Final Presentation Reflection

When I was trying to look for an easy lesson in Psychology to teach a class of 18+ year olds I came across a lot of great lessons. However most of the lessons I really liked called for something to be done, or to have happened previously. Of course I couldn't ask my class to complete a dream journal or to memorize the Psychology Theorists, so I started to struggle a bit. But then I came across this great memory lesson. It was short, sweet, and to the point. So I decided to go with it. I found that integrating technology into it was actually really easy, and if it weren't for Google I'd probably be lost. I integrated a Google Docs Forum (quiz) and a Google Presentation feature. Online when I was creating them, they were so easy I couldn't help but think that I needed to do more. However, that was the great part. I figured out how to integrate technology into my lesson for the sake of learning, and not just to use modern technology.

When I was teaching it to the class I thought things went pretty okay. Everyone was able to access the quiz and the presentation from the Wiki with ease and we didn't have any problems. So the lesson went very smoothly and was in the time limit. However, once I sat down and looked at my notes, I realized I had forgotten to go over a few things with the class. for example, I wanted to see what their results were from the first memory quiz, and I wanted to go over the presentation as a class. Those seemed kind of minor, but I'm sure they would have made the lesson make a little more sense to the class based on the feedback they gave me.

I also had them take a feedback quiz, and I got pretty much the same answers. Of course everyone said they liked it, and only a few spoke up about the negatives. Which were mostly about how there wasn't enough information supplied to them, but if I were to teach the lesson in real life the class would have had to research memory on there own. So that issue would have been resolved.

I guess overall I'm pretty pleased with my final project. If I could do it over I would make sure to add the two things I forgot (which might have put me over the time limit), but that's about it. I'm really happy with how smoothly the technology worked out, and I think the class might have walked away from my lesson actually learning something which was what I wanted. :)

I'm sad to be done with 109 though. It was a fun class and I actually learned so much about technology that I fully plan on using in the future. I have even started using some of it already now, which I think is pretty cool. : D

Core Cultural Competency

The core cultural competency that I chose to talk about was multitasking. The website, http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/the-literacies.php, defined multitasking as the following: the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. Being a good multitasker is required in our new media landscape - and that includes learning when it isn't good to multitask. I happen to agree with this definition.  I once watched a short clip in a class about how MIT students think that multitasking is the best thing in the world for them. They said they needed to be constantly connected to everyone and everything even when in class. On student interviewed said that they would be in class taking notes, on their phone texting, sending emails on their computer and occasionally on facebook. That is too many things to do at once for me, I don't think I could handle doing all of those things together. The same student also said that when their professors ask the students to close the computers and put away the cell phones hardly anyone does. The clip also explained that multitasking is a terrible thing for your brain, because when you are trying to do more than a single thing at once you can confuse your own brain and it doesn't know exactly what to do.

In class so far I have multitasked at times, and watches as classmates have done the same. It is easy to get a little bit off task in class when you have a computer with internet right in front of you. I have to admit that I am guilty of checking or sending a few emails during class time while trying to pay attention. So far I haven't had any problems with it, but I try really hard not to distract myself with other things during class.

Another one of the Core Cultural Competencies that I have seen around a lot is networking. I mean isn't that exactly what facebook and twitter are to our generation these days? We all know without it though we might be lost. At times facebook becomes an easy distraction from homework or other productive things we tend to put off until a later time.

That's all for now :)

Twitter

Before starting this class I had no intention of ever having a twitter. I thought it was kinda pointless that all you used it for was to update other people on what you were doing. However, now that I am in 109 and 107 I see that it can be use for other purposes as well. Since I am new to twitter, I don't exactly know how to use all of its features. I do have a facebook and thought it was easy to figure out, but for some reason tagging things seems harder for me on twitter. I also need to figure out how to do direct messages. I know they are messages between another person and yourself, so I tried one out. However, I either didn't go about getting it started right or the other person didn't respond. Either way, I still have some work to do with keeping myself updated on twitter and figuring it out. Hopefully I will engage in an actually conversation sometime soon.

Privacy

In class we talked about privacy, and what it really meant. I was surprised to learn that websites were achieved. I had no idea that you could go back and look at old websites or things, even if they had been "deleted." This makes me nervous for my privacy online. When our professor showed us the video on how someone could pull up another person's chat on facebook I was a little creeped out. I thought chats were private, but what if other people could read my past chat history? There is nothing that I am worried about, or that someone couldn't read, but that is besides the point. I want what I say online to other people to be private, unless I willingly post something on someones wall on facebook that I know other people will be reading. It also creeps me out that there are ways around everything on the Internet. You may think your password and files stored online are safe, but half the time they aren't My own mother had her identity stolen awhile back when I was younger, and I remember how hard it was for her to fix everything that the criminal had done to her name. They ordered things online with her credit card and started online sites in her name. Now that I am older and understand things more, I can't imagine that happening to me. Privacy is a huge thing to people. If someone doesn't feel like they have privacy then they won't do something, However, the sad thing is that often times people feel like their information is secure when it isn't, and that is what continuously worries me about the Internet. I think we need to find more ways to keep information private for people, including having companies on and off the Internet work harder to keep their customers private information safe.

Blog Platform

I already have an account with blogger for my 107 class, so I decided to stick with Blogger for this class as well. I found a website that compared all of the popular blog websites and it said that blogger is one of the easiest blog platforms to set up and use right away. Sometimes I am a little slow with technology so I like that it was so easy to set up. I made a separate blog for this class and it maybe took me a minute to fill out the questions. The website that I found also talked about wordpress.com and joomla.com. it said that both were more complicated to set up. However, joomla.com seemed to be the hardest to set up and required you to install a bunch of things on your computer, which I don't like to do, so Blogger seemed even better to me. It also talked about an Xanga, which I used in 8th and 9th grade not knowing it was a blogging site, so that was kinda funny. I went and actually found my old Xanga site and shut it down. It looked exactly as I left it, which made me realize that everything stays on the Internet until you take it off. It has been 5 years since I have posted on Xanga, or even looked at it, so who knows who has seen my posts in that long amount of time...kinda scary.

Anyway I really decided to stay with Blogger because it is so easy, and I only plan on using these blogs for class purposes. So having something that is so easy and quick to used when I have an assignment it awesome :). I'm sure there are other easy ones out there too, but at least I already knew how to use it from my 107 class.