Sharing Online: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

This week we focused on sharing online and whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Just like almost everything else in life there is a good side a bad side and even an ugly side. When we talk about sharing online we have to consider so many different ways that we share. We can share personal information, work related information, information about out kids and information about our students. Just like Roxanne mentions, no matter what we are sharing, we always need to think about who is seeing the information and what will the effects of that share be? I will attempt to look at all sides and share my thoughts on all of this.

The Good

Screen Shot of my Facebook Account

There are many ways that sharing online can be positive. I’ll start with sharing our personal lives online. For me personally I have decided to share most of my personal information on Facebook because I have my privacy set highest on that account. I also have a limited number of friends and family on the account having only 204 people on my friends list (many of which are family). Although I have always been cautious of who I add online this number used to be closer to 500. I would say that at least once a year I go back over my friends list and delete people I don’t feel as connected to anymore. I don’t want to share information about my life or my kids life with people who I consider to only be acquaintances. In order to decide who I keep online I ask myself if I saw that person in the mall from a distance would I make the effort to go and talk to them. If the answer is no I delete them, if it’s yes I keep them. This is my way of keeping myself comfortable with the information I am sharing with my Facebook community.

Amy discusses sharing information about her kids and mentions that she is mindful of what she is posting and I am the same way. Even though I feel like it’s my close family and friends on my friend list I am always wondering if my kids will want to see this in the future. I also ask myself is this something my family and friends would appreciate or find nice to see? If it’s a rant, or me complaining about something I refrain from posting because I’m sure people don’t want to see that. I like the ability to share milestones, celebrations and pictures with family and friends who aren’t able to see my kids on a regular basis as well. In my life this is a big positive for social media. While I like to share, I tried to avoid being a “sharent“.

In our classrooms sharing can be an awesome way to keep parents in the know, communicate with students and share our classroom activities and student progress. Kathy Cassidy from Moose Jaw, Sk shares how student blogging has helped her students in the classroom. When students share online it can make them more accountable and they may produce better work. Teachers are able to share resources with other teachers and collaborate to make better resources. We talked a lot about not reinventing the wheel and this is a great way for teachers to work together. There are a lot of different benefits of sharing student work online. I think it’s a great way for students to share work beyond the four walls of their classroom. I also like that when students share with a larger audience they feel their work has a bigger impact. When they receive valuable comment from others it gives even more meaning to their work.

The Bad

While there are definite positives to sharing online, there are also negatives. As parents we can choose what we want to share about our kids, but we need to think about the long term digital footprints we are creating for our children. Sharenting can be a bad thing when we are sharing information that our children may be embarrassed by when they see it later. By sharing information about our kids we are creating their digital footprint. Do we have the right to create their online identity for them before they have any control over it? It is easy for us to post about our frustrations as parents thinking that we are only exposing information about our own lives when in fact we are exposing our children as well. We need to remember that digital footprints are like tattoos.  When posting online about your students keep this video in mind.

The Peel School District provides some social media guidelines that I think are important in preventing the bad from taking over. One guideline that stood out for me was the professional boundaries. I know teachers who are friends with students on Facebook and I have never been too sure about that. I think that it could be very easy for conversations or posts to become unprofessional or though of as so. Social media does allow us to connect with one another but we need to make sure that our connections with students are professional. In these guidelines it also suggests when to share student work. The bad side of sharing student work could be that students aren’t happy with the product once it is shared and that will be on the internet forever.

The Ugly

Sometimes information we share can go from bad to ugly. This was the case with Amanda Todd, a young girl who took her own life after a shared photo of her lead to extreme bullying. There are many similar cases in which information shared on social media results in such negative things. Sharing publicly could also leave you more susceptible to identity fraud as is the case with Alec who has been dealing with the issue for a few years now.

What Do We Do?

So, what do we do? How do we ensure that our sharing online is a positive thing? We all need to be aware of our digital footprint and the digital footprint we are creating for others when we share. We need to teach students that anytime something is shared online it’s there forever. We need to take care of our digital footprint and be proactive about it because if we aren’t, then someone else will.  We need to be mindful of what we are sharing and consider the lasting effects it will have. We also need to encourage people to share and have an online presence that is positive. I think a lot of people are afraid to share because we are worried about putting ourselves out there and worried about who will see it. The more we put ourselves out there and establish an online identity, the easier it will be to control it and prevent bad things from happening. The most important thing is to start teaching this from a very young age. Our students and children are growing up in a world where devices are used daily. They need to know what is appropriate and what is not and how to create a positive online identity.

