Category: web 2.0

  • Podcast481: CMC World Student News

    This podcast features an October 2022 with middle school student CMC (his public alias) who is the creator of CMC World News (cmcworldnews.com). In this 20 minute conversation, CMC shares the origin story of CMC World News and how he came up with the idea, developed the website, and now maintains it with news articles…

  • SIFT on Mastodon

    The social media landscape is changing, and we all need better media literacy skills to help us make good choices. In this post, I’ll highlight how the “SIFT” web literacy framework can be helpful as many people start or continue building social connections on Mastodon, a “federated” and open source software platform which is an…

  • Media Dominoes Fall

    In tonight’s EdTech Situation Room webshow and podcast, I shared Storyblocks as my “Geek of the Week.” It is an amazing virtual media library for videographers, storytellers, and Storychasers. The Storyblocks website explains: Unlock access to our library of over a million royalty-free footage, template, music, and photo assets as well as an easy-to-use video…

  • Podcast480: Pedagogy Matters with Shelly Fryer

    Welcome to the first of a new podcast interview series I’m titling, “Pedagogy Matters.” This episode, recorded on May 30, 2022, features the pedagogy of my wife, Shelly Fryer, which I would summarize as “A Pedagogy of Computational Thinking: Constructionism, Coding, Robotics, Play, and Student Choice.” Shelly started her journey as a classroom teacher in…

  • Media Consumption Boundaries

    What boundaries do you have for media consumption in your life? We’ve heard a lot about “screen time” in the past few years, as both Apple and Google / Android have added built-in tools for tracking screentime. But what comprises your “media consumption” or “media diet” within your weekly screentime? The channels you watch and…

  • Podcast478: Updates and Classroom Favorites

    In this podcast episode, Dr. Wesley Fryer shares a variety of updates about his current and changing teaching situation, geographic location, academic interests (media literacy!) and recent conferences / presentations. This podcast also includes audio from Wes’ recent video, “15 Things I Love About My Classroom (and teaching situation!)” Check out the podcast show notes…

  • GeoMap Job Hunting

    As a geographer and teacher, I love the way maps can help us better understand information and data geo-spatially in rich, meaningful contexts. My wife, Shelly (@sfryer) and I, will be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, this summer, to start a new adventure together as “empty nesters.” I’m looking forward to teaching and collaborating with…

  • Tags and Hashtag Literacy

    Understanding and using both “tags” (metadata) and hashtags to find, organize, and archive information for later retrieval are essential literacy skills today. These concepts may be poorly understood by many teachers and students, however, and underutilized in school-required research assignments. In this post, I’ll explore both the concepts of tags and hashtags and the skills…

  • Social Media Stories, Instagram Reels and Mojo Videos

    I love to play with media. As my wife, Shelly, has become a health coach this fall and learned more about ways to use social media to “share our story” of weight, diet and health transformation, I’ve been learning some new things about social media along with her. One of the things I’ve learned in…

  • Teaching About “Froot Loop Conspiracy Theories” and Web Literacy

    It’s hard to believe, this month we wrapped up the first trimester of our 2021-22 academic year. For the fourth trimester, I’m LOVED the opportunity to teach my 6th graders about web literacy through a unit I call, “Froot Loop Conspiracy Theories.” I started developing this unit 2 years ago with my Chicago colleague Brian…