Blogging with Brenda

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 ...

I wasn't shocked when I found out I have 168 reused passwords upon looking at my Google account's password checkup. I simply do not have the capacity to remember different passwords, and sure Google can save my passwords, but really, I can't even trust Google anymore as seen with my last blog post . So, I just silently resign and reuse my passwords to make my life easier. However, I was shocked to find out only one of my accounts was compromised while checking if I have been pwned and it was an account I barely use. My Canva account was found in the May 2019 breach, but I'm surprised that I've only been involved in one breach considering how little I have paid attention to online security. If I haven't paid much attention to my online security, I can only imagine how much my own students pay attention to theirs. Image Source: Twitter, @Maechez1 J Sterling Morton District 201, has policies when it comes to the acceptable use of technology. There are two sections...