Viewing inappropriate material is becoming a growing problem. With computers, tablets, and smartphones, it is easy for any student to come across inappropriate material with little to no effort. With technology use growing in school students have more time to find inappropriate material. Viewing this in class is not only distracting to them but also the other students around them. It will take away from the learning experience and class time if the teacher has to take time to get the student back on track.
In terms of presenting this information I found the electronic posters very helpful. My group used Piktochart, which was very easy to use once you played around with it. The poster was helpful in organizing information in a clear and appealing way. I would definitely use Piktochart again and would recommend it to anyone. Some other groups that did a nice job creating posters were Cyber bullying, Copyright, and File sharing. All of these groups created eye-catching posters that displayed the information in an organized way. Just like viewing inappropriate material, these three subjects are becoming more relevant with the growing use and easy access to technology. Cyber bullying is becoming easier and easier as there are more social media cites than ever. Anyone can post comments or pictures that are hurtful to someone else and they are stuck in the Internet forever. Copyrighting is also a huge problem because students can easily access information and forget to cite it, or even cite it improperly and have it be considered copyrighting. File sharing is also a growing problem because there are many cites like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Limewire where you can share any type of file. I believe that our lesson on Recycling is valid, practical and motivational. I believe it is valid and practical because it can be easily adapted and taught to any age group. The lesson can also be lengthened or shortened depending on the time frame available. I believe that out lesson is motivational because it engages students right away with a discussion about a picture that shows a trash ridden area. From there is gets the students more involved by learning about what can be recycled and easy it is for them to help.
If I could make any changes to this lesson it would be to have more time. I believe that with more time the students would get a better understanding of what they can really do to help and how easy it is. Also, more time would allow for them to make better and more in depth posters that they could actually use to start a recycling campaign at their school or a local place. One take-away that I got from this was how it can be tricky to incorporate an activity. Given the time restraint, it was a little challenging to divvy up the time into chunks that made sense while still being able to get everything done in the lesson. I think that this will always be a challenge when teaching, whether or not there is an activity, but I know it will get easier to solve the more I have to do it. Finally, my group used Google Docs in order to collaborate. We made a document and slideshow that all of us could easily access and edit. This was very helpful because there was a day when one group member couldn't come to class but she was still able to work on part of the lesson plan. After creating our first lesson plan, I believe that it is valid, practical and motivational. I believe it is valid because writing a simple thesis statement is a very important part of middle school, and is needed to learn how to write more creative and descriptive ones later on in your schooling career. I believe it is practical for our English language learners because it is just scratching the surface of what a thesis statement is and is not very complicated. Finally, I believe it is motivational because it uses examples that the kids can relate to and will help them out later in school.
One thing I would possibly change about this lesson is giving more individual work. Whether this means a worksheet to take home as homework, or doing the activity individually, I think it would be good for more practice so the students learn not to rely on only their group members. What I took away from creating this lesson was that there is much more detail and planning when it comes to writing a lesson plan. From making clear objectives, to divvying up the time, there is a lot more detail that goes into creating a lesson plan than I had previously thought. Finally, in order for my group to share the lesson plan and be able to work on it at the same time we used Google Docs. Google Docs is very helpful when working in groups because it allows you to share a document with other people. Then all of you can edit it, you can either edit it one at a time or even all at the same. Google Docs really is a useful tool when trying to collaborate with others. I believe that using technology to detect plagiarism is beneficial to both students and teachers. It is beneficial to students because they can use any free website to check and see if they have anything that’s cited incorrectly or seems like it could be plagiarized. Once they see this they can then change it or contact their teacher to see how to properly fix it. This is beneficial for teachers because it allows them to quickly check for plagiarism. Teachers obviously don’t know every sentence of every piece of written work so they can’t just read a paper and know if its plagiarized or not. Technology, however, allows them to do this in a very fast manor.
The only down side I can see to this would be a loss in trust between student and teacher. A teacher using this could come off on a student, as they don’t trust that the student did all their work. This loss of trust could ruin the relationship between student and teacher. My first thought upon reading this article was, “wow, these people are lazy.” And no I don’t mean the ones writing the essay; they’re writing more than I ever could, I mean the one’s paying for the service. The Shadow Scholar mentioned that people pay $2,000, or more or less depending on the circumstance, for one paper. When he said this, I wondered why these people didn’t use this money for a tutor, especially the ones who didn’t know English or were “hopelessly deficient.” It seemed to me that using the money to actually learn and help yourself would be a much better use of their money in the long run. Sure having the paper done now will get you to pass the class, but what about after when you still don’t know the material needed for your career.
After finishing the article I had another thought. Why doesn’t this “shadow scholar” want any credit? If I work hard on a paper or project I want it to be known to others that I was the one who created this. To me it would be awful to know that I am one of two people who actually know that I produced this quality piece of work. But I guess after the first few assignments you’re given you probably get over that and really just care about getting paid. Using technology to teach is becoming more and more prevalent in the world of education. As new technologies are created, educators are finding more ways to incorporate them into lesson plans. Also, as kids learn to use technology it becomes easier to teach them with it.
I believe that a certain amount of technology use in the classroom is helpful to teaching and learning. At a point though, it can become distracting and instead harm to learning environment. However, I believe that in the future there will be a way to keep students away from things they should not be doing at school, because even now with some Internet filter, students still get to things they should not be viewing at school. |