Saturday, April 18, 2009

Internet Interview

For my internet safety discussion I talked with my Mom who is 46 years old. We talked about what she had done right in the home and how positive my experience had been while living at home. We talked about how the safe environment really did help me avoid many crap items that are out there. Talking about actually exploring the internet more in our home and having her learn more about what can be done was still pretty easy since she loves learning and wants to know more about technology in general since I have some very technologically savvy brothers whom she normally goes to if she needs help. She likes to be independent so this was a good conversation talking about different programs and applications that I have learned about from this class. Overall it was a very positive experience.

Reading about Safety

For my fourth article I read "An Ensign to the Nations, a Light to the World" by President Gordon B. Hinckley. With all these readings I found a great emphasis on strengthening our families and our homes safety so that we can teach the importance to our children and have that good back up for teaching our children then the importance of internet safety. There was a major emphasis on educating our children on all the positive things that we can do with media, and then demonstrating them for our children so that they can see that media in and of itself isn't the bad or evil thing, but that it is evil people that twist it to make evil of it. As a parent you need to be aware and educated yourself and using media so that you can model for your children and be able to monitor them and give constructive feedback on what they are doing with media and how that can make it a better experience and be safe. The point of my fourth article was not to fear media, but to be aware of it's power for good and to use it for such while keeping far away from its evil. I plan on becoming more educated about what I can do on the computer so that I won't be ignorant of what is out there for my future children. I also am going to be more aware of what I do with media and specifically the internet so that I can have the important good example now for my future family. I already have talked to some of my siblings and my parents about what they are doing good in the home with having the computer in plain sight and limiting the time spent on it. We have talked about the bad things that are out there but I told my parents that we could also start emphasizing all the good that is there as well so that it isn't shunned altogether. These were good readings, I enjoyed the gospel focus on this subject!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

WHAT I LEARNED!

There was this really good idea about using digital cameras and going around the students environments to find shapes that they are learning about. They then combined these and used iClickers to assess if the children knew what they were talking about when the shapes were pulled up.
The whole idea of assessing with iClickers in the elementary schools was fascinating to me! I have never used one in my classes, and then they talked about using mac notebook to rotate, flip, and slide letter and objects in front of the children. This seemed to be effective and the students stayed engaged.