What is your media Diet?

I feel that these two articles contradicted each other on some level. The article "Don't fear the digital" talks about how youngsters now days are using the internet. It says that they should have a 'balanced media diet'. I would have to say that I agree with this. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times facebook has derailed my 'homework time'. The other article "The Multitasking generation" followed a LA family. It basically said that technology affects, or at least IS the new family structure. A few weeks ago, my math teacher gave a good example of this. She said that while visiting her family, everyone was on a lap top or a cell phone with facebook up. The worst part about it was that they were also messaging each other!!! I kind of think this is ridiculous. However, my mother is guilty of this. She will always send me text messages even though I am only down stairs. Every time I go up the stairs and force her to have a conversation with me!

2 articles

Don't fear the digital talks about how the world of writing and communication is always developing and changing. This article also talks about how we need to be able to adapt to the rapid changes in technology.

The multi-tasking generation was about what happens in your brain when you attempt to multi-task and how that effects the way you learn to preform a task or skill.

We can relate to Don't fear the digital because we are the generation that is developing these new ways to communicate such as, IM, texting, and e-mail. I have noticed that if you talk to the people in the older generations they are set in their ways of having to write everything out by hand.

Multi-tasking is an activity that everyone does, but most of us are not aware that we are doing it, let alone how it affects how we learn. I believe that this is a habbit that most people, including my self need to work on learning more about.

Two articles

Don't fear the digital article explains how the children/teenagers today use the interent. They are learning how to create websites/blogs. They are saying kids should have a balanced media diet. Today's kids rely on the interent a lot to finish the task they have to make. The multi tasking generation article talks about how the digital technology life is affecting kids and their plans. The Cox family from Los Angeles are participating in a 4 year study of modern family life. The director of the center of everyday lives of families says ipods, instant messaging, and cell phones are the structure of a family relationship. Kids spend most of their time on the computers, either on myspace, facebook, or whatever the case may be. I question is the internet taking over kids lives? Even the parents lives?

Chapter Two

This chapter was about designing a lesson plan using technology in a lesson. However, one line in particular caught my eye:

"Technology should be employed only when instructional planning has been completed and it is clear that a technology in support of instruction is called for." page 75, middle of the first paragraph

I believe that this is a very important idea to keep in mind. I feel that some teachers shy away from technology because they are unfamiliar with it while others overuse it. I almost feel that when you overuse technology, or you use it the wrong capacity then it loses its effectiveness. On the same page towards the bottom the book also states, "No mistakes can be more costly than those that affect our students...Plan well, teach well."

Interchapter 8

This chapter was about making a classroom website. Throughout reading this, I kept thinking of pizza. It wasn't just because I was dreadfully hungry, it's that the chapter made the process sound like pizza making.

Step one was to story board or get a general idea of what you want. When making a pizza you have to think about what sort of toppings you might want, the sauce to use, thin crust or thin, etc. The same as a classroom website. You have to decided which population to guide it to (parents or adults), do you include information about yourself, if so how much?, etc.

Step Two was content. When making a pizza you eventually have to decide what to do with it, otherwise you end up with a disgusting mess that no one wants to eat. Websites are the same way! If you just slop things together without really thinking about it, you will not only look unprofessional but you will more than likely turn your target audience away from your website.

Step Three was Check Criteria. When you make a pizza you must make sure that you have all of the ingredients on the pizza. After all, what is a pizza without sauce? When creating a website it is important to make sure you satisfy all of the criteria. Otherwise your pizza won't be tasting very well if you know what I mean.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is titled Designing and Planning Technology-Enhanced Instruction. It gives you a lot of useful tools that can help you create an effective lesson plan. The first step to creating an effective lesson is asking yourself questions about your students and the classroom to begin the planning. I believe that this is an extremely important step because teachers should always be thinking about their students. If the lesson you are teaching is not made to fit your specific students needs it may not be as effective. The needs of students in your classroom can vary greatly from the needs of the students in the classroom down the hall. This chapter has a lot of great pictures and charts that help to make the understanding of making a lesson plan a little easier. They make the steps to making a lesson plan more clear and easier to understand. One that I found really interesting was the Learning Environment Rubric, it is set up to help you figure out where your classroom is and where is should be for optimal learning.
Bloom's Taxonomy is a topic that we have discussed in class as well as read about in this chapter. Blooms Taxonomy believes in students being creative while using a higher level of thinking. As a teacher, you should always be aiming for your students to be using higher level thinking. It helps them get a better grasp on the topic in which you are teaching them. The Bloom's Taxonomy and Performance Objectives chart helped me understand Bloom's Taxonomy a little better. It broke the steps down and told what students should be able to do.
Over all this chapter was extremely interesting and there was a lot of information about making lesson plans that I had not know about.

Interchapter 8

I believe that if I would have read this chapter before I started working on my classroom webpage that I would have had an easier time. But, for the most part I thought that creating a classroom webpage was pretty easy. I believe that it would even be easier to think of what to put on it when I am actually teaching. This chapter talks about all the different ways to go about making a classroom website. It gives you details on how to do it and some different ideas. It also talks about the educational recourses that are available on the web. You can put links to these educational resources on your classroom websites for parents and students.