Michaela's Designing Digital Learning Journey

     The App Generation was enlightening to view both the positives and negatives of the use of technology. To an extent, I felt it connected greatly the elements presented in the Information Diet , but it wasn’t solely focused on information consumption; it was more holistic and focused more on the learner’s lifestyle along with the habits of an entire generation.       I work with a wide range of ages; my learners range from Gen Y, Gen X, and Gen Z. Therefore, the way they interact with technology is different; it’s not about their ability to interact with technology, but rather it’s about their views on technology mixed with their culture.      Here’s a quick example: my mom boils eggs on the stove with water whereas I use an egg maker to boil my eggs while taking a shower and getting ready in the morning. We have two different habits to complete the same task. Gardner does the same throughout his book as he compares som...

NetSmart, by Howard Rheingold, focuses on information literacy; it goes beyond research or synthesizing data. NetSmart reveals different types of literacies such as Attention, CRAP, Collaboration, Participation, and Net Smarts literacies.  I found a lot of Rheingold’s information overwhelming, but not in a negative way. It was overwhelming for me to think of the different literacies and how to amend what I have been teaching or practicing myself for years. How do I start fitting in “attention” when I work with team leads on their leadership skills? How do I help employees find useful resources while having them use the CRAP test? It’s a delicate balance of not giving them too much but also subtly enforcing each literacy. The balance and responsibility of teaching those literacies is what overwhelms me. But, if this program has taught me anything (which it has taught me a lot), I know that I don’t have to change my practices overnight; it’s a gradual change to cont...

In reading and reflecting on my peers’ comments from my previous blog post about the Information Diet , I realized how much we have to teach ourselves and our learners how to filter information. The CRAP test is simple, yet do we really do it? Are we addicted to the junk? Yes, we are, which creates an unhealthy and imbalanced relationship with information. But one thing that my peers agreed upon is focusing on teaching a “healthy” balance and helping our learners understand what they are reading, why they are reading it, and how it will impact them. And this is where the CRAP test is important! Their comments about “reading junk” and balancing our information intake really extended my understanding of how to implement a design plan with the element of building a healthy relationship with information. One of my peers also mentioned how information is thrown at our learners constantly whereas some of us grew up without technology and know how to take a step back (or at least ...

  When working with the interns at my company this past summer, they were shocked when they learned that they could reuse code. Their schools always scan code for plagiarism, and they can’t even reuse their own code; it always has to be from scratch. But in the real world, engineers share code for efficiency.  I had a conversation about this with an engineer, and they said, “if someone already created it, we use it and build on it”. We compared it to the structure of a story. Every story or fairytale follows the same structure (exposition, initiating event, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution).  What worries me is if students are able to understand the difference between copyright use in school vs real life (aka when is it appropriate and when is it inappropriate?). If we print copies or save a PDF of a document and give it to students, how would they understand that it’s not plagiarism/illegal? Or, if we find material online and pres...