Final Project Completed

Since the inception of my final project acknowledgement, I have made some changes. As a requirement of my teaching, administration would like me to begin preparing professional developments using social networking focusing on Facebook. I am very excited about this opportunity and I am trying to be thorough. I am submitting three plans:

1. What does your online image say?
2. Using Facebook as an Educational Resource – Part 1 Creation
3. Using Facebook as an Educational Resource – Part2 Reflection

Firstly, my professional development plans are quiet long perhaps due to the combination of my inexperience creating professional development plans and the detail of the tool I chose to teach.

Secondly, I am not submitting a plan covering digital citizenship and internet safety due to the length of my "Using Facebook as an Educational Resource" plans. I felt I needed to break the “Using Facebook as an Educational Resource” into two plans. The first plan, part 1, will discuss using Facebook in the classroom and the Teacher profiles. The intent of part 1 is to get the creativity flowing and to create a teacher profile. Part 2 requires each participant to research the more sophisticated pieces of Facebook and to up the creative ante. Participants will learn about groups, pages and other Facebook tools as well as reflect on their use in the classroom.

Yeah - Chapter 11 Decision-Making and Implementation Mode

In the past, the technology department was primarily responsible for all technology and software decisions. Teachers would say they needed math software and the technology department would look for the software and implement. If teachers were lucky, the principle and maybe one teacher would be involved in the demo.
Today, a smart district involves teachers, special education specialists, school administration and the technology department in the decision. For large-scale purchases, the school board must be involved.

1. Content area teachers need to be involved because they and they allow understand the needs of their students. Teachers work with students everyday and understand the needs of students and are responsible for anticipating future needs.

2. The Special Education department needs to be involved since they have the pulse on the needs of the special education students.

3. The principle has a high-level understanding of student needs, understand the budgetary constraints and view the curriculum requirements for the entire school.

4. Instruction technology Facilitators should be involved because they will be involved with the implementation making sure teachers can access the software and understand how to use it. Depending on the size of the implementation, the facilitator maybe trained in the software to make sure all features are used properly.

5. The Technology Department must be involved to make sure the software will run in the current infrastructure, the workstations can run the software and the network environment can meet the demand. The department is also responsible for installing the software and it is helpful to understand the server and/or web requirements prior to the purchase. If new hardware needs to be purchased, the technology department must research the hardware specifications and make recommendations. Finally, the technology depart generally has to spring for the software and hardware needs.

6. For large-scale purchases, the School Board or District Committee must pre-approve reqauests and have the final budgetary stamp of approval.

Finally, I reviewed the charts and these charts are helpful for Enterprise level software purchases; Enterprise level software is purchased for district wide applications.

Digital Citizenship

I wrote this comment in response to another posting but I think it is important for me to elaborate. Being a mom of a 14 year old daughter, I feel technology has made my life more complicated. When I was growing up, the big concerns for my parents where whether I completed my homework and if I was safely at home. Once I was safely at home, my mom could sleep soundly. Today I have to check my daughter’s texts to make sure the content is appropriate, check her Facebook account to make sure she isn't posting inappropriate content or inappropriate content has not been posted about her and finally, check her email account. Just because my daughter is at home, it doesn't mean she is safe. Cyber-bullying can easily happen 24 hours a day, not just during school hours and it is exhausting.

Girls seek approval from boys by allowing them to text about sex and make comments about body parts. Before texting and emails, it took a lot of courage for a boy compliment a girl about her looks never mind being specific about body parts. Today, boys don’t think twice sending a girl a text informing her that he notices her nice butt or her chest. Hiding behind a phone or a computer has broadened the safety net of inappropriate behavior.

With the movement of smart phones in the classroom and other technologies, it has become more and more important for schools to teach students about boundaries, respecting privacy, cyber-bulling and the law. Today we have bullying laws that incorporate cyber-bullying. Too many students have been emotionally scared and have died because of cyber-bullying. I am glad to see more programs in schools dedicated to educating students; however, it is not enough. Programs need to be developed for parents who are not as technology savvy as myself.

Cybersmart has a free and well done curriculum dedicated to teaching students about the Online Images and Online Safety.

Chapter 9 - Gaming - Who would have thought..

