Blogging and Tweeting

This week I wrapped up Kathy Cassidy's Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades. I absolutely loved reading Cassidy's book. Every time I sat down to read, I ended up jotting down notes and ideas that I could immediately put into place the following day in my classroom. Most of this has related …

Protected: Time Lapse – Round 2

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Advertisements and Media Literacy

As we've been addressing media literacy throughout this quarter, I've often found myself relating it to advertisements. Though there are many other ways in which to be media literate, advertisements seem to be an easy and common avenue to pursue with students. The goals for media literacy as outlined by Renee Hobbs are to understand …

Setting Up Our Blogs

This week, I read the next two sections of Kathy Cassidy's Connected From the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades. During these sections, she focused on actually setting up and using student blogs. The timing for this was very appropriate for me as my team and I have moved on to the next stage of …

The World of Gifs and Memes

For my make this week I chose to create a gif and a meme. Mostly because I frequently use gifs and memes when communicating and they've become so instrumental to online communication. I had never created a gif or a meme and I wanted to see how easy it might be to do so. I …

Diversity and Stereotypes in Media

I previewed the readings this week a while back as I wanted to start investigating gender stereotypes in the media with my students. The fifth graders loved the Gender Remix tool that focused on Lego ads. This is the tool I used to introduce students to the blatant gendered messages that appear in media around …

Discovering Media Literacy – Final Reflection

When trying to figure out the best way to capture the message of our book without just recreating what we’ve already done in this class, we chose to focus on one of the lessons outlined within the book itself. Discovering Media Literacy: Teaching Digital Media and Popular Culture in Elementary School by Renee Hobbs and …

Experimenting With Time Lapse

This week I chose to create a time-lapse video to explore a new type of media production that I hadn't tried before. And as usual, I found that there were many apps available specifically aimed at making this task easier. I think it's interesting just how many free tools are available for anyone to use …

Beginning Our Blogging Journey

At the end of last year, I discovered the previously unimagined possibilities that came with blogging in the classroom. My fifth grade students created blogs and utilized the last two months of school to showcase their learning publicly. I was blown away at how meaningful this learning was to my students and I was so …

Data Collection: Is it Worth the Risk?

This week the readings focused on student data and privacy. I need to start with the absolute mind-blowing Knewton Education Datapalooza video. Mostly because I can't even begin to wrap my head around much of what was being referenced. Clearly, there is so much potential when it comes to data collection and analysis. In this video, …