Journal Entry #7: Professional Learning Networks

Using a professional learning network (PLN) was a very useful experience for me in this class. These types of networks allow me to connect with educators on the topics that fit my interests in the field of education and get information instantly from any source. In my case, my interests were in educational technology and social science, including American government, psychology, and history.

I used Twitter, RSS feeds, and this blog to keep track of activities in this class. In Twitter, for example, I use filtered lists to keep track on tweets that are related to the topics covered in class and in the field of education. Filtered lists, allows me to show only the tweets that I want to show, by selecting the followers that I would like to put on the list, such as educational journals in the education topics list. Whenever I open up the education list, only tweets from the selected followers are shown. RSS feeds, like the Digg reader allows me to instantly show thousands of news articles from various sources, including professional journals, whether it is general topics or topics that are specific to my field of interest. When I look for any news article on the web, RSS feeds makes searching the article I want to read much easier because the RSS does much of the work.

In conclusion, professional learning networks are a very helpful and user-friendly way for educators to connect and share interests with others. However, everyone should be careful when using social media because they can be addictive to some people and there are also privacy issues.

Journal Entry #6: The First Five Weeks Reflection

My favorite assignments during the first five weeks of this class were: making my own webpages, learning the basics of HTML, and using Dreamweaver. I discovered that I can make a simple webpage by just using notepad or a simple text editor, like TACO Edit and being able to know basic HTML commands. I managed to create a few webpages by using this method. I also find that the Dreamweaver program to be rather easy to use when making more complex webpages because this program has a feature where I can click on the command, instead of typing, allowing the program to do some of the work for me.

The two assignments that I had the most difficulty so far were the tables and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) assignments. In the tables assignment, I was confused with some of the commands when making a table and as a result, some of the tables that I made looked funny. Eventually, I figured out how to fix the problem by following the proper coding for tables and mastering the more complex table commands. As for the CSS assignment, much of the concepts of making CSS were new to me, so I had to learn how to use the commands of making CSS. Additionally, I had to do a lot of fine adjustments so my CSS pages would look right. On the other hand, I find that making CSS pages to be fun and colorful, once I got the hang of it.

Journal Entry #5: Twitter

Twitter can mean different things to different people. For me, Twitter is an online hangout where I can share tweets with anyone around the world, including my own friends and celebrities. I just created my Twitter account a week ago and it quickly caught on with me. I now use Twitter for many different purposes, including looking for my old high school friends, as well as tweeting celebrities, like Taylor Swift. However, the main reason that I have a Twitter account is for this class. This leads to the question of whether Twitter can work in classroom situations or not.

Twitter, like other social networking sites has its benefits in educational settings if it is done right, as mentioned in the video, "Social Networking Sites has Educational Benefits". Teachers can tweet to the students anytime, anywhere, and students can tweet to the teacher about their work and share blogs. According to the video, using Twitter can help students who have communication problems by improving communication skills between the teacher and students.

However, there still some nagging issues when using social media in the classroom. First, teachers need to set ground rules and monitor student usage constantly, in order to achieve its goals. Second, there are student privacy and content filtering issues, and not allowing students to waste their own time on Twitter, because many teens tend spend a lot of time on Twitter. If I were a teacher using Twitter to communicate to my students, I would only allow tweets from students that are related to the class and only allow approved educational content on my class Twitter page, meaning no offensive or off-topic tweets, like celebrity gossip or the funny stuff that many students look for.

Questions

1. What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of using Twitter in the classroom? Explain your answer.
Answer: The advantages of Twitter in the classroom are: More interaction between teacher and students, both inside and outside of the classroom, Can increase motivation and
encouragement to do their work, and improve student communication skills. The disadvantages of Twitter in the classroom are: Many students may use Twitter to waste their own time, not to study, issues with unsuitable content, seeing too much advertising, and privacy issues, such as meeting strangers that they do not know or trust.

