Blog 8

I believe that because the Internet is such a huge and important part of many people’s daily lives, it is critical for teachers to instruct their students on how to properly use it. The Internet is like many things; it can be easily abused and used for the wrong reasons, or it can be used in ways that enhance a person’s daily life or used in ways that expand a person’s knowledge base. However, I think that even with proper instruction, there will always be students who find it funny and wish to abuse the Internet and access websites and other places on the web that are inappropriate. For this reason, it is also important for technicians at schools to block adult content and other dangerous and inappropriate websites that students do not to be accessing. It is also possible that a student may be researching for a paper and accidentally stumbles upon a website that he/she did not wish to view. It is important to protect today’s students from the dangers that are out there on the web.

Furthermore, nowadays, pirating illegal content off the Internet is a huge problem. Many people do it, because it is easy, quick, and free. However, as an educator, I think it is also important to raise awareness that downloading content such as movies, music and books, for example, from the Internet without paying for it is very much like stealing from a store. Not only should they know that it is unethical, but it also has repercussions for the creators of the content that the students are downloading; in a way, music artists and actors lose money every day and are cheated out of money, because their hard work is available for free to everyone in just a few clicks on the Internet. In addition, I believe this kind of behavior goes hand in hand with plagiarism. Students need to be made aware that it is unethical to steal written content or any type of content on the Internet (or any other place) and claim that it is their own.

Lastly, it is also important to teach students how to search properly for material on the Internet. As we went over before in this course, not all material and information on the Internet is valid. Students must be made aware of this and taught to be skeptical of the web pages they run across online. They should be taught what to look for on a website to make sure it is valid and reliable.

Blog #7

I started using a computer in my parents' home when I was about the age of 8 or 9. My dad gave me an ancient computer that I used to play Disney games on. It wasn't until 7th grade that my parents gave me any access at all to the internet, but even then I had little interest in using the computer. Back in Junior High, the idea of social networking was really unimportant. If I wanted to talk to a friend, I would call them or go to their house. Social networking became pretty heavily popular towards the end of my High School experience. I began using e-mail, chat programs like AIM, blogging websites like Xanga and MySpace, and I also took part in some online games, which I thought was amazing, because I was able to get to know people from all around the world. I think I had the same or more access to the Internet as my peers did during my K-12 experience. My dad worked for IBM for quite a long time and had several computers in the basement for my sisters and I to play on. I think because of his interest in computers, we were pretty spoiled when it came to using technology and the Internet. I think because of how much I used the computer as an adolescent/teenager, I was at an advantage over some other kids who weren't as experienced with navigating around a computer and with using the Internet, but I don’t believe their lack of experience with the Internet or computers caused any issues for them academically. I knew my way around a computer and knew how to properly use the Internet and its search engines very well by the end of 8th grade; however, in High School, it really was not very important if we as students had Internet access at home. Most of our research was done right in the computer lab at school, and usually our teachers gave us sufficient time to finish our work. I think back then teachers took into account that some students may not actually have access to a computer or Internet at home. It wasn’t as necessary at the time, but now it seems to be that it is almost assumed that everyone has at least one computer with Internet access at home.

As a teacher, I do feel responsible for bridging the gap between the students who do not have access to the Internet and those who do. Nowadays it is very important for students to be able to navigate the world wide web. Because some families may not have Internet in their homes, I would give my students plenty of time in the computer labs right in the school to do their research and work (just as my teachers had done for me), and I would make sure a skilled librarian or I was around to answer questions.

Blog 6: Media Literacy Skills

I found this presentation very interesting; it had several good points. I do see a connection between my life and the amount of media that I consume, but I also feel like because of my college education I have been able to break out of the social constructs that the media have created for our society. When I was a kid in elementary school, I did not care in the least what I was wearing. I think the media is very quickly becoming a bigger part of our lives, because nowadays kids are wearing trendier shoes and clothes at earlier ages. I recently observed a fifth grade classroom and very quickly noticed how stylish the kids were. I did not start feeling the pressure to wear trendy clothes until Junior High. Kids are being "sucked into" media messages at earlier ages, because the media is just about everywhere.

One thing that makes me personally so irritated is how women and men are portrayed in the media. I have girl friends who are such twigs and they complain all the time about how fat they are. The media teaches women to be as skinny as they can be, and many women end up having eating disorders and becoming extremely unhealthy. On the other hand, guys are taught to be strong and almost emotionless human beings. I know so many guys who were taught not to cry and not to talk about their feelings. The presentation made a good point: who is behind these ideas? In my child development course, we talked about the similarities between boys and girls as kids. It isn't up until they are told how to act in society that the differences between them start to emerge. I think more people need to realize that many of what we see and hear in our society is just a social construct made from the media. We need to question what we hear and see instead of blindly taking the messages in and accepting them.

It is absolutely outrageous the things that are shown in music videos, for example. In many rap videos men are surrounded by half-naked women, and these women are portrayed in sexual, negative ways; it's very degrading. Many song lyrics have hugely misogynistic messages. They sing about hating women, violence against women, rape, et cetera, and there are people who listen to this and support this kind of music. Because some people accept messages from the media without questioning what they are being fed, some of these individuals also pressure people around them to accept it as well; they do not use their critical thinking skills. I have male friends, for example, who are mocked and ridiculed if they do not watch pornography. Many of my girl friends accept that their partner watches it, because they believe that it is normal nowadays. For some reason, men are pressured into believing that looking at pornography is a masculine activity and that it is perfectly okay. The media just disgusts me.

All in all, I think it is extremely important for parents to teach their kids from a very early age to use their critical thinking skills to question the media. Media literacy skills are very important to acquire, otherwise many kids will grow up being naive and blindly accepting what they hear and see. It is really sad to see people grow up bound by the social constructs of the media. Many women and men do not feel happy with who they are and what they look like, because we are taught almost everywhere how we need to act and look like to be accepted.