The major project component of EC&I 832 that I chose was Option 2: Personal Journey into Media. Of the different avenues to travel for this assignment, this particular option seemed to be the most relatable for me. Gaining a solid understanding of the digital world and of the apps and programs that our students use regularly is something that I consider and undervalued element of digital citizenship and media literacy. What are the students (including my own children in the…
Continue readingAuthor: Bart Mihalicz
THE Summary of Learning
CHALLENGE: Comb over three months, get it down to as close to 5 minutes as possible Not necessarily an easy task. I know that I did not do justice to all of the content, presenters, Dr. Couros, and the great work of all of my EC&I 832 classmates. In no particular order, here are some aspects of this activity that I really enjoyed: review of the content – so many interesting and important things to consider; readjusting my lens –…
Continue readingPermission Does Not Mean Obligation
I would like to start by giving credit to Dr. Paul Clarke for the title. Not that EDL 819 hasn’t stuck with me, but te phrase that he used has been applicable so many times since hearing it. What comes to mind when you think of ethics? For me, the first choice is the culminating event of Billy Madison’s academic decathlon where he must outperform is nemesis Eric for control of Madison Hotels. Obviously, and not just in part to…
Continue readingTikTok. Who’s there? Me. Kind of.
Getting into TikTok has been a slow moving process. I cannot stick a pin in the exact reason of my hesitancy towards the app, but I have some ideas… preconceived thought that TikTok is for young people; another excuse to be engaged with my phone – I am not actually looking for more reasons; not really interested in creating content, which limits the function of the app; the lack of digital literacy instruction in the classroom (so far) making me…
Continue readingHow do you know so much? Easy. I’m a teacher and a dad.
Thinking back ten years, I had taken the torch of my father and his father. I was a proud third-generation watcher of the news at supper! I would scan the newspapers while waiting in line at the grocery store. News talk radio was thumping in my car, no matter how far away my destination was. That was then, this is now. The early morning news is the last chance that I will have over the next fifteen hours to where…
Continue readingMounting Stress
There are a couple of areas where my/our (Leah) final project has taken some strides since the last update. Flipgrid Update Having fully committed to exploring what Flipgrid can offer the students and myself, I have been pretty selective in how I have been using it with my students. So far, nothing overly impressive to report on, but…I checked out a couple of websites (reliability inspected) to help me navigate my way through. Tech & Learning has been helpful in…
Continue readingLiterate in Today’s World
“The ability to read and write,” is how Oxford Languages defines literate. Pretty simple. Broad, but narrow. Trying to expand this a little bit, literacy is the ability to identify, interpret, understand, and communicate through the skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening effectively. Representing is in the ELA curriculum, so I am going to add that to skill list as well. UNESCO helps modernize this idea by stating that, “beyond its conventional concept as a set of reading, writing…
Continue readingIt Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better
What a conundrum for this week’s post – what exactly is, or should be, the teacher’s role in educating students about digital citizenship? Much like any other emerging need in education, there seems to be this tug of war between society’s needs and what education can do to attempt to meet it. In the middle of this challenge are educators and time. Do not dismiss me just yet, as it sounds like I am going to rant about the plight…
Continue readingDigital Identity & Digital Citizenship
It is crazy to think about how these concepts of digital identity and digital citizenship have emerged and evolved over the span of my lifetime I remember first venturing online as a young teenager, using AltaVista to explore this new digital world. Those grinding, ringing sounds of the dial up connecting, the slow loading pages, getting interrupted when someone needed to make a phone call from the land line. How dare my search for sports statistics and images be inconvenienced!…
Continue readingThe Struggle… continues
This week saw a real battle between life and my level of commitment with this class. I like a good battle, just ask my opponents in any sport, my kids, or my wife. This is not the kind of clash that appeals to me though. Again, I had difficulty finding the balance between IRL Bart and and learning about responsible, relevant, and respectful use to technology in the education arena. Now that we are a month into class, it is…
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