Itlaian 101: And the award goes to…

This semester I was given the opportunity to learn something – just like I am given the opportunity in any other class. However the opportunity was presented much different than it has been presented in any other class. I was given the opportunity to pick something that I was interested in and learn about it using technology and online connections to help me along the way.

Obviously when you are given the opportunity to learn about anything a lot of possibilities run through your head. I wanted to choose something that I would enjoy learning about. I wanted to learn something that I could use at some point in the future. I would have loved to pick something creative like sewing or knitting, but I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money purchasing materials along the way (especially with my limited income on maternity leave). So I decided I would learn a language.

Photo Credit: Free Grunge Textures – www.freestock.ca via Compfight cc

The language I decided on was Italian. Why? Well I didn’t want to do French because I already have some experience with speaking French having gradated with a French 30 credit (even though that credit is from way back in 2004). I wanted to start with a clean slate. In my travels I have spent some time in Italy and I just love everything about the country. The food, the culture, the scenery, the cities and of course the language. I have always thought that it would be great to learn a language and be able to travel and use it someday. Now that I have been learning some of the language maybe it’s time to go back.

Throughout the semester I found a lot of resources that are very useful in learning a language online and found even more that seemed to be of little help. If you want to check out all of the resources I  reviewed in detail look back at some of my previous posts. But here is a quick list of my top resources for learning Italian online broken down into categories.

To practice site words, memory work and phrases.

WINNER: Duolingo – great tool for rote memorization and practicing words & phrases. Uses audio, text, written and spoken language. The biggest negative is the sentences that are used to practice sometimes – they don’t make a lot of sense and you wouldn’t use them in daily conversations very often.

RUNNER UP: Babbel – similar to Duolingo but is a paid service. This focuses on themes for each lesson and can be helpful in learning phrases for basic conversation or travel. Uses mostly writing and listening to complete the lessons.

Honorable Mention: Mango – A free online service provided by the library in Regina. Similar to Babbel in the sense that you practice basic phrases and conversation by listening and repeating the audio.

To listen to audio.

WINNER: News in Slow Italian  – provides slower audio with text to read along. The text is also translated into English to help with further comprehension.

RUNNER UP: The Italian Experiment – this site is good but provides limited resources. There are three audio books you can listen to and follow along with text. The text is also translated into english. It is a great site but would be nice if new material would be added.

Videos

WINNER: Learn Italian with Lucrezia  – most of her videos are fairly short and very informative which make them really nice to watch. The lessons range from beginner to advanced. She also has an instagram and twitter account that I would suggest following.

RUNNER UP: Learn Italian Words App – this app works offline and has a large variety of video lessons ranging from beginner to advance.

Social Media

WINNER: Twitter – @italianlanguage Instagram – italianwordoftheday – both accounts provide you with one word a day to practice and learn. The Twitter account gives you a word and a sentence most days to learn. The Instagram account gives you a word with a picture each day, but no sentence.

RUNNER UP: Twitter @ItalianLearn this account also gives you a word a day and you can click on a link that will take you to a sentence that uses the word and audio for the pronunciation.

Speaking with Others

WINNER: WeSpeke – a great tool to connect and chat with others online.

 

 

Italian 101: WeSpeke and LiveMocha

For my final post discussing my progress and learning journey I will be focusing on my connections I made with others online in order to practice speaking Italian. I shouldn’t say speaking Italian because I didn’t end up speaking to anyone face to face, but I had a few conversations with people to test out my skills and learn along the way.

After searching for different ways to connect and chat with others online I came across WeSpeke. This website is an online community that allows you to connect with people who speak a language you would like to learn. In return, you help them learn your language by chatting/speaking to them. I was a little nervous about joining because I didn’t know if I was ready to connect with people through Skype, but I was happy to learn that I could simply chat with others through the site.

When you sign up the site will ask you for your native language and the language you are interested in learning. It will also ask you to rate on a scale of 1-5 your level of mastery for the language you want to learn. It will then give you a list of profiles for people on the site that may be a good match for you. From there you can select some people to connect with and start chatting away.

The most difficult part of using the website is dealing with the time change. For myself it works because I am at home all the time being on maternity leave so I am able to be around to connect with people. Most of the people I connect with are in Europe so it is usually late evening for them when we connect. It may be hard for you to connect with people depending on the time change between you and them and of course daily schedules.

