New Media – Can Dr. Newberry “read” my mind? Legilimens!

The assignment for this blog is exactly the work I have been doing on my own in my spare time over the course of the last few weeks as I start to prepare that which I’ll need to prepare over my “time off” during the summer. Thanks for the formal opportunity Professor Sn… I mean Dr. Newberry!

New Media the first: Remind 101, Remind 101 - itunes app, Remind 101 - Android app

Directly from their website:

Remind101 is a free communication platform built for teachers. Our product enables you to safely and efficiently update students and parents about important information relating to the classroom and school activities. Remind101 has been adopted by more than 15% of the entire K-12 teacher population in the United States and we're growing quickly.  Using Remind101, teachers can engage their students and parents more effectively without needing to know their cell phone numbers and without having to give their phone number out.

So, what does that mean? As an educator, I create an account. I’m not going to call it a profile; I didn’t even have to associate with my school. Once I’ve created the account, the interface has me create a class and then walks me through sign up. The software essentially assigns a fake local phone number (they gave my class a 760 number and I’m assuming this is based on the computer location as, again, they didn’t ask me anything) and students use whatever class code I assign them (e.g.@mrsbeyro). By texting that class code to my fake number they are automatically assigned to that class.  See below:

Then, when I send out a Remind101 alert to the class (AP Stats – Period 3: Don’t forget to be at Tedesco Park for the AP exam at 11:45!) everyone who has signed up receives a text message with that information like the one you see below.

As the students and parents are NOT allowed to respond to that number (they receive a text that tells them this if they try), this is most certainly a one-way communication tool. The positive note here is that most people who have cell phones (especially teenagers) are very much glued to them. High school students in particular send and receive text messages countless times in a day and this messaging service allows me to get my announcements from my LMS directly to them in the manner to which they are most accustomed and least inconvenienced.  (You know, because it takes SOOOOOO many extra seconds to a) open the Internet browser and then b) log in to the LMS and then horror of horrors, c) click onto the specific class page to see if there are any announcements!) This convenience is a really big score in its favor over my LMS because it should increase the positive social presence for my online portion of the course because it makes the students feel more connected through a method that is familiar to them.

Additionally, Remind101 allows me to give instant general feedback to the group (yes, it does lack personal focus unless you create a group for that…) in a natural texting language, whtevr tht izzz (Forgive me, if you’ve received a text from a teen you know my pain.)

New Media the second: Blogs

I currently have my blog hosted through the google blogger site. Google is far from the only blog hosting service. Other hosting services include blog.com, WordPress, Weebly and many, many more. My responses from here on will be in regards to the blogger.com site.

The blogger.com site allows anyone to quickly and easily set up his or her own blog. The new user can choose from one of many themes and customize them or they can create their own somewhat a la carte theme more stylized to their personal preferences. From there, once the student has created their blog, they are good to go, ready to start sharing their thoughts and ideas with the wide, wide world. And when I say wide, wide world, I mean it. Take a look at my own blog stats below:

That’s right! I’ve gone international! Woo hoo! Also, people don’t seem to love Internet Explorer as much as Internet Explorer loves people.

In addition to being open and available to the wide world, blogging is a two way communication which enables students to asynchronously interact with other students and the instructor. In and of itself, the ability for instant feedback is certainly available (subscription to the blog itself would enable the instructor to be notified immediately when a new post is made…). With the ability to embed links to other websites, video clips and images, I’ve never felt a lack of ability to transmit cues such as tone of voice, etc. nor have I felt myself discomfited in my preferred natural use of language. If anything, it is too easy to be natural and communicate with others when taking advantage of the ability to embed whatever I like. Finally, anyone arguing against the personal focus of the medium need only glance through the customization of the blog itself and tidbits I (and millions of other like me… well, maybe not quite like me) embed in our blogs on a daily basis to find themselves a lovely counterexample or two.

In comparison to the LMS that I have selected, I would have to say that blogger comes out on top in absolutely every aspect of blogging… Schoology does not, unfortunately, currently offer a blog option for anyone that is not an instructor.

Activity of my choice

Building from my activity of the previous blog, I would have to say that it could easily be assigned and completed using the blogging technology. (Evidence: the activity was designed from the assignments we complete weekly for Dr. Newberry and I, for one, have learned an incredibly amount through both their completion and through the classmate to classmate and instructor interactions we have had.)

In fact, I had originally considered designing the activity to be completed on their own blog because the blog allows for a) much more freedom from each individual student in the structure of their response and b) a greater sense of individual accountability because it is VERY apparent if each person has completed their own weekly blog on time while not as readily apparent in the discussion style forum. So then, why didn’t I go with the blog? Well:

1)   When introducing new technologies to students, how much can be done at one time?

While most of my high school students interact with a fair amount of technology on a regular basis, as previously mentioned, that is not necessarily academic technology, a fact I need to take into consideration when I design their work and anticipate the work load I’ll be creating for them.

2)   Blogs are out there. I’m international!

     As a teacher of minors, I have to be cognizant of the fact that bringing students to the Internet and having them put their ideas out there exposes them to the wide world as much as it exposes them to each other. What are my responsibilities here? How do I protect their privacy? Not knowing these answers scares me when I consider the possibilities as much as the positive possibilities excite me.

3)   Can I manage the blog of 85 AP Statistics students?

   Has that become too bulky to be effective? Having never worked with students on blogs before AND having increased the class size by 236%, I hate to bite off more than I can chew. Would this be more cumbersome than a discussion style forum? I just don’t know…

Being a one way (from teacher to student nonetheless), character limited technology; there is no feasible way in which my discussion assignment could proceed with Remind101.

On a side note, I was COMPLETELY on board with creating a class wiki for my AP statistics course. I was even starting to play around with cool *read geeky* names like Statipedia for it, but then I researched the rules for Wiki and found an answer to Dr. Newberry’s musings, at least for myself. I can’t use a class wiki because it can be edited by anyone in public who has an interest as noted by the Wiki Creation Policy. I wouldn’t be able to monitor individual student input to be able to assign credit for ideas and development and without the lure of points, high school students, unused to technology in education at this level would not, as a group, be able to reap the benefits that I would want for their time and effort. :-/