To share or not to share...

Sharing today has become such a big deal in every aspect of life. We share information sometimes with out even really thinking about it. With all the advancements we have made in the world we are constantly sharing things we have learned, what we have done, and little things about our lives with the world around us. To share is to be human now, we live in a world of technology that is all about how we connect and interact with each other.

As someone that has always looked up to my mom, who is a kind of educator, and then most of my grade school teachers, I always thought it was interesting to see how each teacher in the same subject matter taught and to see if they ever overlapped ideas/activities. My teachers in grade school always would talk about how in another class, previous to theirs how a certain teacher would have taught, and how they would share each others ideas for when they would be giving us study advice. As a student looking forward to becoming a teacher, I think that teachers within a small and close school have a good idea of how they share. By talking to each other  after school and constantly being able to shoot one another an email about something. I think that sharing via the web is important also, I am friends with some of my old teachers on Facebook and it really is a great way to see and share ideas about course work. Even though Facebook is a dead/dying social media it is a good place at least to start. But even then I think we should also stick to the face to face, and in class observations to learning and sharing with other teachers.In this article about why and how to share, it talks about how we can start branching out as educators to actually share among ourselves, Also, in the video with Dean Shareski, we see that just simply by sharing a simple idea from one school you can actually make a big impact in other districts/places. A simple idea can make a huge impact in other schools, this is a simple thing to do for educators. One of the best ways to share is a blog/twitter it gets information out there quickly and efficiently. A blog for a teacher can be helpful to others that are simply looking for new and different ideas.

Being part of a sports team and now going into my senior season I have become a leader on my team, it has become easy for me to get good ideas from googling ideas. I have joined several small online communities that are soccer related to see and share ideas that other people have about team bonding and idea's for how to make a team more connected. I even have resources around me such as the old seniors and even some of our coaches. I think that we should share via talking to each other and via the internet.

What I share is usually things that I either think are funny, informational, or something that I would like the world to acknowledge. For the most part I base what I share off of where I am sharing it.If I am on a more "mature" site/blog/media I will stick to informational or something that I feel that needs to be acknowledged. For instance I will only share my thoughts, ideas, plans for certain things on Instagram, a blog, or Facebook if it is something that needs recognition or is a good idea in a way of expressing how it could help another. I have several different twitter accounts for the idea of one is a more personal account that I sometimes use to tweet about "stupid" silly things, such as the other night I tweeted about oreos. But then I have another more "mature" account that I use just for the purpose of education and informational. I think for sharing if it is not offensive, rude, or derogatory towards someone it is okay to share. But that is also a tough situation for then people get to sharing things that could be taken that way. I stick to only sharing what I feel could be silly, an oreo tweet, informative, a blog about teens and technology, or could use acknowledgment, insta post about my little sister signing her NLI for college next year.
What not to share, that's a very fine line. We get mixed up in all these different aspects of life and how we should behave and then what we should share. Being an athlete you can get caught up in drama over maybe a lose and tweet something about the other team, or maybe just in everyday life drama you say something on a social media. We need to be careful of what we share, and how it can be taken. If you at all question whether you should share something or not, chances are you should not share it.

There are many aspects of what we do with students and how we help them. In a way with sharing what they have done can help them in the classroom to show the rest of the world what they have done and to show that the students are very much capable. But also in a slight way we can almost help those that make a mistake a way to correct it. The tools we have now to help students "off stage" can be very helpful but also if not use correctly they can be hurtful. I think we need to show kids what they do incorrectly with a comparison, and not show it to the world. Learning how to help a student more in a classroom is going to be very helpful compared to showing them what they did wrong with the world.

Sharing as I said earlier has become a way of life, as educators we live to share our thoughts, ideas, plans, and even our techniques. I think that we now sometimes get a little carried away with how we share things, which is not at all a bad thing but it isn't always the best way. Sharing I think can sometimes be more effective  face to face, as you can see emotions on what maybe is a struggle or really great. In person it is also easier to show and navigate things but also it is more of a personal sharing experience. Online has now become a quicker way to share but not necessarily the best way to share in my mind.