I was able to connect with a couple of people and have a very brief basic conversation. It was nice to be able to connect and put my skills to work. I quickly found that I don’t have all the basics down and I need to refer to a translator like Google translate often to help me complete sentences. Even though I needed to refer to a translator and get help from time to time it was a great learning experience. Certainly more realistic than practicing with Duolingo. Here are a few snapshots from my conversation using WeSpeke.

 

One thing I did find after using Google Translate is that it sometimes translates differently than what I have learned using Duolingo or other sites. Sometimes I was sure of what I wanted to say but would double check it using the translator and it would be very different from what I thought it should be. I know that the languages don’t always translate word for word, so maybe the way I was interpreting it was a little different.

I enjoyed using the website and decided to download the app because I can log in and chat more conveniently when I have my phone with me. The service is free and I would recommend it to anyone trying to learn a language.

Livemocha is another site that allows you to use others in order to help you learn. This site works a little different than WeSpeke. Rather than connecting and having conversations with others, you complete lessons and others will give you feedback based on your work. You can listen and see the work of others as well and give feedback to them so they can learn.  There is a points system involved that allows you to earn points by completing lessons and giving feedback on lessons that others have completed. You have to use points to ‘purchase’ lessons to complete so it ensures that you can’t just take and only use the service to complete lessons and get feedback. You must also give back and review lessons completed by others.  I didn’t find the service to be super useful and didn’t get feedback from anyone on any lessons I did. I’m not sure how others find my lessons to review. From what I can tell a list of lessons appears on the screen and you just select one that you want to review. So it could take a while before someone picks your lesson to review. For anyone wanting to give the site a try, you have limited time as it is closing down as of April 22, 2016 with no reason stated for ending.

There were a few other websites that I looked at but didn’t use or investigate for a variety of reasons. Some of the websites looked to be a little ‘sketchy’ or unprofessional so I wasn’t sure about the people I would find on the site or safety of the site as well. These were mostly pen pal sites that I had searched. Other sites like italki are paid tutoring sites. I signed up because it was recommended by someone who commented on my blog, but I didn’t realize it was a paid service so I didn’t investigate it.

One site that I came across that I think would be really awesome to join is Conversation Exchange.  This site connects you with someone to practice a language. Once you have practiced and learned the language you are able to fly to the country of the person you have been meeting with online and have them host you for a stay. In exchange you will do the same for them. It sounds like a neat way to learn a language and travel as well, but I would be a little scared to take the leap and join. I am sure you could make some great connections, but I always worry about connecting with strangers online. But like their FAQ page states, you are only strangers for a short time and then you become friends. I would like to look into it more and read some reviews to see how it has worked for others.

If you were learning a language would you try to use a site like Conversation Exchange?

Be A Slacktivist. It’s Better Than Nothing.

Slacktivsm. Up until this past week I had never heard the term before. I was aware of the online support through shares, likes and comments but didn’t know that those types of activities fall under the term slacktivism. Abby Rosmarin describes slacktivism as just that – “when people do something online in support of a certain cause or event, such as sign a petition or share a news article, that requires little time and/or thought.”

Slacktivism Charlie Brown | Flickr User Elijah van der Giessen | Flickr Creative Commons

As with anything there are two views with slacktivism. There are those that believe slacktivism doesn’t work (like Scott Gilmore) and those who believe that any activism even online activism is better than no activism.  I tend to agree with the latter.

Gilmore argues that simply liking a status, sharing an article, wearing a pin or clothes to support a cause does nothing to actually help the cause. He states that if you want to make a difference you either need to pay money by donating or volunteer your time. I feel the same way as my fellow classmate, Adam, does with regards to this. I think that you can show your support in many ways different ways including donating, volunteering, sharing and liking things online as well as wearing pins or a certain colour shirt. I don’t think you HAVE to volunteer your time or donate to all causes. In fact, it’s almost impossible to donate or volunteer your time to every cause that’s out there right now (trust me…there’s a lot). It’s great that there are so many causes but we have to pick and choose how and where we spend our time and money.

Just yesterday I was shopping and at three different stores I was asked to make a donation to a cause/foundation. I donated to the first one and not the last two. Were they all causes I would support? Absolutely. Each one was in support of children. Children with disabilities, reading programs and illnesses. Should I have supported each one? I suppose I could have, but financially I am just not able to donate to everything I am asked to. In our house we pick a few charities and foundations each year to support based on what we feel is important to us. One year it might be to support mental illness, another year it might be to support the heart and stroke foundation. We simply cannot afford to make donations time and time again.

