Post #3 ELA Standards, Open Terms & New Skills

Post #3: ELA Standards, Open Terms & New Skills

After reading through the ELA technology standards, I feel most prepared to teach number 7, under the "Literature" section that reads: "Compare written story/drama/poem to audio, filmed stage, or multi-media version, analyzing techniques such as lighting, sound color, camera focus/angle." This would entitle comparing a book to a movie for example and I think that would be a great project for my students. They would love to watch a movie and I would hope that they would enjoy reading the book as well then comparing the two. A standard that would require more learning on my part would be number 6, under the "Using Multiple Sources" section that reads: "Add: Assess the credibility of sources; quote or paraphrase data and conclusion avoiding plagiarism; basic bibliographic information ." I still have trouble citing sources and with all the different formats that comes with citing and would need to refine those skills before informs my students on them.

One technology software/application that I would like to use with my students would be discussion boards, if I was teaching college students. We use discussion boards and I think they are a great way to interact and communicate with others in my classes. We are able to comment and give each other constructive and positive feedback as well and I think it is a great way to use my peers as a network of help. When it comes to digital citizenship, I will need to be able to teach my students how to "effectively use tech to develop and maintain a positive online presence through which individuals can productively interact and participate with virtual communities". One of those concepts includes, "Protect their personal identities and those of others" and I feel that this is an important concept as more and more of the world moves to technology and the internet. Now a days, everything is online and that means more fraud and the internet can be a scary place. I would teach my students the importance of staying safe on the internet and to know who they are talking to.

Open education is all about making educational experiences available to a wide audiences. For example, MIT made online courses available to anyone and also made these online lectures and videos free. This is obviously different than going and sitting in a lecture hall but gives an opportunity to motivated individuals who are willing and wanting to learn. Open content specifies what people can and can not do with the materials that they find online. OER is a great start for looking for open content and the site specifies the uses of the content. Open source software is source code that is made avaliable for anyone to access. Some examples include Open Office and Moodle and are avaliable for anyone to download and use.
Here is the MIT site discussed in the podcast: https://www.edx.org/school/mitx

I gained a number of new skills through the Newsletter Design project and I am still learning as I continue to complete the project. One new skill that I learned is how to place columns on a page for the script of the newsletter and another is how to form a table to put dates or bullets within that table. I loved this design project and was happy to get the chance to be creative and use this project to practice for when I am in a classroom. I think this is perfect practice for when I am placed in a classroom and need to effectively communicate with the parents of my students to keep them informed and updated on their child and what is going on in our class.