Who would have thought thirty years ago Pac Man would have lead to the gaming community that exists today. Pac Man was created to entice women into playing video games where males primarily dominated the video game world. The little ghost creatures who look like scoops of ice cream and are still fun to watch move around. Before smart phone and iPads, gaming was thought to be a time consuming ordeal where kids would start playing right after school and wouldn’t finish until bedtime. Homework, what it that?

For the last thirty plus years, games and gaming applications have gone from gaming rooms to home computers to smart phones. The games created are huge online games to mini games. Who would have thought.. I watch my son play the piano on my smart phone and play a full band on my iPad for hours. He can play music without the demand of lessons and practice time. It is so natural, makes him very happy and is brain is taking it all in. I am hoping it will lead to an instrument. He is also learning Spanish words from an app I downloaded onto my smart phone. We spend a lot of time in the car driving to swim meets and practice and it is so easy to pickup my phone that I have on me all the time and play. My daughter creates flash cards using my phone and googles facts whenever they pop into her brain. With the advent of mini-games, kids can have fun for short periods without interfering with homework.

I checked out the ”Quiz Your Noodle: Games Around The World” game from the National Geographic for kids site. It is fun, easy to play and the music is engaging. These games can be played from any browser even a smart phone browser.

I do not know if Pac man enticed more female game players but I still cannot figure out how my husband can play “Angry Birds” on his smart phone for long periods.

Chapter 8 - Creating Content - Images

Digital photographs and digital videos have a way of capturing unforgettable moments. These moments make us laugh and cry.  Historical photos and videos explain a visual history that words alone cannot capture.  Occasionally photos and videos are taken for private use only; when placed in the wrong hands, can humiliate and embarrass.  Past News stories have reported students committing suicide because humiliating and embarrassing photos were posted to the web and YouTube to bully and harass. With the speed of online technology, these pictures and videos can be posted on websites, blogs and other social networks site within minutes.  Once content is posting online, it is almost if not impossible to remove.  It is important for students to understand that Cyber-bullying  will not be tolerated.

Today it is so easy to take pictures  and videos of the classroom setting for online posting. How cool is it for students  to see their classroom in action. Before photos can be posted, it is important to understand district policies. No teacher wants to be responsible for posting a picture of a child who is at  risk of child endangerment. It is important for teachers to know if they have a student who is involved in a restraining order and be aware of safety considerations.  My local school district will only allow schools to post group photos of their Middle and Elementary School students.

Each day student at our school create a School News Video.  The students are responsible for finding the News stories, writing the content, creating the scripts, designing the set, shooting the video and editing.  It is amazing how these students have grown as writers and news anchors.  The following is a link to a ReggieTV new cast. Check it out, it is pretty cool!

Chapter 7 Creating Content - WritingChapter 7

According to Brooks-Young, states that teen-age students who blog generally tend to be “more-prolific” writers than teen-age students who do not blog; however, at the same time, these students do not view blog writing as formal or real writing. My school is in the process of creating a Creative Writing curriculum and the program will be utilizing numerous web 2.0 tools. The Creative Writing program, with the dismay of journalism students, will be replacing the schools Journalism Curriculum.  After numerous discussions, I convinced the educators responsible for the new creative writing program that Journalism students and Creative Writing students can live as one. I introduced the web site for Web 2.0 Cool Tools for Schools website. This website provides links to many cool tools for students  to create journalist writing assignments, magazine assignments, books, etc. Students can even create books and have them printed.. 

Our teachers are also working on a summer reading program where all the participants will be writing on individual Facebook pages. These  pages will be  linked to a Summer Reading profile.  Each student will be responsible for completing a characters study of his or her favorite character from the summer reading challenge.  The page will contain a picture or a short video describing the character with written details. 

Ecomp 6008 - Final Project

For my final project, I will prepare three  professional development plans that will cover using Facebook in the classroom.  

The first professional development plan will introduce the following:

a.       Creating a Facebook account basics for classroom use only

b.      Understand groups and pages and how each can be used in the classroom.

c.       Understand “friending” and the pit falls vs “Liking” a Facebook page

d.      Setting up Facebook polls

e.      Created Facebook events

f.       Understanding discussions – projects, homework assignments, creative and 

          journalistic writing assignments

g.      Add news feeds

h.      Getting Parent “By-in”.

