Week 10 Discussion Post, Participation Gap

I am not a full time teacher yet, but the subject field of the participation gap that is existent in schools is a topic that needs to be written about more. As stated in the discussion question, the participation gap is held by students that realize that they do not have the same opportunities, resources, and/or knowledge, which then then use to form a low self-worth or have issues with identity. The decreased value of themselves that they see, in turn, affects there participation in school or halts their drive to succeed. Many factors can be prevalent in an issue such as one like this, however, since this is a web-design course, we can talk about how technology can play a role in this.

I only have two different teaching experiences, one was during my practicum in a diverse middle class area with a very high access to technology, and my student teaching in a similar district demographically, just with less access to technology. My practicum classroom, was a middle school classroom where each student was given their own Chromebook and participated digitally in the teacher's Google Classroom website. The class I student taught in had a projector in the classroom, and had access to computer labs if the teacher reserved the lab for particular dates.

The middle school students I taught were very proficient in technology at such a young age. They new how to download documents, annotate pdfs on the computer, conduct research, and understand the workings of Google Classroom. I am not too sure if all the high school students in my student teaching experience were able to do the same. Most of them did know how to use certain google apps, and conduct basic research. Although they did not have their own personal computers in the classroom, I think they were pretty knowledgeable in digital literacy mainly due from their personal experiences with smartphones, laptops, and other devices.

Although the students from my student teaching did not have as many resources in the classroom, they still had enough resources out of school that they were able to participate in the classroom. However, what about the students that do not have those resources inside or outside of the classroom? What if a school cannot afford computers for the students, and families cannot afford to have laptops? This can affect those students in the long run. Students who might not have the resources outside of school might not have the right skill set to keep up inside a classroom. On the other hand students without any resources that others have might have difficulty in the future when it comes to aspects like getting into college, or getting a job. The reason for that is mainly because since they do not have the resources, they do not have the experience using them. So when they get into the job market or into a college class, that student can fall behind. For this reason, educators must find a way to close this participation/educational gap. This is why we need creative teachers in districts that might have a lot of resources, because they can have the students build their critical thinking and inquiry skills that can help them face the challenges that they have ahead and overcome them.

Blog Post #7

The topic of copyright is a very important issue to discuss whether it is for the blog posts for this course or in the actual teaching process. At times throughout this course, the directions called for us to use non-copyrighted images for our videos. I appreciated that in our directions because it helped me find out how to find materials and images that are free from copyright that would be very useful to use. Despite having some experience during this course, I still need to learn about teachers and copyrighted materials because I want to be able to optimize the classroom by using materials, however, I do not want to get into any trouble while doing so.

In order to learn more, I used some resources from "Five-Minute Film Festival: Copyright and Fair Use for Educators." The first resource that I decided to use was "YouTube Copyright Basics." I was drawn to this resource mainly because of the title. During my student teaching experience, I tried to incorporate YouTube videos into my lectures to keep the students engaged and interested. After reading that title, I am curious to see if I had violated any copyrights while doing so. However, after watching the video, I quickly realized that simply showing any YouTube videos would not violate the copyright laws. Those laws mainly deal with creating the videos that go onto the site. The resource was actually pretty entertaining and could be used by people of all ages, even students. The copyright laws were explained by two puppets and the video used humor to explain the laws, thus making it more interesting. This technique took information that could be viewed as "boring" and really communicated it in a way that was explained simply and effectively. I would definitely recommend this video to those who want to learn more.

This can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp1Jn4Q0j6E&list=PLvzOwE5lWqhTbOCIFp_OxsN6nC-l20kMT&index=4

For the text resource from the list, I chose was "Teaching Copyright" which can be found on teaching copyright.org. I originally wanted to use a resource that discussed that told teachers about copyright laws and the materials that they use in their classrooms. Unfortunately, those links were broken, so instead, I picked the only other think with "teach" in the title since the YouTube video already gave me the basics of copyright laws. The basis of the site is not really completely applicable unless you are teaching copyright laws to your students, because it provides a curriculum for you to use to do so. However, there is a resources tab found on the site that can be helpful. As a visitor to the site, you can click on the links that would have been giving to the students, and learn about copyright that way. For example, they have copyright cases, videos, podcasts, and history information available. This is very important because as a teacher you want to be able to use resources in your classroom, however, at the same time, you do not want to take any credit from anyone else's work. This can be a subject you bring up to your students before you assign any projects or research papers to them.

This can be found at: https://www.teachingcopyright.org/about.html

MMP Update #1

Check out my MMP Update for this week!