Do You Know What Your Doing With That?

"What are we telling our students about their online presence... Are we practicing what we preach?"





Technology is overwhelming. Options and more options and more options. Tricks and shortcuts, applications for leisure, lifestyle and education-- there is so much you can do at your finger tips. So many choices and activities to see and do but have you ever stopped and asked yourself do you know what your doing? I know when I see my parents on social media struggling to upload a photo or save a contact, the first thing I want to say is give it here! you don't know what your doing-- I'll show you. But what about you, do you know what your doing? I saw this image about digital citizenship and the 5 Do's of online behaviors and wondered, self, myself said yes? Do we practice what we preach to students? Well, wait... what are we preaching to students about their online and technology presence? The DigCitCommit campaign is striving to teach students and educators the importance of using technology and its platforms as a voice of positivity and a presence that is engaging and informed on the issues and platforms that we partake on. I really liked this because we tell students that they should be careful of the content they post and to use technology as a method of speaking their minds but we don’t always tell them positively how— and this campaign does just that! Check it out at digcitcommit.org! 

From Pencil to keystroke...

Up, down, over there, put it where? 
How does it work?

What does it do?

Can I try? Well if I can't touch it, 
if I can't work with it 
how do I know it works? 

     The curious mind of the kinesthetic learner or the hands on kid. This is me. Even today I learn with my hands and eyes, through repetition, through doing it myself. It was hard learning as a child from books, because I could only read about it, but how was I to try it for myself? Ah! Through the involvement of physical activities, incorporated by my teachers. That was years ago, you know, before the internet. Before you could simulate difficult tasks at a screen. Now instead of finding more ways to be creative with text we find more ways to be creative with technology. A screen that lights up with good graphics is great all the way up until I have to problem solve. The ideal behind the use of technology is to make things easier, but I think in the process we loose or maybe just don't use as often the skills to problem solve or learn how something work when we take away some of the benefits of hands on learning. For me, this would be a struggle. I mean there are somethings you have to do to learn the best, somethings just don't teach well on a screen. Learning to incorporate both in a lesson would be interesting, but certainly possible. With time, things change they evolve, education, learning, and teaching don't look the same today, as it did 10 years ago as it will 5 years from now,

I suppose as an educator, the challenge is creativity to find ways to reach every type of learner.

per·se·ver·ance

/ˌpərsəˈvirəns/

noun: perseverance

persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

I’m a teacher. No, I don’t have a license, I haven’t lead a lesson, I haven’t created a curriculum, nope, none of these thing have been done… yet. Teaching saved me, from myself. Twenty-five year old me, hated the job she worked, with a degree she couldn’t use just looking for a job she could enjoy. I licensed myself to be a paraprofessional and fell in love with teaching. I fell in love, with the spark you see in the student’s eye when they learn something new, when they FINALLY get it! I fell in love with the feeling you get when a student chooses you to be their champion. I fell in love with mentoring, the young people. I’d found it! My niche. The significance of perseverance you ask? I’ve been a statistic, a young mom at 19, a college drop-out. Living paycheck to paycheck watching people around me reach destinations I’ve never dreamed of—constantly questioning what I was doing wrong. I’ve failed, tried again different ways and failed again. I’ve let myself down, I’ve had to pick myself up. I’ve cried, I’ve been confused, and in this season of life I’m experiencing what it is to persevere. It carry on striving for the teacher, the mom, the woman I know I am. We talk about failure being the vehicle to success, but we act as if it’s the end when we do fail. A conclusion I had to consider was, failure is the evident. It will happen, it will hurt, but it is on the individual to desire fulfillment more than they fear the pain of the inevitable, failure. My success has always been contingent on who I believed more, the nay sayers or myself. As life comes as at me, nothing is greater in my eyes than the hunger for greater in me.

To my readers I challenge you to find the sleeping monster in you, awaken it, and when you do feed it the doubts of your mind, the hurt in your heart and the tears of your fears as you press on to the best of what you want for yourself. Whatever that goal is, you know the one you keep putting off, yes that one, it’s possible…The question is how bad do you want it?

The Good With The Bad

     She was just having a little fun with the boy from class on google chats. How was she supposed to know it would end this Bad. I mean what was one picture going hurt? Right? Wrong. Working in a high school with news and information at every-bodies finger tips all day, all the time, is fine and dandy until somebody gets hurt. Around the age of 16, I’d guess peer pressure is at its height, in high school. Chatting on google hangouts he asked her for a nude picture or as close as he could get. She pondered for a moment-- at least that what she told us, should she? It was just one picture what could it hurt? So she sent it, and later she paid for it.

Sitting in the deans office was a girl under the pressure. It came out that the boy she'd been chatting with was in her group project and what was supposed to be project collaboration turned conversation of interest turned into a threat: if she didn't sleep with him, the entire school will see her pictures to him. 

Is it good or is it bad, technology in school is evident and pretty soon as it already seems to be will be the norm. With that I consider it a blessing and a curse the best thing but sometimes the most dangerous thing at the same time. We need technology in creative spaces as platforms for students to be as creative as possible but a young malleable mind is a dangerous one as well, circumstances like this one, happen more than we like to think. I think technology in school is great for the educational process but it is necessity to have more talks with our students about internet etiquette. All in all I'd say we have to take the good with the bad.