So what do we do? Well…we wear coloured shirts, we re-tweet to help raise money for causes when companies will pay for each retweet or hashtag used, we like statuses and share posts. Does this mean we aren’t doing our part? No it doesn’t. We go further than just Facebook likes by talking with family and friends about the issues that matter to us. Sometimes we buy products that donate money to a cause because every once in a while it’s nice to treat yourself and have something to show your support too.

Photo Credit: FiorellaG8 via Compfight cc

Going back to the other half of Gilmore’s argument in regards to volunteering, I can’t say I agree with that either. Not everyone has time on their hands that they can volunteer or go on a missions trip. Some of us have jobs, families and other responsibilities that make it extremely difficult to volunteer (especially for a cause like the Nigerian school girls). For some of us we can’t simply get up and leave to go fight for these girls or work as an aid. So we choose to use the hashtag for the cause #BringBackOurGirls so that we can do our part by simply raising awareness so that those who can help more might be reached. We use the hashtag to show that we support the cause.

I do think it is important to volunteer and donate when we can. It’s not enough to simply like, share and re-tweet things online. We have to go beyond our screens and talk about it in real life. We need to continue to support where we can and reach out to support those people we cannot help in person because we are too far away. We need to work with each other to create a voice that fights for justice, peace and equality.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds via Compfight cc

 

Italian 101: Kickin’ it Old School

In my last post I talked about brining old school methods into my new school learning project. This past week I decided to look into some old school ways to learn online. I was able to find a few things on my own and I was also able to use some resources that have been suggested by others in the class or different places online. I have been working with flashcards, lessons, books, audio and workbooks this past week. I haven’t spent a lot of time focusing on each, but have worked with each resource enough to understand whether or not it would be helpful moving forward. I will be reviewing the following in the blog:

1. The Italian Experiment (website)
2. International Children’s Digital Library (website) 
3. Quizlet (website/app) 
4. Basic Italian and Grammar Workbook (online PDF) 
5. News in Slow Italian

The Italian Experiment

I’ve mentioned the Italian Experiment in a previous post and haven’t gotten around to talking much about it. I was introduced to this lesson from a chat that I was part of on Duolingo. The website is made up of lessons, stories (with audio and translation) as well as reviews of online courses. I have spent some time listening to the Three Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears on this site. I like that you can listen to the audio, read the Italian text and also see the translation in English. There is a lot of repetition in each of the stories so I was able to pick up on some of the terms and sentences by the end of each story. In terms of the lessons, they are very basic and cover introductory topics. I personally like the lessons because they cover the essentials for learning any language. I like that the lessons provide knowledge that will help you further understand the lessons. I read over the reviews of the Italian Language courses but never looked any further into them as each one requires a purchase and most are quite expensive.

Duolingo Chat

A List of Lessons from Italian Experiment

Three Little Pigs from Italian Experiment

An Italian Experiment Lesson

International Children’s Digital Library

After some fellow classmates (Amy & Genna) have read books in another language I decided I would give it a shot. After all if you are trying to learn the language you should be reading it as well. This site was suggested by a classmate (sorry that I can’t recall who mentioned it or where I saw it, but thanks for sharing). This site was created for families who have moved to new countries where it may be difficult to find books in their native language or for families who need to learn a new language upon moving. It is suited for more people than those who have moved to a new country of course. Take me for example…someone who wants to learn a new language to travel or as a hobby. It is free to use and you can access books that are recommended for ages 3-13. You can search books by fiction, non-fiction, characters, age group and language. Many of the books are translated into multiple languages. The text for the book is given in the language you selected to read which is one downside. For someone like me who is just learning it is difficult to understand the books (even at a 3-5 age). I have to translate the book each time I read one which is a good thing because it challenges me to think and pick out words I know, but it is also time consuming. In my video below I took a screen shot of the Italian and English version of the same book. I put each page onto a slide so you can see the translation. The translation doesn’t translate back and forth between Italian and English quite as I thought it would. Here I am reading a story from the International Children’s Digital Library. I’m sure I am mispronouncing some of the words and I know my r’s still don’t sound the way they should so please excuse my rookie mistakes.

Quizlet

Quizlet is an online flashcard maker. You are able to create your own sets as well as find other sets that have been created by users. You can practice the flashcards by using the different features included in the program. I think its a really useful tool, however I have a feeling I would do better making flashcards with pen and paper as opposed to using a keyboard to make them. Check out my quick review below.

