Blogging with Brenda

At the start of 2021, I set out several goals for myself. One of them was to become more mindful with eating and what it was I ate. I downloaded Noom and one of the terms I learned was "fog eating," where you eat without awareness. I decided to track my screen time for the past three days and I think I also am guilty of fog scrolling, where I'm on my phone without awareness. I already had a feeling this was true, but looking at the actual breakdown of my time was proof that something deeper was happening. Personal Images My iPhone has a Screen Time feature which allowed me to complete this tracking. I can also set up app limits within the feature, which I have before, but I frequently ignore. Starting on Wednesday, April 21st, I spent six hours and fifty minutes on my phone. I had a busy day at school on Wednesday, and my time online didn't start to really go up until about 3 to 4pm. I was home that day by 5pm as you can see by the larger spike at that time. When I g...

I don't know if it's my age or unresolved teenaged angst, but it has always bothered me when I hear complaints about teenagers and how well they know social media, but are completely lost when it comes to educational technology or everyday activities. Maybe it's because I'm also someone that spends an incredible amount of time on my phone, but I empathize with my kids and their relationship to digital media. It's more difficult to learn a tool than it is a social media app since that's what we've known for the bulk of our lives. Instead of fighting the technology and the lack of knowledge on it, I'm doing my best to welcome and build on it, especially given the content I teach.  In a 2010 article , Howard Rheingold mentions five interconnected social media literacies to become a "critical consumer of digital media." They are:  Attention Participation Collaboration Network Awareness Critical Consumption While all of these literacies are importan...

When I was 11, my older cousins became my sitters. Whenever my mom had to work overtime, or late into the night, I would stay over at their house and the time was spent online. One of my favorite things to do would be to watch them go online, log into Myspace, and spend hours creating their profile pages, selecting their top friends, and playing games the site offered. Soon enough, they offered to make me my own account. I was obviously not 13 at the time, but we just changed my birth year from 1997 to 1990. Simple. Pretty much everyone in my 5th-grade class was doing the same by the time this happened. I was just the one that joined late. Danah Boyd stated, "on the internet, every child is 14." I honestly think every child on the internet is at least 18, if not older. CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) is meant to "protect students from online predation, cyberbullying, and inappropriate content." Filters are applied and vary depending on the student'...

What do you do when you have an entire week off from work and/or school? For me, spring break was a time to do very little. During the school year, I do far too much so over break I turned my brain off and opened my favorite apps, including Instagram.  Image Source: Personal Instagram Post On my personal Instagram, I very rarely post. I mainly share what I do in my Story, which is only available for 24 hours. On one's Instagram Story, one can see how many viewers for that post there were and who they were. I can't lie - I look to see who viewed my story. Reflecting on my last 25 posts on Instagram, they are either related to my dog, my boyfriend, a throwback picture, or a special moment. These go back to 2018, going to show how few posts I make. Below are two of my favorite pictures that I've posted recently. The first is from October 3, 2020. Aaron, my boyfriend, and I went to Goebbert's Pumpkin Patch. It was apparently National Boyfriend's Day, but my caption was ...