It's confession time. I created a MySpace account a few years ago with the sole purpose of keeping tabs on a family member's page. I sent her a friend request and she accepted me without knowing who I was. I never lied to her or tried to deceive her in my identity. Eventually she asked who I was and I told her my identity. The things I learned about her online life were shocking. I couldn't believe the things she posted. After about six months, she blocked me but by then I had shared enough of what she was posting with her parents that they couldn't ignore it anymore. Her parents didn't believe me when I told them about the dangers of unsupervised MySpace access for a girl her age (13) and they thought I was exaggerating or reading too much into it, blah blah blah. I finally started printing out different postings and gave them to her parents, along with copies of photos she had posted of herself, etc. Suddenly, it was very very serious. I was really concerned about her getting herself in serious danger and was really frustrated with my relatives, her parents for not wanting to believe that their daughter could really be that naive. I don't want to go into a lot of detail but a lot of changes in that house took place. There was a loss of trust between that girl and I because she felt I had betrayed her. I'm slowly rebuilding that connection because as she gets older, she realizes that I was trying to protect her but it's not the same as it was. I think I need to stop posting about this now. It's starting to get to me.
Took a little break and am feeling better now. I did create a Facebook account but am thinking I'm going to remove that. I just don't want my information out there. It would be fun to try to find old classmates but a lot of my students are also out there and frankly, I don't want them to "friend" me. We had a staff member who really got in hot water for doing that with students. It blurs the adult/child - teacher/student line. I've had friends from college who I found on MySpace tell me that they had searched for me but couldn't find me on MySpace so I guess I have successfully hidden myself there. Facebook is a lot more out in the open and I'm uncomfortable with that.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Thing #19 Pick a Pack a Podcasting
I was introduced to podcasts last summer and was instantly hooked. I think I have subscriptions to about 30 right now and have loaded a few random episodes of others as well. I don't even want to think about how many hours I have to listen to. I'll never catch up but hate to delete any, just in case! It's cyber-packratting?
I subscribe to Grammar Girl, Stash and Burn, They Might Be Giants, and a bunch of literary ones. The best literary one would have to be Disney's Last Minute Book Reports. HILARIOUS! I used one podcast to play Romeo and Juliet for my class. I burned each scene separately on a CD which was really handy to lend to students who had been absent.
I have also taught some students how to make simple podcasts using Garageband - one program that wasn't listed on 23 Things. It's so simple, even my kids can do it. I also have used G Cast, which is very simple and only requires a phone.
I am helping our German teacher to create a walking tour of Germany podcast her students load onto their MP3 players before they take their trip to Germany this summer. Plus, I told her they can use G Cast to record their reactions throughout the trip.
I subscribe to Grammar Girl, Stash and Burn, They Might Be Giants, and a bunch of literary ones. The best literary one would have to be Disney's Last Minute Book Reports. HILARIOUS! I used one podcast to play Romeo and Juliet for my class. I burned each scene separately on a CD which was really handy to lend to students who had been absent.
I have also taught some students how to make simple podcasts using Garageband - one program that wasn't listed on 23 Things. It's so simple, even my kids can do it. I also have used G Cast, which is very simple and only requires a phone.
I am helping our German teacher to create a walking tour of Germany podcast her students load onto their MP3 players before they take their trip to Germany this summer. Plus, I told her they can use G Cast to record their reactions throughout the trip.
Thing #18 - I Tube, You Tube, We all Tube
This was too much fun! I found two animation shorts that I haven't seen in YEARS! One is The Cat Came Back - the song will get stuck in your head. The other is Vincent by Tim Burton, my all-time favorite director. I put that one on my blog so all can view it. I can't believe it's there!
I'm so grateful and yet, I feel a bit guilty about it. I didn't purchase it. I didn't get permission from Mr. Burton to post it on my blog and yet, simple as pie, it's there. We are getting farther and farther away from definitive copyright. I have had numerous discussions with students, friends and even family members about the need to purchase music and movies, etc. - not steal them off the internet. The artists, musicians, and film makers do this as their living so we need to legally, legitimately purchase their works in order to encourage them to continue making more.
One family member, a teen, said that she never paid for the music she downloaded off the internet because first, if they didn't want it available, they would protect it better; second, the music industry is corrupted anyway so it served them right if people took the music; and third, they make way more money from concerts then music sales so who was it hurting. I told her that what she was doing was the same as shoplifting but that fell on deaf ears.
I have loaded all of my CDs into my iTunes and am using Handbrake to load my DVDs (something I wish iTunes would have as a feature). I do not view this in the same venue as this is material that I legally purchased and am simply converting it to a different format for viewing. Just like I believe that I can legally convert all of my VHS purchases to DVD. Am I wrong?
I'm so grateful and yet, I feel a bit guilty about it. I didn't purchase it. I didn't get permission from Mr. Burton to post it on my blog and yet, simple as pie, it's there. We are getting farther and farther away from definitive copyright. I have had numerous discussions with students, friends and even family members about the need to purchase music and movies, etc. - not steal them off the internet. The artists, musicians, and film makers do this as their living so we need to legally, legitimately purchase their works in order to encourage them to continue making more.
One family member, a teen, said that she never paid for the music she downloaded off the internet because first, if they didn't want it available, they would protect it better; second, the music industry is corrupted anyway so it served them right if people took the music; and third, they make way more money from concerts then music sales so who was it hurting. I told her that what she was doing was the same as shoplifting but that fell on deaf ears.
I have loaded all of my CDs into my iTunes and am using Handbrake to load my DVDs (something I wish iTunes would have as a feature). I do not view this in the same venue as this is material that I legally purchased and am simply converting it to a different format for viewing. Just like I believe that I can legally convert all of my VHS purchases to DVD. Am I wrong?
Thing #17 Searching for . . . answers
I had a lot of difficulty with doing the tasks for this Thing. I couldn't get the quicktime movies to work. I couldn't get the RSS feed to work. I couldn't figure out how to do the tasks we were asked to do. I'm pretty techno-savy but maybe I just didn't explore enough. I have some experience in this area though so don't feel too bad about just pushing ahead. I have used a number of tools like this for my masters classes and have taught my students how to use these search tools. We have many of them linked on our school media center webpage and encourage the use of ELM versus "googling" everything. I haven't connected searches to bloglines before since I hadn't used bloglines or other RSS feeds before so that was one thing I was looking forward to getting more experience with. I may go back and revisit that at a later date but for today, I'm calling this Thing done.
Thing #16 Research Tools
This is the answer to a prayer! I have been working with another teacher about teaching researching in the digital age. She and I have been struggling with how to explain why it is necessary to check your sources to make sure they are legitimate, how to use search engines, plus the general mechanics of organizing a research paper. This is a whole new ballgame for us. This is not the way we wrote papers when we were in school and I'm not that old! :-)
As I was typing this, I got a phone call from a friend (also a teacher) and coincidentally, she was wondering about this exact thing! So, I told her about the whole 23 Things project and emailed the website to her. She was going to check it out this afternoon. Talk about timely information!
Thanks 23 Things Organizers!!
As I was typing this, I got a phone call from a friend (also a teacher) and coincidentally, she was wondering about this exact thing! So, I told her about the whole 23 Things project and emailed the website to her. She was going to check it out this afternoon. Talk about timely information!
Thanks 23 Things Organizers!!
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