550 Digital Media ALB: Change Project

Final Digital Literacy Change Project

550 DIGITAL MEDIA LITERACY

Professor Bogad

Summer II 2019

Parents are Children's First Teachers

by Ana Lina Barros

Who am I?

Who am I? A powerful question that makes me reflect and ask this repetitive question to myself. Who am I? A native from an island (Cape Verde Island) on the west coast Africa, an immigrant, a traveler, a child deprived of her parents for a year, a single mother, a sister, an aunt, an ELL, an educator and a lifelong learner. Coming from a family of eight with both parent’s illiterate and traveling to America for that American Dream for their children. This is my story and it is my "Why?" One thing that has been instill in my brothers and sisters until this day, is how powerful education is and how far it can take you. No matter who you are and where you come from, education will take you far. If you have the motivation, strive, and a strong family support the possibilities are endless. As Wesch quoted "Learning is the hallmark of humanity. We are all cut out for learning". My mother has never dumb down education. She always thought it was too late for her but encouraged us that this was the way for a better future. The grandmother effect was my mother. Sugat Mitra believe encouragement is all you need to keep you motivated to learn. My mother’s believe was that learning was significant. While Michael Wesch's believe students are struggling to find meaning and significance in education.

What you don't know about me is before becoming an educator I was a creative designer. One blank sheet of sketch paper transformed into this authentic and unique piece of artwork. This is how I view every student who enters my classroom. A unique individual. They start to unravel before your eyes just like technology. Prensky warns of this unraveling of the today's youth and their brain and how we need to keep up with the digital because of their different way of learning and becoming more of a digital native. As technology unravel terminology emerges to help us identify the difference between Digital Native and Digital immigrant. As Prensky describes users of the Digital Media, I find myself identifying more so with a Digital Immigrant. I am more of a step by step person and prefer completing a task before diving into something else which also places me as a standalone verse being connective. Even though Prensky's terminology describe two ways of identifying yourself, the negative aspect of the terminology can be interpreted as offensive to someone like myself. If I didn't understand his reasoning behind it. As Boyd question the terminology, he expresses how word choice like immigrant and native has a negative connotation base on the history. Unfortunately, technology was not present in our household. As technology evolves, as an educator I have to figure out which of the Scott Noon's 4 tiers of tech (preliterate, Technocrat, Technotraditionalist and Technoconstuctivist) would I fall into based on each characteristics, I find myself to be between Technotraditionalist. Since I use it for creating lessons, worksheets, exit tickets, and Google Classroom , however, my goal is to become more of a Techno-constuctivist in creating more online virtual projects. Even though technology was not present in my adolescent.

My Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is to provide an environment that allows students the opportunity to speak openly without any fear of being wrong or misunderstood. As Sherry Turkle points out devices have taken over the human quality of knowing one another and understanding each other. Digital Media can lead to misunderstanding. Therefore, I dedicate myself in providing students with the necessary skills and passion to learn and achieve their goals, through conversations and digital media. For students to set forth goals for themselves and strive to achieve it. And continue to teach with enthusiasm, creativity, and with versatility. Also, search for the new ways of teaching and understanding the needs of all students, regardless of socioeconomic or ethnic background and share new ideas with colleagues. Michael Wesch believes, changing the learning environment is critical in engaging students to ask creative and critical thinking questions. In addition to being open minded when it comes to new and old ideas. Furthermore, to always challenge myself and my students in every way possible to reach their full potential.

Change Project

For a change project, I focused on homework tracking and parent communication. Over the years the one issue that seems relevant to parents besides grades is homework. Managing homework check-in in the beginning of the year is manageable. However further into the school year it becomes cumbersome. My goal is for students to be more accountable for their homework through a check in using Digital Media and to encourage for more proactive parent communication through a digital platform. Homework is controversial. Therefore, it made me rethink and ask myself two questions. How important is this change to my classroom? and Is it relevant to the students, parents, and me? After researching and reading The case for (Quality) Homework by Janine Bempechat and other articles, There were several concerning factors about homework. First you have parents that are for and those against homework. Secondly, there are teachers who are against or limit the amount of homework and others who disregard homework all together similar to some schools. Thirdly, does it benefit students in improving grades or test scores. Finally, how long should it take a child to complete their homework assignment

After researching, there were both pros and cons and solutions. What does homework support look like in social classes? Parents of low-income family and immigrant family value homework. It is a critical piece of connection to their child's education, since they are unable to participate in other aspect of their child's schooling (working odd hours, two jobs or overtime), they use homework routine as a way to manage their time and provide structure (quiet place for learning) even if they do not understand the assignment and have limited resources. In this household, the siblings provide the extra support. This was a mirror image of my household. However, affluent families have the resources and their focus is to succeed. The downside is that these students parents have high demand for their child to be accepted into these ivy league colleges that are looking not only for exceptional grades but a well-rounded candidate, has lead students to heightened stress, anxiety, physical complaints and sleep disturbance. Many of these students participate in extracurricular activities and can only complete the homework after the activities, which then lead to physical and mental health problems. On the other hand, Etta Kralovec and John Buell writers of The End of Homework feel that homework punishes the poor because of the lack of resources available, financial resources for computers, tutoring, and language barriers. They also argue that parental involvement with homework is not necessary for a child to succeed.

For teachers, homework is relevant. Teachers believe that homework fosters academic achievement and that it promotes responsibilities and it also serves as a review and practice on targeted skills. A teacher views homework as a way of keeping parents connected and informed with their child’s education. If the homework is high quality that promotes learning it is work assigning, those are the homework associated with higher achievement. Students also find homework relevant especially those at the high school level value high quality homework.

Homework completion is relevant especially in middle to high school. Based on research it is associated with high achievement for upper level At the lower level based on a small number of study the results showed that students that did receive homework compare to those that did not receive homework achieve at a higher level. Also, homework does lead to positive learning, it teaches responsibility, organization skills, and self-regulation. It does contribute to learning so homework is relevant. Which leads us to the question how much time a child should spend on homework.

In the article, the suggestion for homework after decades of study is 10 minute per grade level beginning with 1st grade. For middle school the suggestions are 90 minutes and high school between 90 minutes to 2 hours and half. If students are spending more than 90 to 2 and half hour, then it is not contributing to their learning. Based on a survey conducted by the National Household Education the 70 to 83 percent believe that the amount of time child is spending on homework is right. Unfortunately, there is no one straight answer when it comes to homework. Unfortunately, there is no one straight answer when it comes to homework. However, homework is relevant regardless of socioeconomic status.

Now that my question was answered, my first step was to find a digital platform. After analyzing the different platform, I decided to use ClassDojo and Remind. Class Dojo provides parents with quick access and receive notification through, cellphones, tablets, and laptop. In addition, messages can be translated in other languages and students can also access and converse with each other. In addition,

ClassDojo keeps track of student’s homework and generates reports with break downs into different components for parents. Remind app is more immediate and parents receive information directly to their phone. Pictures can be uploaded. Parents can also communicate back and can also use emoji to respond or to acknowledge receiving the message. For these digital tools to be successful, I would need to designate a set time and day to send a Remind message weekly to keep parents informed.

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