2. How many teenagers (ages 13-17) in the United States have access to social networking sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Google+, etc.)?
A. 75% B. 80% C. 90% D. 99%
Answer: C (90%).

Journal#4: Project Plan

Site Title: "What is the Electoral College?"

Developer:  Walter Shu

Focus: The Electoral College is a division of the federal government that decides every presidential election. The President and Vice President are not elected directly by the voters. Instead, they are elected by "electors" who are chosen by popular vote on a state-by-state basis (Wikipedia 2014). This means that our votes for the presidential candidates does not directly decide elections, instead our votes goes to the state electors, where they will decide who will get the state's electoral votes, based of the number of popular votes in each state. This project will focus on the functions and history of the Electoral College and the reasons why the electoral college exists in this country.

The Main Features
-Multiple chapters
-Interactive features, including videos and games
-Timeline of the electoral college
-In-depth descriptions about the electoral college
-Discussion groups
-Links to valuable resources

Content & Wireframe
Planned chapters of this project:
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 2 - How the electoral college works and how it decides presidential elections
Chapter 3 - The history of the electoral college 
Chapter 4 - The pros and cons of the electoral college
Chapter 5 - When a president wins the popular vote, but still loses the election
Chapter 6 - The future of the electoral college - should we keep it or eliminate it?
Chapter 7 - Conclusion

Target Audience
Late high school teens (11th and 12th graders) because most California districts offer American government courses in grades 11 and 12 and is one of the courses that is required for graduation and college admittance. It will also prepare them to learn how to vote in elections when they turn 18 years old (the national minimum voting age).

Design Considerations
The design goals of this project are to better understand how the process of elections work and the importance of choosing a leader of the United States through our democratic system. Most Americans do not have much understanding about the electoral process, including the electoral college and we should learn more about the subject, because of the importance to this nation.

Limiting Factors
The limiting factor is the complex nature of the subject. I will try to simplify the subject matter as much as possible, in order to make it easier to understand for its target audience, without leaving out the most important components of electoral college.

Journal Entry#3

Commercial Concerns on Social Websites (2010)

This article criticizes the intended purpose of social networks for educators, as being over-commercialized by putting advertisers above the interests of educators.

Thanks to advances of web 2.0 technology, social networks are supposed to bring students and teachers closer. Social networking allows teachers and students to communicate online when they are not in class and to provide each student with customized lessons and homework assignments. However, most social networking services, like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and Google are more interested in pleasing advertisers than students because these sites earn a large amount of money from advertising. Most of those sites serve advertisements and in some cases customized advertisements, based on the visitor’s activities and preferences.

According to the article, if anyone visits a social networking site for any purpose, they will see many advertisements on the page they visit, meaning that they will see a lot of corporate logos, for the purposes of selling products. Some will find this as a distraction because the main purposes of social networking for educators are to learn and connect and that seeing too many advertisements can affect their experience. Some sites, like Facebook, will even customize the advertisements when you visit that site in order to improve the user experience and to increase revenue for advertisers. At the end of article, the author stated that there is a major conflict between interests of educators and advertisers when they visit social networking sites.

I agree with the author that social networking is over-commercialized and that most social networking sites are more concerned about revenue than interests of educators. While some may not care about the over-commercialization of social networking because they use these sites primarily to meet friends, but for educators, too much advertisements can defeat the intended purpose of creating new learning opportunities.

Link to Article Here

Questions

1.    Since 2010, when the article was first posted online, how much has social networking has changed?
Answer: Social networking has been increasing in popularity. By 2013, 73% of all Americans use social media. In addition, more and more students and teachers are using social media while in school. This means that commercial concerns on social websites has increased has more and more people join Facebook, Twitter, Google and etc.

2. What actions can social networking sites take to make more pleasing for educators?
Answer: Social networking sites can offer special, ad-free subscriptions for educators, either for free for current students and teachers or for an annual fee as one way to make social networks more pleasing to educators. Another option is to find social networking sites that are designed specifically for educators, such as Lynda and Edmodo.