Tag Archive for: course-eportfolio

Good digital citizens “use the internet regularly and effectively,” according to the authors of the book Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation. By that definition, I think that most of us have some work to do on becoming better digital citizens. This post is the 3rd in a series that will target research on rising tuition costs (see Scholarly Research on Rising Tuition) for a Digital Citizenship class at CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI).  Social media as a search tool for information sharing is the topic of this particular post.

I have never before considered actively using social media to find knowledge. I, of course, have used social media sites to read gossip and share little tidbits but never to pursue information on heavy topics. While rising tuition costs are a hot topic across the web and the world, I was intrigued by the types of conversations going on over the social media platforms that I frequent. Twitter, in particular, was a source of several jokes (see picture below) and pushing of political platforms for candidates in upcoming elections.

A large part of the conversation on Twitter about tuition is comprised of people cracking jokes

A basic search for tuition on both Twitter and Facebook generated the accompanying hashtags #FeelTheBern and #Bernie2016 which is understandable since that is a major part of the platform Bernie Sanders is running on, but I felt that these hashtags contribute little to the conversation on tuition. The focus of conversations that link tuition and Bernie Sanders, is Bernie Sanders, therefore tuition is a small piece that fits into the greater puzzle. Another trending topic on Twitter and Facebook revolves around Hillary Clinton attacking (unconvincingly, according to ALTERNET) Bernie Sanders’s stance. While I am thrilled that people are showing interest in the presidential election, these were not the types of results that I was looking for.

After sifting through the jokes and politics, I was able to find some new articles that didn’t come up in previous investigations, but little information on the major players that are discussing tuition on social media.

I will be looking more into researching this topic effectively on social media, but for the moment, I am somewhat gratified with the results and eager to improve my findings.

Until next time,

MGH, professor in Training

The post Social Media as a Search Tool appeared first on Professor In Training.

I earned my degree and credential out of state. When I returned to California I began working as substitute teacher in the LAUSD. I was shocked when I walked into my first assignment. It was first grade, minutes from my home. When I walked in the door I learned that I would be teaching in English AND Spanish! I was not fluent in Spanish, I had taken 2 years of high school Spanish six year prior! In this particular model, I was supposed to teach everything twice, English, then Spanish. On the board when I walked in was written Mi nombre es ________ and below it was My name is _________ . As I walked around the classroom I saw many papers with Mi name es Jimmy. This was my introduction for teaching EL students. I continued to substitute in the Northeast San Fernando for 10 more years. I became familiar with about ten different models of instruction for addressing the needs of English Learners as I worked in various schools. This has been a source of questions for me over the years. Many of the schools had Spanish speaking aides and/or programs addressing  students with Spanish as their first language. However, the students with other languages, Korean, Armenian, Tagalog, Persian, etc., did not get the same support. Some of the schools had high concentrations of these languages, and yet no services. I wondered why. In another school district I worked in we had 11 different languages represented. Spanish was the largest subgroup and garnered most of the attention. I was grateful that Kagan Strategies, SDAIE strategies, etc. attracted more attention because these could be used across the schools regardless of the language.

Currently, my class of 28 first graders is 100% English Learners with Spanish and Mixteco being their primary language. My instruction all day long incorporates specific strategies to help students learn rich content more easily. Even with all students being EL we incorporate leveled groups for learning English, and students have many pull-out programs for assistance. All are intended for support, yet can be disruptive to the continuity of our students’ learning. This is where I believe the teacher’s attitude and school wide attitudes are  so important. There are pros and cons for for various models. Dual immersion sounds ideal, but are we offering dual immersion for students with primary languages other than Spanish? Or do they participate and then have their home language ignored as they learn 2 other languages? Is there a certain concentration percentage necessary to make a program viable?

This chapter simplifies a complicated issue. The important take away for me is a self-evaluation on my own attitude. Am I valuing the primary language aspect of my students, or am I viewing it as a problem? What is the attitude school-wide? Am I a positive influence in this regard? Am I a advocate for inclusion and/or inclusion attitudes?

