Becca's Media Lit Blog

What does Mike Wesch believe about how students learn?  How does he act on those beliefs? Mike Wesch believes that our traditional classrooms (at the college level) were the antithesis of learning and how learning takes place.  He says that we all must somehow agree with this thought as we call everything outside of the classroom the “real world”.  He realized that he needed to look critically at how he was teaching and decide what wasn’t working in order to focus on what he believed teaching and learning should be.  Learning isn’t an act of dumping information into empty vats.  It’s not about thinking about how to “get by”.  It’s not what he called the “vaccination theory” where once you took a class you never had to do it again.   Wesch believes that learning is a fundamental trait that we all have.  We, as infants and toddlers, begin learning because we are connected to those that love us and we can feel courageous.  We don’t think about failure as a bad thing but rather som

What do you make of the (divergent) positions of Boyd and Prensky?  What do you hear each of them saying about who youth are?  Where do you stand on the “digital native” terminology? I found the ideas of both Prensky and Boyd to be fascinating.  On any given day, I can feel fairly tech-savvy and then completely out of touch with the latest apps (educational and social).  I have begun to realize that I feel more tech savvy when it comes to being in my classroom in front of 5 and 6 year olds.  The technology in class is pretty minimal.  We use I pads (though not till mid-year), I have a mimio board, and I can screen share.  I use some of the technology resources from our science kits, and I use Class Dojo to communicate with families. But in day to day teaching, I don’t use specific technology tools when I am working with my students. I am probably somewhere between a Stage 2 or Stage 3 on Scott Noon’s framework.   Since moving to virtual learning, I am definitely more in Stage 3 as I

My name is Rebecca Duff Wolstencroft. I use the name Ms. Duff when I teach because I always had and I just couldn't imagine being called anything else in the classroom .  It just seemed easier for 5 and 6 year olds than Mrs. Wolstencroft.  I have been teaching in South Kingstown for 20 years, mostly in first grade.  Two years ago I moved back to Kindergarten and I love it!  I have spent most of my career at Wakefield Elementary School .  I am the mother of two children, ages 12 and 8.  We have been out of school for a little over a week and most of our time has been spent at the beach.  We split our time between Narragansett Town Beach and on Salt Pond.  A little over a year ago, we rescued a 6 year old chocolate lab through Save a Lab .  Brownie has been a wonderful addition to our family, even though we had our first traumatic encounter with a bunny this morning.  So much for a quiet morning!  Now that my children are a bit older, I have been trying to read more for pleasure.