Reflection Unit 3

Reflection

We chose to present this project in the form of a podcast. We wanted to do something different than what we had not done in previous units and a podcast is a fun and interactive way to present our findings. We also chose this medium because we were each doing interviews it was a simple way of being able to convey what we learned in our interviews, to our audience. It can be difficult to ensure that what the people you are interviewing are saying is taken the way in which they mean it, when it is in writing. With a podcast a listener can feel like they are in the room while the interview is happening. This ensures that comments are not taken out of context, as social interaction can be hard to embody by print. Our topic can sometimes be a sensitive one, it was important to us to be respectful. Because of this we decided it would be a better idea have our interviewers voices heard to ensure that our conversations were not misconstrued.

Podcasts have been rising in popularity for some time now, to the point where they are now a kind of phenomenon. Podcasts can be fun and light or dark and heavy. Either way, podcasts are the way people are getting their information. In my personal experience, our target audience falls within the population that is likely to listen to podcasts. Podcasts are an easy way to get information. It is a fun way to obtain news and current events on the go. Podcasts can be listened to on your cell phone or tablet, which makes them easy to listen to anytime, anywhere. Since our audience it parents, who are often on the go, and teachers, who often work long hours, using a medium that is easily accessible is ideal.

Since podcasts are so accessible to allows people with disabilities to also be able to engage with our project. We wanted to ensure that we were “practicing what we preached” and giving accessibility to the knowledge that we found through our research. In Naomi’s interview with her teacher, Profesor Caron, she mentions that an upside to technology is giving students different ways to learn.

Our intended audience for our unit three project is parents of children of any age as well as teachers/educators. The reason that our team decided to gear our project at parents themselves is because parents have direct control over the usage of technology of their children. The way that kids use technology when they are young sets the precedent to their habits throughout their whole life. Parents should be the ones monitoring this use so it is crucial that they have access to the information that we have been researching for this project. It is so essential that people are educated on this ongoing technology debate: whether it is hurtful or harmful in the classroom. We also want to assure that educators hear our message because they make the choices of implementation in the classroom.

We made our podcast and published it on Soundcloud. Then, we each respectively shared on our Facebook pages. Each of us having our Facebook pages for years, we have accumulated lots of Facebook “friends” all including parents and teachers we have had over the years within our network. This is a great way to get our platform out there for our audience especially as soon as it gains traction through likes, comments and shares. We all shared recently so we have yet to hear a response from any of our users. Each of our posts look like this:

Included is a link to our podcast on Soundcloud as well as our pitch to begin our engagement into a conversation.

With time we hope that between the three of us we will be able to start an ongoing conversation on this topic which we all agree is something that needs to be talked about. We want parents and teachers to be educated on how a child’s technology use in the classroom) can affect them throughout their academic and potential future professional careers. We hope that through the insight of our interviewees; a technology professor, an education professor and a student teacher, can give our audience some more insight. We want them to be able to start a conversation within the post and be able to share their own thoughts. This is the beauty of social media posting which is why we chose to share via Facebook status. Even if they choose not to interact with our posts we think that it will be beneficial for them to listen to our podcast to gain understanding and be more educated on where they stand on this debate.

Even though we worked asa  group, the comment that a classmate left on our blogs that made the most sense to converse about was one from Bethanne Brandsetter, on the Unit 2 Portfolio of Naomi’s blog. “Naomi, the flyer is a great idea and different from a typical paragraph pitch. Sending it to your Introduction to Inclusive Education teacher was a great idea because she can give a lot of insight about the topic. If you end up putting the flyer up around campus, it will be interesting to see what students say since this directly relates to them. Great job and great ideas!” The reason we chose to analyze this comment was because that it made us realize how good and relevant the topic was of having technology in a classroom. This influenced our writing because it made us go and look for points on how technology in a educational setting has benefits. The part of … “Sending it to your Introduction to Inclusive Education teacher was a great idea because she can give a lot of insight about the topic…” made us realize that this is not only a topic that all of us feel passionate about, but other people do to. Especially being in an educational setting like at a University, there are a lot of people who agree that technology should be used in education, because they are actually professors teaching in the field. This inspired us to start our project and do interviews with people in the field because we realized that there are more people passionate about this topic then just us. Kelly interviewed her roommate who is currently an education major, and is in classrooms everyday teaching elementary school aged children, who agrees that society should implement more technology and social media use in educational settings in order to help children in need and to create a forum for children to express themselves. Naomi interviewed her professor that stated that technology can be helpful as long as it is used properly and running properly so that it can be used, and Sophie interviewed her professor who feels that since technology is a way of life, it should be implemented because it is a daily thing. Overall, the comment from our classmate made it easy to pick what topic we would do our final on, and that how implementing technology into educational settings is not only the way of the future, but is beneficial and can help kids succeed.