Leah's Blog

Google Earth displays geographic data from a wide variety of sources together in a geospatial context. The data includes imagery for the entire globe and can be useful for educational purposes. Students can use it to find their homes, schools, and other locations familiar to them. They can make inferences by comparing familiar places to other locations. Additionally, students can learn about the world through mappable data and can create and display their own data. In the classroom, Google Earth can be used: to support hands-on inquiry by students in computer classrooms. as a basis for homework assignments. for dynamic presentations during class lectures. for inquiry during class presentations. to create imagery and maps for PowerPoint, Word, and other presentation tools. as a data discovery, organization, and distribution tool for research projects. to enrich discussion of an issue that arises spontaneously during an informal classroom discussion.(How to Teach With Google Earth, 2020)

Padlet seems like it would be a fantastic tool for teaching. You can share weblinks, type a message, record your voice, add a photo, or link to a document. I'm thinking about using Padlet for our produsage assignment coming up. I've never used this tool before and am interested in seeing the way I works. I created a Padlet here:  https://padlet.com/leahpie11/dogownership101  and would love if you'd check it out and maybe add something to my wall. I wanted to give it a try before including it into a formal lesson plan for students. I'm considering creating a lesson where students have to utilize Padlet to collect information for a research project and share ideas with each other. Here's a quick video that explains how to use Padlet as a student: Have you used Padlet before? Do you have any ideas for how I can include Padlet in a lesson for students?

We've been blogging for this class for a while and I've enjoyed the opportunity to learn from my peers and engage in interaction despite not being in the classroom together. This week I read the article Assessing the effects of interactive blogging on student attitudes toward peer interaction, learning motivation, and academic achievements.  The article states that  " blog platforms provide a personal writing space, which is easy to publish, sharable, and automatically archived, empowering users to form learning communities through inter-linkages" (Yang & Chang, 2012).  In fact, I'd argue that I've learned more from my interactions with others in this class than I would from a traditional teacher and textbook style of presentation. In a classroom, when a teacher poses a question, "students express their opinions without solid support from content they are studying, perhaps because there is not enough time to prepare or reflect. Disengaged students fre

On social media, users take on pseudonyms for all sorts of reasons. Some want to hide their identities while others want the freedom to post without having their comments linked back to their real names. However, some platforms such as Facebook and Google+ have guidelines about requiring users to keep real names so there is no anonymity or pseudonymity. Platforms such as Instagram or Reddit allow users to keep names such as animallover34 and destroyer82 which provides a sense of privacy to the user. So which one is better, pseudonyms or real names?  Arguments for pseudonyms include having protection to users who would like to share or discuss information that possibly puts them in a vulnerable situation. For example, a person with a disorder or illness may want to seek help from others on the web but may not want to reveal this to their friends and family. I experienced the use of pseudonyms during our community assignment when I followed a Reddit group. Many people refrained from usin