DRoman

This week I learned about media literacy. After watching Professor Zumpano’s screencast , I learned that media literacy is our interaction with media and the messages we take away from it. It’s our ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages. I agree that it is important to teach students about media literacy from a young age because it is important for them to learn how to analyze what they see, read, and learn online. Students need to be aware that companies post advertisements for a reason, and that is to sell. Our students also need to be aware of how the media makers manipulate things and how they can make informed choices and learn how to differentiate between what's true and not true online. Image Source: Fulcrum: Media Literacy is Essential Education This week I also learned about Rheingold’s social media literacies and Renee Hobbs 5 competencies . Renee Hobbs 5 competencies are:  Access  Analyze Create Reflect Act  I think all of the 5 compet...

This week I learned about the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) more in depth. Both of these laws were created to protect students’ safety and privacy when using electronic devices in the classroom. CIPA ensures that the schools that receive government funding via E-rate provide filtering and monitoring softwares on their electronic devices to ensure student safety. These softwares block harmful and inappropriate content on school devices. CIPA also ensures that schools educate their students on internet safety. It is important for students to learn about being safe online, such as not talking to strangers, being truthful about their age when creating an account online, and never meeting up with strangers they met online. It is also important for students to learn about cyber bullying. COPPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of children under 13 years old by not collecting their personal information, such as th...

This week I conducted a data mine of myself. The websites I used were: PeopleFinders , Nuwber , Google , LinkedIn , Spokeo , FamilyTreeNow , InstantCheckmate , and ZabaSearch . This data mine was very eye opening because I got to witness my own digital tattoo. I found a lot of my personal information posted online for anybody to see. The information I found was from my past and my current life too. I now understand a little bit more about how everything that is posted online is like a digital tattoo because it can’t be easily erased and it stays online forever. My thoughts and feelings throughout my data mine were: at the beginning I was surprised by so much information I found online of myself, throughout my data mine I was intrigued and wanted to keep digging up more information and see what else was out there about me, and by the end of my data mine I was shocked to see how much accurate information there is online about me and anyone who looks me up can see it. I plan to be more ca...

This week I learned about Safety, Security, and Phishing. I also had an opportunity to review more in depth my school’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for technology. I learned about a Passphrase , which I hadn’t heard of before this week. Did you know you can add spaces to your passwords? I didn’t. After learning about what a passphrase is I plan to use them from now on, because they are more secure and it takes centuries for hackers to guess your password. I will also be sharing this knowledge with my colleagues and students’ parents, because my students are only 3 and 4 years old. The older students at my school can definitely benefit from learning this knowledge and it will hopefully encourage them to create more secure passwords on their technology devices by creating a passphrase.  Image Source: Screenshot of www.useapassphrase.com After reviewing my school’s AUP in English and Spanish, I think that it can definitely be improved. It is missing positive student friendly language....