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Reading Review Part B

First Go Around


When I first started searching, I was going to jump straight to the Minecraft aspect of my inquiry, but I changed my mind when I realized that I really would like to answer my first question of "What is Digital Literacy." With this in mind, I started searching websites that I could use within my teaching to also try to explain to my students what digital literacy is. With this initial search, I found two sites that I found valuable::

1. https://mediasmarts.ca/


This website has a wealth of knowledge located within the site. As I was looking through it, I realized that when I was teaching elementary school (around 10 Years ago), I used this site quite exclusively when I was teaching my students about online safety and computer etiquette. I then moved on and forgot about this site. I will definitely be utilizing it again because I find it truly helpful.

2. https://www.commonsense.org/education/
This website is a plethora of information for all your digital literacy needs. I used my keywords, and nine times out of ten, this website was in the top three results with an article or two connected to the topic/keyword that I searched. I believe this is the American version of Media Smarts and it has quite a few helpful topics within itself. This site can also give you information on different media that you would use in your classrooms, not just the interwebs.

When I had finished looking at the above websites, I went to find some articles to see what research had to show me on the topics of digital literacies and I added the keyword Social Media to the search. I wanted to narrow my search so I decided on the cut out the digital literacy keyword. I had found many different scholarly articles when I searched the UBC databases with the keywords "Social Media" and "Education."

a. Social Media in Education: The Absent Attendee 
http://www.scientiasocialis.lt/pec/node/files/pdf/vol76/583-586.Alabdulkareem_Vol.76-5_PEC.pdf
This article talks about how social media is used in school and what types of educational benefits are coming from their use.
 
b. 'Social media is their space': student and teacher use and perception of features of social media in language education
https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/doi/pdf/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1774653?needAccess=true
This article's abstract states that one of its goals is to analyze the results of two workshops based in the UK university of "how individual features of social media are used generally and,  how they are used for educational purposes between learners and teachers of languages." (Lambton-Howard 1). I understand that this is for a university, but you can get some very interesting ideas and the research will bring some insights to your own teaching. 
 
c. What Should Be the Role of Social Media in Education?
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/doi/pdf/10.1177/2372732219865290
This article talks about the research behind social media in schools and where it can be useful for teachers, professional development, student learning, and research practices.

The previous articles are the top three choices that I was interested in. There were a lot more in my searches, but these were all published within the last three years, and to me, this is an important factor. The use of social media and all technology in education has changed in the last one-two years, let alone five years ago.

Second Go Around

I went ahead and wanted to see how many resources I could find for my Minecraft focus. I was hoping to find some videos or blogs about this topic when I started and most of what I found can from Minecraft: Education Edition itself. 

The first site that came up was https://education.minecraft.net/ 
This is the main page where you can navigate to different areas of the site. I looked at their blog for inspiration and found that there are quite a few blog posts that can help you out no matter what level of Minecraft player you are. I looked into a few and the one that truly connected with one of the visions I have for using Minecraft is: https://education.minecraft.net/blog/using-minecraft-to-write-survival-fiction. While the survival part of the writing fiction may not be 'exactly' what I wanted, it was really helpful with first steps in doing what I truly want my students to do.

The second site that came up was the Minecraft: Education Edition YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/MinecraftEducationEdition/featured. 

I am positive that these videos are linked to their website somewhere, but this is an easy way to head straight to a video if you are a visual learner. The picture above shows, not the homepage, but the playlist page. They have quite a few really good resources for both student and teacher.

Once I explored these two sites, I wanted to try to find something coming from elsewhere. Somewhere, someone who did not work for or advertise for Minecraft itself. To that end, I looked for articles that could help me. One of the results I have found was an ebook and the other was an article on using Minecraft to teach writing. Both of these I found helpful:

1. Minecraft in the Classroom: Ideas, inspiration, and student projects for teachers
This book walks teachers through using Minecraft: Edu in their classroom and through all subjects. It also has a great starting place for those who have never used the program before.

2. A Guilde to Teaching Writing With Minecraft
This article was written to help teachers use Minecraft during Distance Learning. It is quite neat and throughout the article, there are links and information on other aspects that you can use for this program and distance learning.

Works Cited:
Lambton-Howard, Daniel, Jieun Kiaer & Ahmed Kharrufa. (2020): "'Social media is their space’: student and teacher use and perception of features of social media in language education."  Behaviour & Information Technology, DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2020.1774653. Accessed 30 Jan 2021.
 

Comments

  1. Aaron MuellerFeb 1, 2021, 7:52:00 AM

    Well done post exploring your early results, experiments and further digging on your topics, keywords and interests. You did a good job narrating your experience and describing some of the strategies, repositories, formats and results of your keyword searching and inquiry. These early results look very valuable, with good research, guides, best practices and videos for practical implementation and support. Overall, a well done checkin post on your progress.

    ReplyDelete

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