Sharing everything as a teacher is like sharing everything as a toddler. That's how you make connections and learn from each other. With sharing you can see what you teaching methods other people have in common with you and if maybe by adjusting your style a little may be more effective. As a teacher to share everything is to become part of something even more, it is to show that you are looking to become a better educator and it shows that you have an idea that you think someone else may be able to use or even make better.

As a teacher I think it would be great to not only get other teachers involved but also the community around us to help out and give advice on how we can maybe improve.The community based around the school can have a lot of input on how we can best educate our kids, by starting a community based blog/website that the local parents and teachers can give input on what we should adjust with in our teaching ways. By giving everyone else a little more say in the educational world we could really brig a community more together than before.

In this age technology and sharing has become a norm with everyday life, we must change and evolve with the society in order to keep teaching such a big and important part of the kids. Using what we share and learn based off sharing is a great way to keep improving the educational world around us. It helps to boost good writing by knowing that the world can see what you say means you should be more aware of how you are writing. I do not think that everything should be a formal kind of writing as to share is to share what you feel, it is a way of expression and saying you can only share in a formal way is to say you can only express yourself if you sound like someone you may not be. But to keep sharing is an important part of teaching and everyday life.

The cost of sharing is priceless but the outcome can be great. Never stop sharing and keep expressing what you have a passion for when it comes to what you are sharing with the world!

Week 2- Teens using Social Media

Hello! My name is Annabelle Hegeman, I am 20 years old. I am currently a junior attending the University of Akron, also I am a goalkeeper on the Women's soccer here at Akron. I graduated from a high school in Western Maryland called Mountain Ridge where I played varsity soccer for all four years, then continued to play soccer at a Division II school in PA called Slippery Rock University for 2 more years. I was so happy and loved it there, but a couple things changed and I decided to transfer here to Akron. 

A couple things about the women's soccer program. This is the first year under a new coach/coaching staff lead by Noreen Herlihy. She was my former coach at Slippery Rock, under her new leadership we have made history in all of the programs past. In just under a year with coach Herlihy, we are the first women's soccer team to have made it past the first round of our MAC (Mid-Atlantic Conference) tournament ever in program history. We were ranked 8th, the last seed in the tournament, and were forced to play the number one seed in an elimination game. With that, we raised to the occasion and played to win and ended up winning after double over time, and into penalty kicks. But ended up losing in the semi-finals of the tournament. Now we are on the road to win the MAC tournament next season.  If you ever want to know more about the program/team/schedules just visit our home page. 

I have always enjoyed my math courses in grade schools because of the course content and also my teachers. I am looking forward to becoming a high school math teacher. I find it interesting the ways to look at a math problem, and the different ways that different minds think about it. I have wanted to go into this field of study since I was in sixth grade, I have had some of the best teachers I could have asked for. They are my inspiration in going into this subject matter, I want to be like them. They made the classroom a fun learning environment, that used all different kind of technology in the room. 

For the most part I hate all this technology, we have become so dependent on all it. When I was growing up my favorite part of the day was after school and playing in the backyard or when my dad was coaching, going to one of his practices and running around with all his college men soccer players. That is what I think of as a good childhood, but now when I think of childhood it frightens me. I think of little kids having all this technology and only interacting with each other via the internet. In this article it talks about how we are becoming less creative because we are less bored since we have the internet to keep up entertained. Here it talks about how boredom helps creativity. My mom is constantly worried about my little sister in a way that when she was younger she was always writing these extremely creative and interesting stories, but now she is glued to her phone and does not write any stories. This is just an example of how our phones and constant internet access can be a bad thing. That is only one point of social media and its impact. 

