Digital Identity
Computer Engineer Barbie
Mar 4th
Barbie has been around for 51 years and there are 126 different versions of the doll! While popular around the world, there are many people who don’t like this toy because they say her body is unrealistic, she perpetuates a stereotype and she doesn’t represent real women.
Mattel, the company that makes Barbie, is trying to improve her image by creating dolls that give girls a positive role model – mainly by creating versions that have jobs. There newest doll is the Computer Engineer Barbie, a coding woman with matching pink laptop, glasses and accessories.
Students – feel free to respond to this story and answer one of the questions below using the blog “comments” field.
Do you think that Barbie is a role model (good or bad) for young girls?
Do you think this Barbie is dressed for work? Why or why not?
Is this new doll inspiring, insulting, or something else entirely?
OK GO followup
Mar 2nd
On Monday, the 7th grade talked about the band OK GO and their inability to post embeddable videos due to the record contract they have in place. State Farm Insurance stepped in and gave the band money to make a new video that falls beyond the EMI agreement. Enjoy this massive Rube Goldberg machine:
OK GO coming to Washington state
Mar 1st
7th grade time in the lab is split between two lessons today – bridged by digital identity:
1. OK GO is a band that became popular through some awesome YouTube videos. Instead of signing a recording contract and spending millions on advertising, they made a couple of low-budget, hilarious films and posted them online. The videos were so popular that they got signed by EMI. You can see the famous “treadmill” video (more than 49 million views) at YouTube because embedding has been disabled at the request of the record label.
The band recently made a new video and posted it on their website for all their fans, but EMI (the record label) was not happy and made them remove it. This is bizarre because the internet made them famous but now their bosses asked them not to use this tool to connect with fans. To watch this video, you have to go to YouTube so that EMI can get paid by the advertisers.
OK GO has a great online presence, using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and their own website to promote their brand (band). We took a look at their Facebook page and found out that they are performing at the Sasquatch! music festival in Washington in May. That took us to the second part of our class…
2. We opened Google Earth and searched for the The Columbia Gorge, where the music festival takes place every year. From there, we prepped for the upcoming Washington State History quiz on notable locations around the state. We used Google Earth to locate the Coulee Dam (pictured below), Adams and other mountains, major freeways, lakes, tribes and more.
2010 digital identity survey results – cell phones
Feb 20th
The 8th grade Community class has been analyzing the results of their 2010 Digital Identity Survey. 88 students (out of 103) completed the request for information. There is a lot of information to work through – from social networking accounts to gaming consoles to parent perceptions of tech use. Below is a small sample: student cell phone ownership and texting trends.
Who are we (according to search engines)?
Jan 13th
In conjunction with the new iCLAST unit on “identity,” 7th grade students explored the concept of “digital identity” today.
Searching our own names online (Bing, Google, Ask, Yahoo, Pipl.com, Spock.com), we found that unless you know someone in the real world, it can be impossible to figure out what results are accurate and which are about someone completely different. This can become important when it is time to apply for high school, college or jobs, as well as with friends and parents.
A few students, like Aranza and Deividas, have unique enough names that there wasn’t any misinformation associated with their searches. Others, like Forrest, learned that there are thousands of results that have little to do with their own lives.
Some highlights of the class:
- Aaron is an all conference 2nd baseman who hit .351
- Sophie S. went to The Giddens School (true fact)
- Veronica lives down in Grenada Hills, CA
- Toby died during the war of 1812
- Isabel stars in 2 teenage novels
- Dani is a broadway star-quality singer and dancer
- Amanda works at Parliament
- Rachel L. has 2 children
- Augie’s dad’s name is Chris (true fact)
- Aselya has her own radio station
- Sophie L. is a honey farmer
- Curtis won the 2008 stock market game (true fact)
- Nicholas has a 5-star film
- Alex is a DJ
- Nicole has a boyfriend named Steve
- Twig is a florist
- Halley is a 43 year old Englishman
- Abbey is a 70 year old Australian
- Nova volunteered to feed kids (true fact)
- Forrest is a 3 out of 4 star doctor
- Rachel R is a supervisor at Netflix
- Isaac is a black male who died in South Carolina
- Drew is an actor
- Ronan is a Facebook friend with someone named Ilya (true fact)
- Reyna is a business analyst from Toronto
- Nick is a realtor in Mount Vernon
- Sophia gets her hair cut in Queen Anne (true fact)
- Aranza is mentioned in a webpage about brain research (true fact)
Fix Facebook for your Friends
Dec 19th
Welcome to your Winter break!
This post is a follow up to last week’s discussion about the new Facebook privacy policy that is in effect. Many of you mentioned that you tried to read the explanation by the CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but didn’t really understand what it said. This is a big deal – so big that the government might be getting involved (http://mashable.com/2009/12/17/ftc-asked-to-investigate-facebooks-new-privacy-settings/).
To be brief, if you accept Facebook’s “recommended privacy settings”, you are opening your digital identity up to anyone who cares to look for you. Parents, teachers, high school admissions counselors, advertising companies and search engines. As you know, once a search engine has a cache (copy) of your info, there is no way to get it removed…as Brian says, “Google is forever.”
If you haven’t already done so, please take 5 minutes to access your account and do these things:
Community class focused on digital identity
Dec 17th
The new group of 8th graders enrolled in Community Class have turned their attention to digital identity in preparation for a January 20th presentation to parents.
The Parent Education committee has requested an evening to discuss “what exactly do students know about social networking and tech usage in general.” The 8th grade sees this as an opportunity to educate parents about screen-time, gaming and social networks and to teach parents what kind of questions to ask.
The class has split into 3 groups:
- Parent/Teacher survey about screen-time and online habits, both for the parent and for their children
- Student survey about digital device interaction (texting, accessing media, gaming, etc)
- An online resource website for parents with links to studies, news stories and FAQ around digital identity.
Results will be posted once data gathering is complete!
EduBlog nomination impacts our digital community
Dec 17th
There was a lot of excitement this week around the EduBlog “Best Class Blog” nomination that the Billings Middle School Tech Blog received. Students, alumni, faculty and board members all sprung into action – leveraging social networks (both real-world and digital) to spread the word.
Did the nomination have an affect on our web traffic? Absolutely! We received visitors from 25 countries, as far away as the Philippines and New Zealand. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to learn about technology integration at our school!
Think before you text
Dec 4th
Texting is a prevalent form of communication among much of our students. Up in the tech lab, we periodically compare texting plan rates and discuss the fact that a text is a permanent record that can be used by others for good or bad.
LG has teamed up with James Lipton to create some funny ads that ask teens to think before they text:
Tip for parents: if your student goes text-crazy without a plan, you should be able to call your cell phone service and ask for a retroactive plan that started the previous month. A $200 charge can quickly be reduced to $8, if you are willing to subscribe to a monthly charge.
Documenting community
Dec 1st
One 8th grade class is photographically documenting the meaning of the word “community.” After an introduction to some well known photographers, students used our new interactive white board to sort thumbnail images into a Venn diagram (shown below). We differentiated between artists that convey their theme purely through subject and composition v. those that use treatments after shooting to express themes.
Students then took to the streets to capture the Green Lake community. Once back in the lab, most chose to use a Hockney-esque treatment to convey their theme.
