The App Generation

While I was reading this book, I found myself in this book quite often. There is no doubt about it, I am definitely a millennial.  I can relate to my students and understand a lot of their neediness and longing for approval. I too am very similar. This book justified a lot of traits that I see in the classroom. Getting upset when not understanding after first try, getting emotional if not receiving an A, lack of face to face social skills, not wanting to work through problems on own, asking questions for confirmation. All these traits that we witness in the classroom are problem of the 21st century learner that we as educators are trying to turn around through the integration of technology and apps.

However, we millennials are not all bad! Our 21st century learners have awesome qualities if I must say so myself. This generation offers many possibilities that sometime get overlooked. This generation does a great job of accepting others flaws and taking them in. In the technology world there are many supportive apps and communities that find common ground and interest that sparks communication ad even friendships over. Leading to my next positive to the app generation is they come with a wide network of connections and social ties. When ever in a group somebody knows somebody how knows somebody, similar to the facebook common friends function.

The app generation is a tough code to crack. Through collaboration and the demonstration from teachers, are duty as educators is to teach our students to still be creative even when using apps. Depending on apps to do all the work is not the best strategy and essentially allows the app to do all the thinking for them. No problem solving or creating is being done. Teaching our students to be app enablers allows them the power to use the tool and be the designer and not us to be consumed by all the apps. Another responsibility that I will integrate more in my classroom is encouraging my students to take more risk outside their comfort zone with out the fear of "getting it wrong." Just by taking that chance is a start to empowering my learners and this generation.  This is just the start, we all know it is going to take many years and repetitions of modeling and coaching our learners to be app enablers and not app dependent.

Net Smart

Net Smart was an interesting read for me. I did a lot of stopping and starting throughout the book. As mentioned in the book, I often find myself taking mental breaks or setting little goals to get through some assignments. I know I work best with incorporated breaks. That actually was the chapter that I was assigned to do the pros and cons with in class. Some of the pros, was working in small increments, taking mental breaks and being able to regroup between working sessions. Some pros to that is not wanting to start back up, taking extended breaks, falling asleep, lack of momentum. All are downsides as well. Another part of the book that I heavily related to was the social media section. I always am finding myself reading blogs and watching webinars on various topics in education. Both to obtain more information and to see different perspectives on the issues at hand. All great ways to stay connected to the educational community and not just see my perspective.

I think using the pro's and con's assignment could be useful when teaching math strategies. We briefly discussed this during a shared reading time. We explored all the different math strategies we know how to do and see what would be the best strategy to use when taking the SOL. Not only did students have to apply them but also reason on which strategy would be the best use of time.

In my class we do brain breaks when the students need to refocus. A quick go noodle video to get the wiggles out, play 5 mins of Gestures, or my favorite and the kids favorite is to do a 30 second nap. The kids absolutely love 30 second nap. Little do they know I do this when I need to count to 10 because no one is paying attention I need a moment to get my life together. Another way to incorporate this book would be to do a student blog. Having the kids respond to blog questions similar to how we do blogs and reflect on others responses. A more authentic way would be for the student to create a famous American twitter. Students would have to take significant events in the Americans life and create tweets that correlate with the time and event.

copyright clairity

Copyright Clairity was an interesting read this week. I was always taught in school that you can be taken to jail for copyright and plagiarism. In relaity the rules are not as strict as teachers have made them out to be. As gullible as I am, I believed them. I mean who would dare challenge their teacher. Teachers know everything and are never wrong! That's what I always thought at least. But since I have became a teacher, I have overlooked a lot of copyright laws that I was taught.  I mean as a teacher, we are all about sharing, borrowing, collaborating and adapting materials and tools to meet our needs in the classroom. I mean name me a teacher who hasn't borrowed a worksheet from a fellow colleague or saw a great activity to do in your class off Pintrest. 

I feel the big question I have again comes back to TPT. If I purchase something off TPT and the teacher next door wants to use it, I would feel weird saying no sorry you will need to purchase your own instead oft taking two seconds to make a copy of mine. From the teachers perspective, it seems silly. But to the owner who took the amount of time to make the material, then I understand. But as  a teacher who is given no curriculum and materials to teach, I spend countless time and dollars on materials then I feel as though we can share among each other. As long as someone bought it.

Now i know that is considered "wrong" but I now understand as long as I transform what I borrow, I am not breaking any copyright laws. I do not even have to explain me reasoning. As long as I am using the item in a different way than it was originally intended. Seems simple enough. It is almost funny that my perception of copyright has been wrong for so long. When all I had to do was look up the actual law. This happens a lot in education as well. The meaning of something or explanation is easily butched or misinterpreted when it is passed from one mouth to the next. When all we have to do is go to the original source and look it up. Then we would easily find what is valid and what has been added on from word to mouth. I will definitely make a more conscious effort on looking up and verify information for myself and disregarding any misconceptions.