Basic Italian and Grammar Workbook

I found this workbook searching for online learning resources. It is developed by lecturers at the University of Turin in Italy and University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland. I haven’t printed the workbook out because it’s 194 pages, but I have scrolled through it and skimmed it. It is definitely an old school workbook full of information, exercises and answers. From what I can see it is a great resource for providing more than just words. There is a lot of information and a decent amount of practice for each unit. The amount of information isn’t overwhelming however. This is something that I would like to print off one unit at a time to read and practice. I bookmarked this PDF and don’t know how I cam across it. I’m not sure if it is supposed to be printed or even presented as a PDF online. I don’t know if there are any copyright issues with this. I hope not!

A sample lesson

A sample exercise

Answers for the exercises

News in Slow Italian

This is a great website that I came across a few weeks ago but never explored until the last few days. This is a GREAT resource for anyone looking to learn Italian. There are different pages for beginner, intermediate and advance users. I focused on the beginner level. Each level includes lessons with audio to help you learn Italian. When you are listening to a lesson you can hover your mouse over the Italian text which will display the English translation. The beginners lessons have very little Italian but they progress as you go along. I believe a subscription is needed to have full functionality of all the lessons. The intermediate new shows are great to listen to. I am usually able to piece together enough information using the Italian I have learned with the help of the English translations. There seems to be a lot of features and different ways to interact with the site so it is a great place to explore if you are learning Italian.

A beginner lesson

An intermediate lesson

I hope that some of my resources help you learn Italian if you are trying to learn the language. I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the resources I have shared.

Ciao!

Italian 101: Italian on the go? Not so much.

Just realized I never published this post! Yikes!! I found it in my drafts. I think I was hoping to add to it but I will share now so that it’s included in my major project progress. It was from March 12th.

I didn’t have a blog post last week reviewing my major project progress because there wasn’t a lot of progress to talk about. Last week I was in Florida with my family taking in Disney World. I thought that I would be able to get a lot of practice in during the flights and layovers heading down and back but that wasn’t the case. On the first flight from Regina to Toronto I quickly discovered that my go to apps Duolingo and Babbel require use of the internet to use them. So on my first flight I wasn’t able to do any practicing.

Screenshot of Duolingo from my phone

Screenshot of Babbel from my phone

When we landed in Toronto I used the free Wi-fi to download some lessons from Babbel so they would be available to use on the next flight. I was able to make it through only one lesson with a very poor score I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something like 40/78. I found it very difficult to concentrate when flying. It might be from having my son right beside me who seemed to need something from me every few minutes, or all the background noise, or maybe just because I have a fear of flying and get extremely anxious on flights. I was hoping the lessons would help me relax a bit by distracting me, but I think it created more stress haha. Maybe my next online learning journey will be participating in this Fear of Flying Course. 

If you read my blog post about my detox with technology you’ll know that I was rarely on my phone during my trip. I was far too busy and exhausted by the end of each day so thinking about practicing was even too much to handle. I decided to take a few days off and hopefully my skills wouldn’t decrease too much in the days I wasn’t practicing. I was mistaken. When I got home, my fluency on Duolingo was only 13% (down from my previous high of 16%) and almost every one of my skills was missing strength bars. It was overwhelming and a little discouraging to think I would have to go back and redo all of the lessons to strengthen skills. But after seeing another classmate, Amy, with a very high fluency percent in her language she is learning I was determined to bring my fluency up. I practiced quite a bit in the few days I returned home and was able to bring my fluency up to 20%. You can see that on Sunday I did 24 lessons to get 240pts in order to bring my fluency up to 20% from 13%. I am still trying to refrain from being to caught up in the fluency percent as I think it varies a lot and to be honest I don’t think that I became 7% more fluent on Sunday from doing those 24 lessons, but I’ll humour myself and the app.

Screen shot of my fluency on Sunday March 6

Screenshot of my activity March 6-10

You can see in the picture of my activity that I have 13 hours left before I complete all the lessons. With about 30 days before class ends that would mean I have to practice about 25 minutes a day to complete the course. I know that 25 minutes a day doesn’t seem like a lot, but some days I don’t have the time to practice so it does seem like a challenge to find 25 minutes for the next 30 days to complete it, but maybe I can do it.

 

Over the next few weeks I will be looking at using different apps and websites to learn Italian. I will try to read one book in Italian and also connect with someone online to communicate with.

