Digital literacy is becoming a huge part of our daily lives, given the social climate of today and our heavy reliance on the internet for information. In the past ten years or so, I have found my own digital literacy to be lacking and worked hard to ensure that any information I am spreading online or in person is fact checked and proven by multiple trusted sources. I hope I have improved this part of my life, however, I feel that I am more scared to “claim” having knowledge of something now than I was before, in fear that I may be misinformed. As a future maths teacher, it would maybe not come up very much directly in my classes to deal with fake news or misinformation. But I think there would be opportunities to teach about skewed information, especially in graphs! It is very easy to create a graph of statistics and make it LOOK different than it is. For example, I created these two graphs to the right to show the same information in two different graphs, and how simple it is to skew information or perspectives. People can definitely do a better job than this, especially since a lot of online sources simple lie about the numbers. I also think it’s important to catch students if they are spreading misinformation, or to be able to discuss any questions about topics they may be conflicted about with hearing multiple perspectives. I also thinking, if I am able to teach about it, that I would like to discuss the ‘backfire effect’ within the brain, discussed in this comic called "You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you". This is the neurological process in which people deny or reject information that goes against their own beliefs because it is hard to accept being wrong on something that believe so deeply. Similarly stated and further explained in “it’s Easier To Call A Fact A Fact When It’s One You Like, Study Finds” by NPR. Also, in the ’10 Types of Fake News’ by PBS, I find it interesting that they labelled propaganda as neutral impact. If we look in the past, specifically in wars or conflicts, I will never consider propaganda as a neutral media. In fact, I think labelling propaganda as neutral is misinformation in itself, as it is not labelling it for what it really is! Giving it a more positive and acceptable view than it deserves. It is not appropriate or acceptable to spread propaganda in my opinion. I would like to teach students about propaganda, and it’s impacts as it seems to be the least noticed media misinformation. Overall, I think media literacy is extremely important in the growing world of today and even more important in our future and the students’ lives that we will be impacting.
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For this week of learning, I wanted to reflect back on my goals from the beginning of this project. Looking back, I wanted to learn about the crochet language and how to read patterns when there is not tutorial provided. Although I am still working on understanding patterns, I thought it would be a fun to try and make my own pattern for something! A couple of weeks ago, my sister asked me to make her a toque with bunny ears attached, in honour of her best friend who passed away two years ago. I couldn’t find a pattern for something I liked and felt fit what my sister wanted, so I knew I would have to make it up as I go, so this is my pattern I made! For this pattern, I saw two different styles of reading crochet so I wanted to try both. Both come with some base knowledge that I did not include in the images, but I learned online. This resource is great for learning the shorthand for stitches in crochet, and this resource is very helpful for learning the stitch chart style I did for the bunny ears sections! I also wanted to note that I did use a smaller hook than what the yarn called for, to ensure there were less gaps in the toque and it would be warm!
This week I learned a new perspective for making art with crochet. I continued to work on my flower bouquet a bit this week, but I struggled to commit to these crafts as I was worried it wouldn’t pay off in the long run. I kept thinking “if someone just pulls this string, the whole piece will fall apart!”, which kept me unmotivated and uninspired by these thoughts. Until I realized (!!! Big moment for me here!!!) that art is allowed to be fragile! In fact, most art is fragile! I realized this when I was read the quote “Most art is fragile, but some should be placed and never moved” by Donald Judd and I was reminded that people are paid to revarnish famous paintings, or how statues get chipped but are still considered incredible works of art history! I kept holding myself back with these flowers because a lot of it is loose, random and not tied together at every point, making it breakable if you gave it a bit too much love. Or even that these pieces wouldn’t sit the same at all times and would curl, twist, stretch and shrink really bothered me because I felt like my hard work wasn’t showing through this project! Realizing that art can be fragile and that these pieces don’t need to be bullet proof has really changed my perspective on what I can or should make! I love the look of these flowers, but hated how delicate they were, but now I love the look AND how delicate and fragile they are – like real flowers! Granted these flowers aren’t weak or bad, they’re just a little less structured than a blanket or a toque! I worked on a sunflower mainly this week! The loops for the seeds on the sunflower are delicate and could come out if they were pulled a little too hard, but I think it looks amazing! It was very worth the work, and this realization ahs really opened up my perspective on crochet!
Coding is… hard. I am not the best with technology already, but I find making things with technology is very difficult. Especially because I can’t see what I am doing while I do it, I just have to work out a big chunk of coding and THEN test it out!
