Week 5

Watching the video from MSU about how to spot fake news, it reminded me of the show The Good Place. Hopefully this doesn’t spoil the show for anyone (though I haven’t watched the last season, so no spoilers for me!!), but there comes a moment when our protagonists discover why everyone is sent to the Bad Place. It’s because our decisions have become so entangled with how complicated the world is. Unless you research every little aspect of the decisions you make, essentially every decision has bad ramifications somewhere down the line: the company that makes the product you buy has unethical business practices, the food you can afford is processed and unhealthy, etc.

While these problems aren’t exactly the same, the idea behind them is. If you don’t do your research or exercise due diligence when reading on the internet, you may be making a bad decision unwittingly. The amount of information out there is staggering. ANYONE can post ANYTHING from the safety behind their screens. I think learning these skills of fact-checking and source-checking are new 21st century skills that need to be taught. But the problem is that everyone needs to be taught these skills, not just young students. I grew up at the same time the internet was booming into people’s homes for the first time. Legitimacy was never something that we talked about. The first time I was even confronted with the idea was in college and the universal mantra of “Don’t Use Wikipedia!!!”. We have a chance now to change the mindset of the internet as a safe, true place, if we only take the opportunity to educate people.

For my final project I’ve chosen to look a little deeper into Mobile Learning. Using smartphones and tablets has become more prevalent in the classroom, and I am curious to see what trends and perspectives there are. I came from a 1:1 iPad school, so I definitely have my own thoughts about the perks and shortcomings of mobile learning.

I found Chapter 9 of the textbook interesting. I always have a bit of trouble really digesting theories and models. We all get to a point where we react instinctively to certain situations, automatically adjusting how we communicate. It’s interesting to see explanations of different types of communication. I think that overall, I gravitate towards constructivist ideas.