Soaring with Soerens

Getting Ready to Land...  or Take Off Again? Two months ago I embarked on a new journey of blogging. Encouraged by my professor in my EDU776 class, I packed my bags and I was ready to go.  Image Source: Giphy It’s going to be a wild ride. And a  wild ride  it has been! I truly did not think that I would like blogging as much as I do... I often write the way that I speak and have always lacked the confidence in writing for an audience; however, even though my course is coming to a close, I don't think I am ready yet to land this plane. It has been a great reflective opportunity for me to see how much I learned and grew over the course of only 8 weeks! Can you imagine what it would look like after a year?! Even if it isn't shared with anyone but myself, I appreciate the time to learn and document it into a fun, colorful, and image-filled space. 😊 I always knew the importance of technology in education, especially in the world we live in today. But...

Social Media... in the CLASSROOM?! Yep - you read that right. And before you totally disregard this and skip to the next post, let me explain that I, too, felt the same way up until about an hour ago when I read more on danah boyd's (she prefers her name to be listed in lowercase letter) extensive research on social media and the students that are in front of us. She traveled 18 different states for seven years from 2005 until 2012 collecting data on teens and their social lives using technology. She conducted over 160 interviews with teenagers of varying socioeconomic and ethnic communities over a 3-year span. You can read more about her findings in the book she wrote, It's Complicated , or peruse this interesting presentation that summarizes it. However, here are a few points that started to shift my thinking: Using social media allows teenagers stay connected throughout the day, not just at school or the school-sponsored sporting events. For kids these days, soc...

Data Mine I don't have a tattoo. I was born with a birth mark across my lower back that looks like a tattoo I am trying to cover up, so I often joke that "God gave me a tattoo." I also almost made a grave mistake and got a tattoo of a triangle inside of an octagon to represent the friendship I had with a handful of my college girlfriends... our friendship didn't last the next year, so thankfully that didn't happen! But I don't have a tattoo. I do, however, have a digital tattoo.  So much of my life is available on the internet. By just knowing a few details about me, such as my maiden name or the state that I live in, you can easily figure out my entire life. I first did a quick Google search of my name. Each time I did it came up with about 26,000 results in less than 0.3 seconds. The majority of the results came back as items I had pinned on Pinterest , but there was also my baby registry from when my daughter was born in 2015, my grandfather's...