Italian 101: New School Requires Old School

I feel like I have so much to talk about when it comes to my learning project. This weeks focus will be on my experience using Twitter, Instagram, blogs and Facebook to connect with others in order to learn Italian. I am also going to talk about my progress with Duolingo (which is still my go to app). The last thing I will talk about is how new school learning requires old school methods. I have included a few videos reviewing the accounts I follow. They are quite long and not very polished unfortunately (it wasn’t a good day for vlogging in my life but I had  been trying to get these videos done since last Thursday so I just wanted to get them finished finally).

Twitter

I started following a variety of accounts on Twitter. I have found that of the accounts I follow very few seem to be very helpful in learning the language. I have attempted to tweet a few times in Italian but most of the time I need to use a translator to help me form a complete sentence.

A tweet to classmate Elizabeth who is also learning Italian

I feel as though I am on the right track with using Twitter to learn a language but I need to find more accounts that are useful to follow. I took the advice from my feedback by Katia and decided to create a list on Twitter of the people I follow to learn Italian. It will be much easier to locate and focus my learning on Twitter now.

My learning Italian Twitter list

In the following video I take you through some of the Twitter accounts I have recently followed and give you a brief overview of each. Some of them are much better than others and I will continue to follow them after this class, but at the end of class I will go back and delete some of the accounts that I have found are less useful.

Instagram

I have found a few accounts to follow on Instagram and also created an Instagram account that I tried to use to share some of my learning. I say tried to use because I haven’t really kept up with it. I found that I wasn’t able to attract any followers and because of that I quickly lost interest. It is something that I should reconsider however because I think that a photo blog or flash card type posts are a great way to learn.  I have actually also had trouble locating my account to share on here. My account name is AshleyLearnsItalian and it was created as a second account on my phone. I have taken a few screenshots to share so that you can see what I had done.

I have also reviewed all of the accounts I have followed. I would love to find more to follow and will keep an eye out for more accounts that I can learn from.

Blogs and Facebook

Through my blog I was able to connect with Stephanie who had commented on my blog. She was able to suggest a Facebook page for me to follow – I’mpariamo l’italiano. Unfortunately I found the page to be beyond my current level of understanding but maybe someday I will be able to use the site. Stephanie also recommended iTalki which I had heard of before but after having her recommend it I am making it a goal to use it before the end of class. I of course started following Stephanie’s blog and have found it quite nice to read and learn from. I also started following the Conversational Italian blog through the @travelitalian1 twitter account. Here is my review of Facebook and the blogs I follow.

Duolingo

I have decided the reason I keep going back to Duolingo is because it is just like a game. It makes learning a little more fun. But I have also discovered that because it is like a game I often don’t focus as much as I should when I am using it preventing me from actually absorbing the material at times. I am wondering if it has become a way for me to procrastinate or kill some time yet still learn something.  I have also added the Italian keyboard to my phone to help me with spelling Italian words when using Duolingo. Check out this video on my progress and experience this past week using Duolingo.

New School Requires Old School

This whole time I have been so focused on using online tools to learn that I have assumed I would be able to learn a language without writing anything down. I know I said in an earlier post that one of my goals was to write down words that I was having trouble remembering but I never stuck to that (it seems to be a reoccurring theme for me…setting goals only to forget about them). The problem is that learning is tough, especially online independent learning. There are so many goals I could set and so many different things that I can be working on that would be helpful. The trouble is knowing which goals I should continue to work on or which methods will help me the most. I was emailed a few articles that have some tips for learning a language on your own and although I am using technology to learn online, that doesn’t mean I give up traditional ways of learning completely. For example, when trying to memorize words it is useful to write the words down on a flashcard.  It’s also important to organize your time, make it fun and stay focused.  And if all else fails guess or make up the words you are looking for. You just might surprise yourself.

I am happy to say that my scores on my reflection rubric for this week have improved since last week so I obviously feel like I am making progress.

Employability Goes Online

Just as other classmates have done this week, I too Googled myself. Logan discussed a key point that I have always thought about when thinking about doing a Google self search or Egosurfing. When he searched for himself he was able to find some information relevant to him, but when he searched other classmates he was unable to find a lot of information directly related to them. Why is this? I think that it depends on the uniqueness of the name being searched. For example, if I search myself under my maiden name Ashley Dejaegher, I find a lot of information about my hockey life. There is some information from my undergrad work but most is related to hockey (a small portion of my life). If I search myself using my current name, Ashley Murray, I have a hard time finding a lot about myself. There are some links to work I had completed last semester in EC&I 832, but not a whole lot more. There is a however lot of information about other Ashley Murrays.