Looking at the social media, I use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and GroupMe. I grew up in the time when you everyone had a MySpace and that was just such a big hit that quickly faded out and became Facebook. I do use all my social media on a regular basis, and when I get bored laying in bed. I try to avoid using my phone as much as possible, and when I am around friends/family/public I try to stay off social media as much as possible. In general I would much rather talk to someone person to person than via social media, but there are always the exceptions to that.

 Facebook, I do not totally agree with Mr. Watts on it being dead. Yes, I agree that it is not nearly as common with the now teens, but for me I that is how I stay connected with family, my sister who moved away, my cousins that are my age, my old high school friends. I like to be able stay connected with people and for me I always was traveling for soccer and became very close with my teammates parents and so I think that may skew my perception a little more than most. I like to use Facebook on a daily basis. I do use it almost as much as any other of my social media. But for the most part for the now teens that were not that exposed to actually using it, I can see how they use it as just a good place to store all of their pictures in different albums that is easily organized and viewed, and for them it really is a dead social media. But it will always be the "go to" social media to "creep" on someone.

Instagram, that is always a good one to brows and  

to go through when you are bored. I do not really have any particular reason for being on this one. I do use it post pictures 2-3times a week to display what a great weekend I had with my best friends or a shout out to someone I haven't seen in a while. I like to go through my Insta feed to see what everyone is feeling today. For this one I tend to follow, musical/inspirational sayings/friends. I like to use Instagram as a way to really see what someone is like and read captions to pictures. Like Mr. Watts says, this is the social media that is used for when people choose one really good photo they like and then edit it and want to show the world. For this media, I completely agree with what he says.

Twitter, I have never really gotten the hang of it. I agree with Mr. Watts in saying that "a lot of use simply do not understand the point of twitter." I for one do not understand the point of it, for me I mainly only use it to follow Slippery Rock athletics, and their games. Also like to use it to see what our school tweets about our athletics. I know a lot of people that use it to tweet "inspirational/emotional" song lyrics. And that's okay, its a place where some many people are constantly tweeting that you do not really get judge for it. I am one of those people that hardly ever tweets but sometimes re-tweets fun things or game stats.

My favorite social media is Snapchat! I do not know what about this social media makes it so fun to be on, but I think that Mr. Watts has summed up this app so well with how it can literally play out how one goes out. I think this is my favorite because you can be silly and send "ugly" pictures of yourself to only a certain people and not feel embarrassed or pressured to be someone else. I like being able to have a conversation with my sisters when we are so far apart and still see their faces within the conversation. Whether the pictures are actually saved or not, in reality I don't think that it will really make a difference or stop us from sending the pictures we do. And for the most part we are only send snaps of us having a great time with friends, a hangover in the morning, our great food choices, or selfies.

GroupMe, is the last source of social media that I mainly use. For me it is the most useful social media to get in contact with my teammates or other groups I am involved with. For soccer we have several group chats within that app, and it is very easy to navigate between groups and to rename the group if we need to. It is easy to get information between people, and it is nice because you can even send individual people messages if you need to. It can also be fun to change the groups names, and pictures for the group. When using the app, it helps to make plans with people by whether they like a message or not. For groups I think this is the best social media! So for this I do agree with Mr. Watts with it.

In a classroom setting I use to hate using any kind of social media for any assignment or class. I thought it was a waste of my time to have to get on the internet and do something, but now that social media is such a huge part of our society and culture I think that it can be very helpful/useful. Teachers that can incorporate social media into their classes I think have a good grasp on how today's teens are living. I feel that twitter is the best social media that can be incorporated into the classroom, for it has all the tools to connect with. 

Technology today is slowly taking over the lives that we are trying to live. We depend on it in our everyday lives, we have grown attached to using it all the time. It's sad to see little kids today being able to almost navigate an iphone better than me, but at the same time it is impressive all the advancements we have in technology. I just worry about how lazy we become and how creativity is decreasing with always relying on technology...