There are a multitude of websites and YouTube videos available for patients seeking more information on colostomy care. However, for patients that do not have access to internet resources or who are not educated in technology usage, finding information may be a challenge. I found a booklet from Cedars-Siani Medical Center given to patients for colostomy education and information. I found the booklet to be helpful in the sense that it addressed troubleshooting issues such as intimacy, travel,  leakage, and how to approach friends and family about this medical condition. There is also detailed information about the anatomy of the abdomen, tips for taking care of and cleaning the stoma, skin care, and diet. I found the images throughout the booklet to be lacking detail, so I think a good supplement to this would be a take home dvd so that patients  are able to view the techniques being put into action. Below is the link for you to check it out!

Click to access colostomy_booklet2.pdf

This post is the 2nd in a series of posts that will target research on rising tuition costs (see Search Engine Search: Rising Tuition) for a Digital Citizenship class at CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI). This week, rather than using the basic search engines such as Google and Yahoo, I explored Google Scholar and the databases of the CSUCI library. I didn’t initially expect to find many differences in the results that I gathered from the two different mediums, but was pleasantly surprised.

It appears that the results from Google Scholar were more informational than theoretical. The articles that I found addressed a lot of facts: trends over the past X amount of years, effect on enrollment on a year to year basis, etc. By searching the databases however, I found more articles that examined, truly questioned, and offered tentative explanations and solutions to combat the problem. In psychology, we would denote differences such as these as similar to the differences between basic and applied research,

In hindsight, I should have realized that there is a reason that you must be given access to scholarly databases. The information that anyone can find on the internet does not include some of the best information out there: the research and analysis from experts in the field. For the average person looking for information on rising tuition, I think that Google Scholar is a valid resource for identifying the scope of the problem, but that searching academic databases would ultimately be better for identifying and analyzing the root of the problem. If I didn’t identify with this problem so personally, I might be satisfied with the numbers and facts. As a college student myself, I’m much more interested in finding information and prominent figures that seek with purpose to change the narrative.

Until next time,

MGH

The post Scholarly Research on Rising Tuition appeared first on Professor In Training.

In this week’s challenge we had to look up our topics on Google Scholar and use our library data base.

The first thing I use was Google Scholar. I typed in a key word and a bunch of results but got results that didn’t really pertain to my topic or that were just too broad. It tried again but with quotation marks, my results were better. Once I started looking and started to find articles I thought I could use I got excited. What I was not excited about was all the reading I had to do just to figure out if I really needed the article or if it was really good for my topic. Eventually I would try to find the summary or the discussion part of the article to better see if I needed it without having to read the whole thing.

My next step was using the library data base. I looked at the YouTube video that my professor’s had posted to better see how to use it. After watching the video I headed right in. We used Academic Search Premier. After typing in my key words using quotation marks and clicking on the box that said full text I discovered there is more that one could do. So I clicked on the language I wanted, the years I wanted it from, and I made sure it was scholarly. Another thing I discovered on my own was that I could make my own folder to put my articles in. That is where I put all my articles that were related to health care.

From the school library I was able to research done on women’s health. There was actually a lot on women’s health, mostly to promote it and to do more research specifically on women’s health. There was also a journal article about learning more about the differences in the sexes, women’s health services, and partnerships with businesses and the scientific community. What I found most interesting was that the Office of Research on Women’s Health was the main source or article that women’s health was being done on. There were not many other journal articles that were on women’s health that did not have (ORWH) on it. What I found on Google Scholar were articles too, but not any from ORWH that I saw. What I did find were articles on how doctors could treat their patients better. Mostly on how some doctors could be a little prejudice/racist when diagnosing their patients. Mostly, what I read is that doctors are asking questions that pertain to the patients race or making decisions based on race. Yes, there are differences in health based on race, but the doctors must be aware that it is not to all diseases or sicknesses that race is a factor. It was also found that patients were being treated better when they were Caucasian rather than African American, Asian Or Hispanic, even White Hispanics were treated better. I used treated in the sense of health care and character. These are just a few of the findings that I found and the results that came from it.