Reflection on Module #5

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Crafting, building and learning about my Digital Identity has been an overwhelming process!  The picture above is basically clipart of me!  As I am finishing up my second semester of coursework I have a lot of emotions.  I have learned so much!  I was so happy when (I think) I was able to post my unit plan to Digital Text and Tools site which was a first.  When I did it over the summer it was a bit of a disaster but this time I was much more comfortable with Google Docs so it made it a bit easier.

My Blog is still a work in progress. I spent a lot of time checking the formatting and adding Creative Commons licensing to each post as well as giving credit to various pictures that I included in my blog.  Overall though I am happy with my blog.

My Learning Hub (click the link) is more than a work in progress!  I tried known, Google Sites, and now it's Wix.  Thanks to Laurie, I'm trying out the Wix thing.  I worked with known and Google Sites over the past sixteen weeks with no luck.  I'm going to spend the next month that I have "off" to try to really brush it up.  I'm hoping what everyone says about it never really being done is true!

So my Digital Identity is changing, I'm like a middle schooler right now.  Not totally sure where I fit in but hoping to find my Digital self soon.

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Welcome to Room 115!- Final Unit Plan and Reflection

Image Courtesy: Anne Marie Lanning

Welcome to Room 115!

This is the first time I'm publicly posting my Unit Plan and to be honest I'm a bit nervous.  I have looked everything over and over again this entire semester and I want to make sure I included everything.  There are five lessons total, using both PebbleGo! and Easy Blogger Jr. I adjusted some of the lessons and added an additional lesson because of my other course work.  I also included my reflections on each lesson and I put a copy of each of response sheets that my students used.  I also (think) I posted this to the Digital Text and Tools website.

Unit Plan with Reflections on Each Lesson

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Participatory Culture

Henry Jenkins said that participatory culture has been around since the mid 19^th century at first I surprised by because I thought participatory culture was available only through the internet.  Clearly I was wrong!  The example he gave of the sewing a quilt in terms of participatory culture; not everyone is an expert but together can make something great. 

Mimi said how the kids that are “geeking out” are the one identifying with more creative ways to use the internet for YouTube, remixing, etc.  Parents/adults on the other hand are afraid to “friend” their own children on Facebook.  It seems like adults are one step or more behind kids that “geeking out”, they aren’t comfortable trying something new because maybe they would do something wrong.  Kids are willing to do something wrong because that may lead to something better than originally planned.

Kids are the ones that to me are leading the charge of Participatory Culture.  Participatory Culture can be defined as various people from varying backgrounds, cultures working together to build something greater.  My definition is similar to Henry Jenkins example of the quilt.  There are no experts in Participatory Culture but together something great can be built.

When thinking about guiding students to expand their online skills and interests we have to think about how we as adults do it.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were started by a group of adults/young adults but what they have developed into is thanks to our students.  Their word of mouth, their thoughts about what else these programs can do goes beyond posting a status or remixing a video.  They are creating this new world of a larger “participatory culture”.  The way we can best guide our students to expand online skills and interests that they have developed in their personal lives in order to create individuals who become productive, contributing members of a larger “participatory culture” is to have them show what they know not just tell and to trust the process.   People don’t like to be wrong but sometimes being wrong can lead to something “right”, let students know not everything has to be a success!  We as adults know that sometimes in order to succeed we need to struggle, share that with students.   Participatory Culture has no age limit, teachers and students can struggle and succeed together!

This work by Anne Marie Lanning is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.