The  second professional development plan will help the audience understand the basics of an “ Online Images”  and it’s importance.

The third professional development plan will  teach Digital Citizenship and internet safety.

a.       Review Children’s online Privacy Protection Act of 1998

b.      Review Children’s Internet Protection Act and Media Safety

c.       Explain Cyber bullying

d.      Explain Digital Imprint, digital ethics, etc.

Copyright Webquest Reflection

When I began thinking about my first webquest, I was unsure of the topic I would cover.  I wanted my topic to be one I could use sometime in the future and I wanted the topic to be interesting and informative.  After some careful thought, I decided to work with copyright, fair use and public domain.  These topics tends to be misunderstood by administration, staff and students alike

After weeding through a ton of information and narrowing down my thoughts, I decided to create four unique roles. The roles I decided on are administration, instructional technology facilitator, teacher and student.  I decided to include a student role since more, more students are using technology to create projects, and the tendency students have with the belief that everything on the web is free and available to the public domain.  I also believe having students involved, the creation of a copyright policy will be more credible.

Groups of four will work together and each person will be required to select a role that closely resembles their responsibilities.  Each role is responsible for researching the topics listed in the webquest document by role type.  At the conclusion of the research period, the group will get together to discuss their findings.  A link to a copyright quiz is supplied in the resources section of the webquest to help direct the group discussion and keep the discussion focused.  Once the group discussion has finished, the group will use the Glogster EDU application to create an artistic and informative poster that to post around copiers, libraries and computer labs.

After laying out my draft, I needed to create my website using one of the free web 2.0 website creation tools.  Being opened minded and wanting to learn as much as I could about different technologies, I decided to work in the MAC environment for the entire project. I decided to develop my website using the iMac tool and Bravenet to create and upload my site.  After a long weekend and many hours of site design and playing with HTML tables, the site looked great and I was ready to publish.   I decided I was not going to take the easy way out so I worked on publishing my site using Bravenet.  The process required may steps but was not bad.  After some effort, I was able to post my site. 

After testing my site, I found some errors. The most discouraging problem was the assessment table I created using html.  I think of myself as a good html developer but the tool had other thoughts.  After making some html changes,  I tried to upload my site again but could not.  I tried for a few hours and was not successful and I am not sure why.  I never received any errors except that it would not post.  To save time and the fact that my projected needed to be completed, I created another site using MobileMe.  Uploading to MobilMe was a fun and easy process; however, the site tool did not accept the html code.  I tried for many, many hours to change the code and nothing worked so I had to change my approach and create a document page instead.

Being a Windows PC person my entire career, the site creation process was  a bit frustrating but I was determined.   By the end of the weekend, I was happy with my progress, I learned a lot about the MAC and did not divert back to the PC. 

Virtual Worlds - How they grew on me. Chapter 6

While reading this chapter for the first time, I had many concerns with the virtual world sites such as Teen Second Life.  We have a problem with predators stocking children in chat rooms using just words.  I cannot help but think how easy it would be to lure vulnerable children into destructive or harmful situations when discussions involve real world visual scenarios such as personal relationships, dating and sex if visual avatars are used.  I fear young people may get to wrapped up in the make believe and begin to interpret these worlds as real. That being said and with the intent to keep an open mind, I decided to read the chapter two more times.

As I read the chapter again, I began to feel more comfortable with the idea of these virtual worlds.  I found  virtual worlds be of  value if they suit a very specific education goal, the out comes can be proved and teachers carefully monitor student usage for underage programs.  For example, medical programs can use virtual worlds to simulate real-life medical conditions or emergencies.  Students can play out scenarios without harming patients.  These worlds may be used to assist students learning English or students learning foreign languages where they can interact and learn real life scenarios is a safe environment.  The Skoolaborate.com offers students the ability to partake in discussions about current events with others students from around the world such as topics about the Middle East and Egypt.  