It’s pretty obvious that Ashley is a very common name but I wasn’t sure just how popular it was so I decided to see if I could find out. I found a site based on the population of the United States and there are 510,770 people in the US alone with the name Ashley and it’s the 114th most popular name. I also search the last name Murray and there are 213,130 people with that last name so chances are there are quite a few people who share my name. In the United States there are fewer than 120 people with the last name Dejaegher so it is quite uncommon. Chances are if you have a more common name you may not find as much information about yourself.

Luke brings up a good point about how we can make ourselves more visible online. If we have a common name, how can we make sure that people can find our twitter pages or our blogs? I found myself wondering the same thing and basically found that it all boils down to the popularity of your blog for example. The more people you have visiting your site or twitter page, the more popular it will come which will bounce it up in Google searches. I also came across how to use a search engine optimization (SEO) to increase the visibility of your blog on search engines by using different techniques while blogging.

Photo Credit: arbyreed via Compfight cc

I am among the percent of social media users who changes their privacy settings on my accounts. My Facebook and Instagram pages have high privacy settings. The reason I have my settings this way is because I use Facebook and Instagram to connect and share with people who I have personal relationships with. My friends list on both platforms is quite small in comparison to others. On Facebook I have 201 friends of which probably 50 are family. On Instagram I have 133 followers. This is because I have chosen to keep my friends lists limited. Every so often I go back and delete people who I no longer feel a close connection to. I don’t add people easily either. I have decided to keep it limited because I don’t want everyone and anyone knowing about my personal life. I think that teachers are held to a higher standard so I tried to keep things private just in case anything that might be thought of as inappropriate pops up. But sometimes it would be nice to just be an average person too. 

Just like Vanessa I believe that online identity is only a small portion of our actual identity. Our identities are made up of so many different things and each part is as important as any other part depending on what you are doing. That being said, I don’t believe our online identity should make or break us as a person. Something we need to realize is that what happens online stays online…literally. Luke argues that it should be considered a digital tattoo as opposed to a digital footprint and I would have to agree. In order to prevent our students from an array of negative/inappropriate digital tattoos we need to work with them to create positive online images. We need students to showcase their work and demonstrate their learning so that they can create a reputation for themselves that is positive.  It should come as no surprise that employers use social media to hire people but keeping that in mind I do think that resumes should reflect your online image and vice versa. We have seen instances in the last few days where candidates running for the Saskatchewan NDP have lost their jobs because of posts. I think that in order for the NDP to maintain a positive reputation they had no choice but to eliminate those candidates, but in the case of a person going to a job interview I do think that their online identity can be brought up and questioned before making a final decision. Perhaps it was something that happened years ago when the candidate was young and immature.

I think it’s important to keep an eye out on Google and search yourself every now and then to see what comes up. Maybe you’ll notice more posts showing up in Google as your blog becomes more popular. If you’re worried about how your online reputation can hurt your job hunt check out these tips.

Porn. Let’s Talk About It.

Porn. It’s out there and it’s coming for your kids! I’m totally kidding…well somewhat. The reality is that porn IS out there. Porn is easily accessible online and there is no shortage of it.  A simple search on the internet will allow you to find things you may be curious about and much more. Another reality is that porn isn’t some monster that is coming after your kids lurking in every corner of the internet waiting to expose itself to them. There is a lot to talk about when it comes to pornography and my hope is to talk about some of the issues and concerns we might have about it.

Before we get going, here are some stats about teens and pornography.

Infographic provided by Covenanteyes.com

I think we need to address the difference between situations where kids are actively seek pornography out of curiosity, entertainment or satisfaction and kids who might come across it by accidentally searching something that brings them to see something they weren’t intending on seeing. These are two completely different situations and need to be address differently with each child. For the children who are actually searching out of curiosity or for other reasons we need to understand that it is natural for boys and girls to be curious about sex and body parts. Jeff Hay discovered his son had found pictures of naked women online and was taken aback before realizing that he was once a curious boy who used the Sears catalogue to look at the women’s bra section to satisfy his curiosity.

When I tired of Star Wars figurines, Atari games, and Hot Wheels, I would then look both ways for parents, then my nimble fingers would find the women’s bras section. I can’t be the only one to have done that…gosh, I feel so vulnerable right now.

The only difference from when he was a kid and now is that the medium has changed. Kids no longer have to find a hidden Playboy or search through the catalogues to find pictures. They can do a simple search and have all the images they want. Jeff provides some good advice on how to deal with the situations and like many others the advice is to not “freak out”. We need to be able to have open conversations with our kids about this. We can still give consequences, but we have to talk about our kids about pornography and why they are actively searching for it. Talking to your kids about pornography should happen at a young age and should involve discussing the messages that can be sent in different media including commercials and tv shows. I think it’s important for kids to understand the difference between fantasy and reality when it comes to porn. We need to teach them about healthy sexual relationships and expectations.

