Summer EME 6414- J Foxx

I had to step back from social media a bit this week, and it was a welcome break. The constant news of COVID-19, economic downturn, and Black Lives Matter protests was too much on my personal Twitter account. Even working on the community norms assignment the past few days has grated my nerves, my online teacher communities have been filled with arguments over whether or not we should return to campus in the fall, some very strong opinions about how ineffective online learning is, and general anxiety about next school year. It was also my birthday this week, so a mental break was a birthday gift to myself.  However, I decided to brave reading through the class blogs this morning with my coffee, and I am glad that I did. I had a beautiful "ah-ha" moment this morning when a few different things in this class clicked together.  Bayraider's Blog  discussed his experience with Reddit and how it was not a good fit, due to the content and comments lacking actual substantive disc...

The two classes that I am taking this summer are overlapping nicely this week. Here we are discussing community and professional learning networks and in my change management course, I am tasked with analyzing a change in my own organization. Any time there is a change in my organization that usually involves professional development for teachers but the current pandemic has meant that we may be relying on digital networks as professional development for the foreseeable future. So what will online professional development look like for teachers and what do current communities and networks offer? One of the articles this week discussed teacher communities online and informal learning, the article spanned twenty years of research and had some interesting information. Formally organized teacher learning communities are online using MOOCs, various LMSs, email lists, blogs, etc. There was a multitude of tools used but the research showed that no matter the tool the teachers experienced an e...

This week has begun with a discussion on formal and informal learning via social media, and a reflection on how much we have used social media during this pandemic. Will our Facebook memories be flooded with posts about having to hunt for toilet paper, learning a new hobby, or spending days in bed in our sweatpants? One of the articles that I chose to read for class this week was a research article on teens and their social media use, but more specifically how they are using social media for informal learning. I thought this article was really interesting and even as a high school teacher who interacts with these kids on a daily basis, I was surprised at the amount of learning going on. The students in the article were using their social media platforms to learn about potential college and university programs, they were building businesses as an entrepreneur and selling items online, they were building Pinterest boards of what their lives will be like when they join the military. T...

I can see how this class may be dangerous for me right now during quarantine. I have been relying heavily on social media in my personal life to stay connected to friends, colleagues, and family. I have been using it even more than normal and now I have professional accounts piling up for this class. I find that I am spending a significant amount of time on social media every day for my personal life and class, and then add on to that- I am enjoying blogging more than I expected. My main reflection for this week is that I need to be careful with the amount of time that I spend on each social media platform and crafting witty blog posts because this is just a small fraction of my job duties right now. Plus, we are still in a pandemic and I need some time for self-care, as we all do. I am also very intrigued to keep exploring how differently each generation approaches and uses technology. My research and reflection this week has made me realize that even though I think I am this hi...

For our class this week I chose to read Chapter 7: Networked Work in the book Networked   by Lee Rainie and Barry Welman. The chapter begins by describing scenes from Mad Men , the TV show that takes place in the 1960s. They are explaining organizations and businesses in the traditional sense of the word. Structured, hierarchical, men working at desks, separate from each other. This is different from what we experience today in networked work and networked organizations. They begin with five trends that led to the development of networked work outlined in the first section below. Fostering the Turn to Networked Work in Networked Organizations Globalization The shift from atom work to bit work . This is referencing the shift from the production of materials as the main business to the production and distribution of information and services as the main goal of businesses.  The Mobile and Internet Revolutions, which I will discuss more in-depth later.  Access to sh...

I am a Millennial, but am I a digital native? This week has prompted me to think about how I define myself and how I interact with Web 2.0 and social media. So a lot of my thought process has included a trip down memory lane to assess how quickly things have changed in my lifetime. Let's start with the term Millenial. According to Pew Research , a Millenial is born between 1981 and 1996, which would make us all ages 24-39 this year. The article discusses the things that define Millennials- 9/11, the economic recession, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and technology. In another Pew Research article they break down the use of technology spanning across the generations. 93% of Millennials own a smartphone and 86% use social media. Okay, yes, all of that describes me. Now, the term digital native is a bit more complex. In our reading this week, the Prensky article would define most Millennials as digital natives, having grown up during the expansion of the internet, Web 2.0, ...

Social Media- the hive mind, collective intelligence. These are things that are part of our discussion this week in EME 6414 and it has generated this question for me- is social media actually making us dumber as a society, or is it helping us find better and more creative answers? As the psychology teacher at my school, I am all too familiar with Asch''s experiments on conformity and groupthink. I am well aware of the dangers of the hive mind. So this has made me step back and think- do I fall prey to groupthink on social media even though I am aware of this potential bias? If the psychology teacher can't even handle the hive mind how can a teenager, or anyone for that matter? First, if you are not familiar with Asch's experiment I will briefly explain. This was done with a group of college students, where they were put into groups and asked to look at pictures of lines of varying lengths. They were asked to say which line was the longest, and the group was compris...

This has been an incredibly rewarding first week in EME 6414 and first-week blogging. I have enjoyed spending my time researching blogs and how other high school teachers have implemented blogs in their classrooms and I have enjoyed reading some research on social media and the effects on society. I am looking forward to spending more time on Twitter this weekend with my new Twitter profile. I plan on following some of the educational blogs and websites that I found- but I am not sure what else I want to do with my Twitter account so far, so if you have any suggestions please comment below! At the end of this week, I feel much more confident in understanding the term Web 2.0, that I have heard many times in the past without knowing what we were talking about! It has also been fun for me to think about all of my experiences with the internet as I have been alive and how those experiences have evolved and changed, particularly quickly over the last ten years. By the time we got our f...

After discussing Web 2.0 and social media differences in class this week I was curious to explore more aspects of what exactly IS social media and what effects has social media had on our society? Let's start with the Mirriam Webster definition of social media- " :  forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)"   https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20media  This is an interesting definition, and one that aligns pretty well with the definitions of my classmates this week, but how does this differ from the Web 2.0 definitions that we generated? And does this mean YouTube is social media since users are creating content like videos to share information with other users? Prior to this course and my readings this week I would not have considered YouTube to be social media, but I believe ...

After starting to think about what I could do with blogging I decided to research some educational blogs that are highly recommended by some top education resources as well as look at other AP Psychology teacher's blogs to understand more about how they use them in their own classes. While this will not relate to my future career goals of designing distance learning programs in higher education, this will be incredibly relevant for me right now as I transition to teaching high school online- and I will be teaching high school in some way, shape, or form in the fall for the new school year. I found that Education Week ( https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/blogs/index.html ) was a great resource for general education blogs because it breaks them down it to specific topics. There is a section for educating specific populations, technology, politics, and more. The one that I enjoyed the most on this site was Rules for Engagement ( http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rulesforengagement/ ) wh...

I am completely new to Blogging, and I am not sure where to begin. I have had friends start "food" or "gardening" blogs. Perhaps it would be fun to create a "Quarantine" blog and we can all share advice on how to get through this time of social isolation. I think it would be a lot of sharing recipes and in-home workout tips. I am particularly curious to learn how to use this tool for education because, in my little knowledge of blogs, I have not found one related to education. I know that there are some out there, so I will have to look for them this week, but part of the reason I do not read or follow any is that Blogger and other blog websites are blocked by our school firewall, so they are useless for the 40 plus hours a week I spend on campus.  This will be a fun adventure for me!