I liked Scratch for making this game, as I have used it before. I tried to find this really horrible game I made back in elementary school (the game below!), but I think it got taken down because it was designed to crash computers (whoops!). I did find this game I made at the time as well though, which is not very good! I wanted to make a new game (the game above!), something I didn’t try my first time with Scratch. For this, I chose a Searching game, where you have to find objects and click on them to win the level. However, I could not figure out how to make the game “end” when all objects are clicked – or even do anything after that! I wanted the game to wait until all objects with in the pink box to the left, but it greatly depended on the player doing things in a specific order, which was not feasible to rely on. If you do select the objects in the order: Baseball, Key, Present, Guitar, then the game will move to the end screen, but it won’t move on if they are ‘found’ in any other order, which is annoying but could be my own error. After finishing my game, I think I like Scratch for coding – especially for people who are new to coding. It is simple but doesn’t walk you through it too much so there is still learning that can be done. I also found it good for improving problem solving skills, as you have to find and fix your own errors in the game when they appear – no one is there to know what you’re trying to make the game do! For me, coding has never been super important, and I can see myself going my whole life not really understanding it and being fine, but future generations may rely more on it. With the new technologies coming up every day, the younger generation are much more likely to run into coding in their future lives than I am! Overall, I definitely prefer to play games to making them! This week I worked with Notability some more to plan some more squares. I also used YouTube to keep me focussed, but not to teach me new things about Crochet. I used the Pomodoro method to focus, with 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of break – and I found it very helpful! This week, for something new and different I started making some crochet flowers! I really enjoyed making pretty things, and seeing results quickly rather than working for long periods of time. To learn different flowers patterns, I used MoaraCrochet. This site allowed me to look through many different options of what I wanted to create, and gave a combination of images and written instructions, which made everything very clear. The website is very well organized as I can see the end result, and what flower it is before I even dive into the page with the pattern – so I can see if I really wanted to add that one to my bouquet! I loved this website, and will definitely be coming back to it! I worked on three different plants – lavender, string of pearls and a combination flower to really test my skills! I loved how simple and beginner-friendly these patterns are, and they come together quick, which is very encouraging! I loved the lavender I made and I plan on making more, but I want to make a fuller bouquet and I am not sure what will go well with lavender! I will have to look into it more, so I can make sure I like what I make for a long time! I recently deleted TikTok as it became too distracting for me, however I do remember seeing crochet flowers on there so I might have to sneak a peek on that app! Digital citizenship is practically unescapable today. Parents, teachers, students, workers, and even babies are likely to have some form of online footprint, whether made themselves or not. Personally, I have been seen on Facebook since 2007 (when I was almost 4 years old). Reflecting on this, I don’t mind that I had a social media presence at that age. My family is huge, and it would be impossible to send images to every single person in my family when my parents wanted to show how cute we were! As I got older, watching movies and in classes I learned that the online world is hard to maneuver and know about, even when you’re confident you can. My schools really enforced a “we will find you” style of threat when it came to cyber-bullying, lying or harassment. Outside of that, they practiced scare tactics to keep us in check. But these scare tactics were not to keep off the internet, just to stay good on the internet. They didn’t talk about anything negative happening to those who were kind and polite online. Hearing lectures about the negative side of an online presence scared me, but I don’t think it could scared me “into submission”. I was always a goodie-two-shoes and have an extreme sense of empathy for others, so I was never one looking to be mean behind a screen, and I was quick to tell an adult or report a stranger online. I don’t think my sense of values around the internet comes from the lessons about online presence though, I think it is just who I am. I knew many many students who went unaffected by these lectures on the opposite side – bullying, harassing, and lying on the internet because “it’s just the internet”. (I would like to note - I am fortunate enough to have grown up in a situation and family where I can trust adults to help me in cases like these, whereas a lot of marginalized groups may not have this sense of security in adults of a system that oppresses them, which is understandable and in no way a reflection of who they are - negative of positive, but more so of our societal expectations of different people.) I think that teaching students about internet use is helpful, but teaching people to be a good and kind human is really where the lessons were lacking. In the future, I am not sure that I will be the one responsible for teaching about online citizenship in most cases. If I were to teach about the reality of having an online presence, I would like to focus on real stories, Canadian based because I think using real stories of real people teaches students in a deeper way than just facts. However, I would like to think I could influence my students into being good/better people to each other. I also hope I am an adult they can trust when it comes to scary situations online or offline. This week I worked on the borders of my squares for my baby blanket. I feel less productive this week because school has gotten in the way and I honestly have not made much progress. Other than that, I started to plan my details for my animals on this blanket. I did this on Notability. I plan to use many different stitches and methods to crate different looks and textures within the animals features. For example, the lions mane is based off this flower petal idea from Bella Coco on YouTube. And some of the shapes I make will be based on or inspired by this tutorial by Annemarie Benthem. Overall, this week has very little progress to report, and I am sad to admit that. Next week there will be much much more to say about my journey hopefully! |
AuthorMy name is Paige Belcourt and I am currently a student a the University of Regina. I am working towards a degree in Secondary Mathematics Education with a minor in French, as well as a certificate in inclusive Education. Archives
April 2024
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