Week #15 - Final Course Reflection

Final Course Reflection

I have learned quite a bit about how to utilize technology in the classroom. I must admit that I was very nervous about this course. I would like to reiterate that I am in no way computer savvy nor creative, but this course has given me a new perspective on technology.

Let’s begin with the blog. I am in no way a blogger. I had and still have quite a bit apprehension about blogs. Though I do not personally care for them, I do see the value in them. They can be utilized for communication purposes as in this class. The blog helped me share my difficulties with the projects as well as my individual learning experience with each assignment. The blog project will be useful in my classroom for the sake of students sharing their experiences on class assignments. The students’ blogs will help me assess my teaching and make necessary adjustments. These blogs will be visible to only students in the class. They will not be for the general public to view. I will not subject my students to any outside nonsense or predators.

The listserv was fairly easy for me to create. I was already familiar with this tool. I am currently on several different listservs at work. When you need general information disseminated to particular people really fast, the listserv is an awesome tool. Like for instance when the university is experiencing difficultly with SOAR, I receive an email via the listserv notifying me of the issue. I plan to establish a listserv for the students, parents, and administration at my school. I will post information such as class cancellations, assignment changes, and anything else that me be of importance to the class. The listserv will be available for all of the above groups use.

The podcasts and videos done by the professor proved to be very helpful to me when trying to figure out exactly what was expected. The podcasts and videos demonstrated exactly how the project was to be done or they gave me enough of an idea to figure out the project at hand.

I guess my favorite part of the class was creating the grading spreadsheet and the classroom website. I am very good with excel since I use it everyday in the workplace. I am also good with numbers, so when I saw that I had to do a grading spreadsheet in excel, I was very confident in that task. The website on the other hand, made me a bit nervous. This was my first time every creating a website. This task introduced me to new technology that I will definitely by using in my classroom. I can post the class syllabus, assignments, class averages, and resources for the students and parents use. The website was really the best piece of this class for me.

The flyer on the other hand was very difficult for me because I have no sense of creativity. I am a no-nonsense kind of person. I stick to the facts and get straight to the point. I am not much for the fluffy and smell good stuff that often times accompany the bottom line/facts. This again is why I was not very good with the PowerPoint quiz either. According to the professor, my quiz was very linear. Again, I reiterate that I am a linear person. This has proven to be my strength in my career and I hope it will remain a strength for me when I become a teacher. I will be teaching secondary education, so I will stimulate the minds of my students with facts and challenges not artsy work. Needlessly to say, when I had any project outside of my comfort zone, I did not do as well as I would have liked. Unfortunately for me, just about everything was beyond my comfort zone. Though I was introduced to a great amount of technology and tools, I mastered none of them. By the same token I must admit that I did enjoy them for the most part.

I will try to use flyers and PowerPoint presentations in my classroom when applicable, but I assure you that I will not be going out of my way to use either of the two. I will stick to those things in which I am good. I will stick with the classroom website, listserv, grading charts, parent letters, and things of that nature. Though I may have the students do a project that requires PowerPoint. The project may be graded by the students themselves in areas of appealing, design, and content. This may help me in utilizing PowerPoint more often in my classroom while giving me input on the students learning and creatively.

Again, I was terribly frighten of the movie, it turned out not be as difficult as I had first imaged it would be. The movie helped me to realize when I create my classroom website; I will need to be very familiar with every aspect of it. I had to constantly go back and forth on the website to make sure that I was stating everything correctly as I was doing the voice part of the video. This assignment taught me as well as got me more familiar with the website layout. The video making process was very time consuming and a bit tricky at times. I would do something and forget to save it and would end up repeating the step again. All of this taught me to save at every step of the process. This is yet another assignment that I think I may give my students. They may be responsible for making a 2-3 minutes video on a skill that is being taught in one of the semesters. This will not only benefit the students by introducing them to more technology but it will show me how much my students know about a particular skill.

Overall, I must say that this course has been a valuable asset to me. It has introduced me to a wide variety of tools and resources. I can envision me utilizing these tools in my classroom. Of coarse, some more than others, but I am open to all of the tools I have been fortunate enough to learn about this semester.

Week 13 Question #1

Question #1: What are the legal, social, and ethical issues arising in the Digital Age?

Legal
Copyright violations were of concern in education before the advent of technology. Generally, copyright laws do not allow use without the owner's permission, but there are some occasions when such use is allowed. Fair use guidelines describe circumstances under which a teacher can use copyrighted materials in face-to-face instruction. The TEACH Act offers similar guidelines for the use of copyrighted materials in distance learning. The evolution of technology is constantly challenging current copyright laws thus causing the laws to continuously change. Regardless of the ultimate rulings by legislators or courts, it will continue to be an educator's professional and legal responsibility to stay aware of changes to the law and to model its application in oclassroom.

Every child in the teacher's charge has a right to privacy. Parents must give permission to share any information about them to which you might be privy as a result of your position as their teacher. Violations of privacy when using technology can take many forms. At one time it was as simple as asking a child to sign a form that would allow individuals to obtain and share the personal information of the child. This conduct became so serious that in October 1998 Congress passed the COPA. COPA protects the child's privacy and sets guidelines for teachers to use in regards to students' privacy.

