the insurance covered them and the school believes they were worth every penny. I think using technology in the classroom will start to catch on and every time it is done they will get better and better. People can learn from the mistakes of others and make it work the best that they can.

Gibson-Fairfax-Winthrop High School using iPads

Colleges Tracking Online "Chatter"

Colleges are now using the social medias everyone once hated to their advantage. The admissions offices are using websites such as Facebook to look at their prospects and get a real picture of them. What they are doing on the web can be the best representation of their interests, goals, and maybe even commitment to the school. Some people may this as an invasion of privacy and i can see this point of view, but they have to know that the internet is never private and it could be good incentive for people to be more careful about what they post. Colleges can also use these tools to interact with their prospect students. The schools can get in touch with the students in a way that is easy and comfortable to them. The world is always changing and getting more advanced. In order to keep up, the schools have to find away to accept the new ways, like Facebook, and use them for their own good.