Who owns this tweet?

A couple weeks ago, a fellow grad student and coworker at LEARN NC stuck her head into my office to apologize for something she has posted on Twitter.  Recently,  I was tasked with creating a social media plan for LEARN NC. The Twitter account was the first thing I had access to.

That particular afternoon I posted a link to the New York Times article Mooresville's Shining Example (It's Not Just About the Laptops). Just a few minutes later, my colleague post a link to the article on her Twitter account. As soon as she had realized that she had done this, she stuck her head in to explain that her dad had sent her a link to the article and she didn't realize until she had posted her tweet that I had posted about it as well.

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Digital (il)Literacies

Photo by Jeff MyersI came across this the other day while researching some current initiatives for technology in education. Following the partnership between North Carolina Public School and Microsoft (as written about this past fall in a post tited: North Carolina Public Schools Bought by Microsoft), I found myself at the Microsoft Digital Literacy curriculum page (at this point I feel that I should put forth the disclaimer that all of my following comments are solely based on the information provided on the Microsoft Digital Literacy web page). At first glance, it doesn’t seem too bad.

Welcome to the Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum. The goal of Digital Literacy is to teach and assess basic computer concepts and skills so that people can use computer technology in everyday life to develop new social and economic opportunities for themselves, their families, and their communities.

It continues.

From using the Internet, to sending e-mail, to creating a résumé, the Digital Literacy Curriculum helps you develop the essential skills you need to begin computing with confidence.

Starting to seem a little… plug and play…

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Infographic? Researchgraphic!

I'm tired of research papers. Recently, while teaching a MAT course on diversity in education I found myself momentarily leaning toward assigning a research paper. But then I countered myself, "how many research papers did you write as a teacher?" Do future teachers need to write another research paper? I decided that if they did, it would not be for me. I was then faced with the void. What should they do? I still wanted them to research a topic of diversity and articulate an argument for why it is important to their content area. In the heat of the moment of drafting the syllabus, a poster session seemed like the most logical thing. While at the time it seemed best, I soon realized that it did not force the students to do as much analysis as I had hoped, and there was little synthesis. I wanted abstractions, I wanted to see creative ideas married in interesting ways. I received, for the most part, PowerPoint slides on cardboard. When it comes down to it, it was ultimately my own fault for failing to clearly articulate my hopes for the project. 

I've tried to guide students in the creation of an infographic before. I failed. I failed miserably. I just couldn't seem to figure out a way to frame it in steps that worked for my students. This afternoon, thanks to a friend's twitter posting, I came across "The Anatomy of an Infographic." Here is the bare-bones of how they lay it out:

Parts of an Infographic

Visual

• Color Coding
• Graphics
• Reference Icons

Content

• Time Frames
• Statistics
• References

Knowledge

• Facts
• Deductions

Steps in Creating an Infographic

1. Skeleton/Flowchart (planning the visual)
2. Color Scheme (color coding the sections of information)
3. Graphics (what could/should represent this and that?)
4. Research and Data (what is the information about the topic?)
5. Knowledge (so what?)