Once technology is made available to students, it is the obligatgion of educators to ensure that it is used appropriately. Just as educators would not allow questionable or inappropriate printed materials into the classroom, so too must they ensure that such materials available via technology be kept out of the classroom. There must be a code of ethics established where the teacher states the guidelines for using the internet for the students. Students must be assinged a discipline if the code of conduct is violated.

Social
Equity and accessibility of technology are the most pressing and critical of these issues. Families with lower income have less acceess to the internet than do the high income families. This disapportionment is known as a digital divide. The divide does not occur along socioeconomic lines alone, but it also occurs along ethnic, gender, and education lines. More men are technologically savvy than women which may ultimately lead to the gender difference within the digital divide. The digital divide cannot help affecting technology literacy at every level of education. Awareness of the gap in access and the possible inequities along ethic, economic, gender, and eduation lines can help teachers become aware of their students' needs.

Ethical
The Digital Age has also encountered ethical dilemas. One of the most significant of these is freedom of speech and the Internet. The internet is not regulated and contains content that is inappropriate for students. The biggest debate over this regulation is the freedom of speech amendment. Then comes the bebate, who has the responsibility to monitor the content of the information and opinions expressed on the web sites, conferences, and emails. While this controversy continues to rage, it remains the schools' reponsibility to control access on its network to areas of the Internet that are inappropriate for an academic setting.

The next ethical issue is that of privacy. Is it right to monitor the use of the Internet? The controversy arises as the rights of any agency, whether governmental or commercial, to closely monitor and record a peron's personal information or online activities. For educators, this issue is less murky. The primary responsibility is the safety of the students. Because schools and their technologies are public entities, monitoring activities are both appropriate and expected.

Another ethical issue is that of academic dishonesty. Some websites offer "services" to students so that they can hire someone to writed papers for them. Others let students post written assignments or retrieve assignments written by others. Academic dishonesty can be also be caused by students copying and pasting information directly from the Internet and not giving credit to the true authors. To address potential digital dishonesty, teachers and schools should have clearly defined and enforced policies to deal with digital academic dishonesty just as they do for dishonesty of the more traditional sort. There is antiplagiarism software available for teachers to use that compares student's work with well-known author's work and with work posted on the Web. Yet again, it is the teacher's responsibility to ensure that some sort of checks are in place to promote and enforce academic honesty.

Week 12 - Movie I really did not like this assignment. First it was the most time consuming project of them all. I had a hard time with the music. So needlessly to say that there is no music in my video. Just on the last side I lost everything that I had done. Good thing that I had decided to save at every slide. I had no clue how to get everything back. The last slide is missing the audio. I will redo at a later date. I have been working on this since 11a.m. this morning. I list serve was fairly easy. I utilize this tool very often in my job. If the university's server goes down, Itech is very good about informing the faculty and staff through a listserv.

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Ms. Mary Mc's Movies

Week Eleven - Chapters 9 & 10

Week 11 - Chapters 9 & 10
Question #3 - What is distance education? What types of support are critical to the success of distance education? Why?

An alternative delivery of instruction that has been created through the adaptation of communications technologies to education has been one of the most dramatic changes enabled by technology. Many schools and institutions of higher education have adopted this idea of moving information rather than people and have applied it to the delivery of instruction. This type of delivery approach has been referred to as distance-education. This IT645 class is a prime example of distance education.

In distance education technology is key to providing a format for academic communication and exchange. Advances in communication technologies and increases in available bandwidth are driving these continual improvements in distance delivery systems. The instructional potential offered by these systems has in turn, caused a rethinking of the nature of instruction.

In a distance-delivery environment, planning is even more crucial than that of a traditional classroom environment. This is due to the fact that in a traditional classroom the teacher is able to adapt and adjust to unforseen circumstances immediately. Where as in a distance-learning environment this timeliness factor is unavailable. Once an assignment has been given, it is very difficult to make changes because there is no assurance that everyone received the changes in a timely manner.

Feedback has been a great challenge for distance learning as well. In the traditional classroom the teacher can use both verbal and visual indicators as feedback . In the distance-learning environment it is critical to plan for adequate and frequent feedback within the instructional design itself. Just as with any instruction, students need confirmation that their understanding of concepts is correct.

Another key issue is evaluation of the distance education course. One of the most common approaches is to provide performance assessment alternatives that can be used in addition to testing. Distance educators must carefully consider the intended objectives and then creatively develop assessment alternatives that take advantage of the technologies in place. Such assessments may challenge students to demonstrate competencies even more effectively than those commonly found in traditional classrooms.

Once the intitial planning issues have been considered, the next step is to examine the supporting technologies that are available or that need to be acquired to implement the instructional design. Such technologies fall into two broad categories, technologies that support synchronous distance education and those that support asynchronous distance education.

Synchronous distance education is instruction that occurs at the same time, although typically not in the same place. In contrast, asynchromous distance education is time shifted. That is, teacher and students can participate at differing times from the same or different locations. The nature of the distance education program that a district or school chooses to implement will depend on whether the distance-delivery approach will be synchronous, asynchronous, or a combination of both.