Ontario is taking a step forward with a new sex ed curriculum to help students cope with coming across inappropriate content online. As the article states, we know our students can easily access inappropriate content whether it be on purpose or not. Schools can set firewalls that will help prevent students from coming across anything inappropriate, but once students bring their own devices or access computers at home, anything can happen. It is important for us to teach students what to do and who to talk to when they see something that makes them uncomfortable. Students shouldn’t be left in the dark after seeing something for fear they will be in trouble. For some children, especially younger children seeing sexual images can be very confusing which is why we need to address the issues in an appropriate way.

Photo Credit: seansinnit via Compfight cc

There are a lot of great resources that can be helpful in having the pornography discussion with your students and kids. MediaSmarts has some really helpful information. You can also learn ways to prevent your kids from accessing porn on your computer.

I like that Ontario is taking a step in the right direction and think that more provinces including ours should jump on board. What do you think? When is to young to talk about porn? Is it ever to early to talk about? I think there are different conversations that can happen at different ages, but we must have these conversations to help our children develop healthy sexual habits, relationships and expectations.

Italian 101: La Mia Familia and Mango Language

This past week was spent using Mango Languages alongside Duolingo to continue my journey in learning Italian. Mango Languages was introduced to me by Brittany a fellow classmate who is learning German as part of her major project. In order to sign up for Mango I needed to have a public library card through the city of Regina. I was able to login using the link found on the Regina Public Library e-learning services site. When I logged in I was able to create my profile, select my language and do a placement test before beginning. You can find the video of my placement test in this post. If you’d like to see how to get started with Mango Languages and how it looks check out my brief tutorial.

In this video I explain how the lessons work and give a brief review of what I like and don’t like about the lesson format.

For the most part I have nothing negative to say about Mango Languages. The only thing I don’t like is the voice comparison feature. I don’t like that I have to listen for myself to see how my voice compares to the narrators voice in terms of pronunciation. I prefer Duolingo’s voice recognition software that will tell me if my pronunciation is correct or not (although I sometimes feel the software is a little off). If you are looking to practice speaking and reading Mango is great for that. There is no written practice and you do not get to read Italian and then answer in English like you can with Duolingo.

I decided to make this quick slideshow to showcase some of the skills I learned using Mango this past week. I learned a bit more than the slideshow demonstrates but if I wanted to showcase all of my learning it would have been a pretty random presentation so I decided to just focus on my family because I was pretty excited to have learned how to introduce family members in Italian.

A few things I have learned in the few short weeks I have been learning Italian:

1. I  have found that I cannot take a day off from practicing the language as it seems to fade quite quickly.
2. I continue to struggle with endings of verbs depending on the context of the sentence.
3. I am not great a pronouncing a lot of the words yet and also struggle to roll my r’s.
4. There are slight similarities between French and Italian that I have to really think hard about in order to use the correct language. These similarities cause me grief sometimes, but often it helps me because the Italian word is so similar to the French word that I can relate them and it helps me remember it.

Some goals moving forward:

1. Practice EVERYDAY! Even if it’s only enough time for one lesson. It will be better than nothing and will keep the basics fresh. Every little bit counts right?
2. Write down pronunciations and words that I struggle to remember rather than continuing to make the same mistake over and over. When I put the pen to paper it helps me remember things a lot better.
3. Explore a different app/website each week while continuing to use the Duolingo app on my phone.

What I hope to accomplish over the course of this project:

1. I want to feel confident in my basic communication skills. I will know I have accomplished this when I reach out to someone to have a conversation with them.
2. Become at least 50% fluent in Italian using Duolingo to document this percentage. I am currently still only 3% which is a little discouraging because I have completed a lot of lessons and come a long way since I started. I haven’t been using Duolingo as much because I have been focusing more on Mango this past week. I am hoping 50% is a realistic goal.
3. I want to have at least three conversations with someone else speaking Italian starting March 7.

I have also decided to create a reflection rubric to use each week after seeing some classmates create rubrics for their project. I figure this is a good way to keep me accountable and compare my week to week progress.

Next week my major focus will be on Babbel. This is a paid service so I don’t know how long I will choose to use it but I will try it out. I plan on continuing to use Duolingo and Mango as well.

Ciao!