Chatspeak!

I don’t have very many high school age friends, nor do I know very many high school age humans. I have however, from time to time, stumbled upon a myspace page of an under ager. Let me tell you, it is a very scary sight. I have seen some of the most atrocious spelling and cyber-slang you could imagine. Not only are these kids using chatspeak for almost every single word, the words they don’t abbreviate are all used incorrectly.
So, after reading a couple of articles regarding chatspeak, I would have to say that I believe it is, in fact, ruining the children’s ability to learn English. I know that it’s not a popular opinion to have, but I feel like chatspeak is very similar to Ebonics. If enough people start speaking and writing incorrectly, it suddenly becomes correct. I am not a fan.
The opinion held by Greg Monfils, that children know the difference and they can switch gears from internet slang to formal writing, seems ridiculous to me. He seems to believe that students use chatspeak in papers as a form of rebellion. I’m sorry, but what student who knows the correct academic form of a word, is going to use an incorrect Internet word and risk getting a worse grade, just to get a rise out of the teacher? Give me a break.

Cyber-Bullying!

I consider myself pretty lucky that I haven’t ever really been involved in any cyber-bullying on either the receiving or the giving end. I think it must be due to my advanced age and the advanced age of my friends when we actually starting using social networking sites and the web in general.
While I have been immune to these problems, our nation’s children have not. Students are the victims of cyber-bullying via things like IM, email, social networking sites and chatrooms. Because of the somewhat anonymous nature of the internet, kids often think that they can say whatever they want to anyone else without any serious repercussions. This is hardly the case. As with the girl who hung herself after receiving a nasty email, many students who are the victims of cyber-bullying become depressed, unengaged, and often violent.
While it is easy to monitor the internet behavior of students when they are at school, it is not so easy when the students are at home on their privately owned computers. The question has repeatedly been asked, “What can and should schools legally be able to do.”
Currently, schools can only interfere or reprimand students for off campus internet behavior if it “creates or threatens to create a substantial and material disruption of the school or interference with the rights of students to be secure.” (cyberbully.org) This disruption if often extremely hard to prove.
So, what can we as educators do? I think that we should implement preventative techniques such as guidelines for proper internet behavior. We should be keenly aware of the warning signs of cyber-bullying and educate parents and students on how to handle this ever-growing phenomenon.

Google Search

While sifting through the websites that pop up when I google my name, I found out that I had better start making my profiles private if I ever want to get a teaching job. Most of the sites that pop up are from what I call my “band era.” While I still play in bands, I am a little more reluctant to have videos of me taking shots and mooning my friends uploaded onto the internet. My facebook and myspace profiles are both private which, let me tell you, is a GOOD thing.
This web life, however, is a private life and does not reflect how I act in a classroom. This doesn’t mean I want my students to be able to google my name and find out about this private life. As a teacher we are role models and need to set an example. They don’t need to know what I’m doing in my spare time.
I was incredibly surpised by the 27 year old who was denyed her teaching credential beacause of a picture on the internet. I understand that if students saw their teacher as a ‘drunken pirate’ they might have less respect for her, but she wasn’t even in the classroom yet. And, she might have put her profile to private once she had taken on those responsibilities. I am glad that the profilesI have control over are all set to private but now I’m worried about pictures that other people may have posted of me without my knowledge! There are sites that I don’t want people to know about that I have no control over (ie: www.myspace.com/prettylittleproblemrocks) This site isn’t bad but boy is it embarassing!

Digital Immigrant

Until now, the only experience that I’d had with technology in school was with an old computer that my uncle had built me so that I could type up term papers for my undergrad coursework. Most students didn’t have personal computers yet and so they went to the ever-crowded computer labs on campus. There was no world wide web at that time and so, until I had a midterm or a final paper due, my computer stayed turned off and collecting dust in the corner of my bedroom.

I met my ex-boyfriend right out of college and I blame errr… credit my current computer literacy on him. He was an avid gamer/computer nerd/digital native and we always had a separate designated work and counter strike computer in our house. I am what some would call a digital immigrant. I have regrettably made the, “did you get my email? - phone call” (Prensky, 2001) on more than one occasion. But due to him, I have learned and acclimated quickly to this digital world.

As an aspiring teacher I want to do everything possible to reach the emerging generation of future citizens. I want the students in my classroom to do everything that the video games promise them, “Explore, take on your friends, master, amass, build, perform, research, lead, don’t work alone!” (Prensky, 2005) I never want my students to feel like they will have to “power down” (Prensky, 2005) to be able to sit through one of my lectures. I loved the idea of using text messaging to gather data for research projects. There are so many more ways to incorporate technology into the classroom than I had even begun to think of and I hope to never let myself become static in this growing digital world.

Introduction

My name is Brookes Regenhardt and I'm hoping to teach Language Arts & Music! My favorite animal is this amazing pony named Penny (1975-2010) because she was coolest little pony west of the Mississippi.