I also checked out SecretBuilder.com and Whyville.com and they are of interest.  These sites are inviting to students of all ages including elementary school students.  Students can participate in book discussion groups without the fear of being belittled by friends or thought of as a nerd.  How many students refrain from participating in other scholarly activities including tutoring programs for the fear of being called stupid?  Some of these sites are used to bring courses to students in rural neighborhoods where educational services are limited or not available. 

In my opinion, in order for me to partake in these environments and encourage their use, I would have to learn the environments and carefully plan lessons.

Social Networking - Can we keep our kids focused?

In my opinion, using social networking site such as Facebook is a great idea but how do we focus our students in these environments?  We also have a dilemma as to the proper way to interact with our students on these sites.  I believe it is imperative that we keep our teacher life and personal life separate where teachers create a classroom site and require students to interact with the classroom site.  Not only does this protect everyone, it shows students the importance of keeping school and personal life separate.

I know there are different options available for social networking sites but to be perfectly honest, Facebook is it!  Almost every student and child I talk to over the age of 12 has a Facebook account and uses it everyday so why not incorporate its use into the classroom.  I really liked Chad’s idea of giving students 5 minutes at the end of class to view their personal profile if all students stay focused on their school work.

I have researched several ways to setup Facebook sites, groups and pages.  If a teacher creates a classroom site and “friends” students to work on classroom assignments, the classroom site is not immune to personal status updates from "friends". Each time a student sends out a status update to all friends, personal information is sent to the classroom site for everyone to view.

After much research and testing, my personal thought is to setup a page for each classroom or each project.   These pages can be managed from a teacher’s personal account or teacher Facebook site without interference from student sites.  Students must “like” the page from their profile and each student will receive messages from these pages to their profile.  Students can comment on the page wall and participate in class discussions.  Pages may be public or private.  Private pages require invites.   Facebook groups require students to be friends with your site before friends can be added to groups. 

The school I am working at is testing the use of Facebook in the classroom.  If students do not follow the class rules, there are consequences.  These sites are also used to post homework discussions. An improvement in homework completion has been noticed. 

Netbooks - Are they really all that?

 I read this chapter and thought the large scale initiatives were commendable. Give children in other counties and low income families access to computers and you open up the world of learning. Unfortunately, the quality of the netbook is poor. Netbook screens are very small, disk drives are minimal which limit the number of installed applications and the internet access speed is very slow.  For an extra 100 to 200 dollars, students can have access to a  small but better quality and fully functional mini laptop.
The intent of these small computers is to give students computers which can be used during lessons and then taken home to complete assignments.  They are small and fit nicely on desks with other learning tools. In my opinion and personal experience, I do not believe they will have a long life span if they are allowed home. However, I did do some research and found a netbook that looks durable.
http://www.netbooknews.com/9084/handhelds-algiz-xrw-rugged-netbook-certified-for-durability/

Thoughts regarding the MP3 Players Chapter

I work in a school district where a majority of the students is from low-income households but most students seem to have iPods or some sort of smart phone, which I find surprising. Having these devices available can assist in the classroom and can be used as a handy tool. Teachers can create their own podcasts for lessons or lesson reviews. The chapter also discusses some sites that the author has found helpful. I have listed a couple of sites that contain educational links to the iTunes educational site as well as 100 ways to use your iPod. I find these sites to have many interesting applications that range from flash cards, ELL tools, foreign language introductory tools, books, book summaries or Spark Notes, etc. The only issue with a lot of these podcast or apps for iPods is the cost. Many of them have a cost; however, local libraries can be a resource for literary podcast. Another idea is to work with the school libraries to create a library of purchased podcast or learning applications. Often apps or podcasts can be purchased for use on multiple devices added to the library resources as found in public libraries.

The author made a point in the chapter to discuss three important topics. The first is using these devices to cheat, the second, the need to educate students in copyright laws and digital citizenship and the third, multitasking students. In my opinion, if a student wants to cheat, he/she will find creative ways to cheat and we should always be aware during examination periods. Regarding copyright and digital citizenship, these skills should be in the curriculum and taught throughout a student’s educational career. The theory behind understand the law does not change with the piece of technology used or emerging technologies.

Finally, the concern of students and their ability to multitask is a viable concern. Every student learns differently and needs to understand how they learn best. Perhaps one student can listen to music while they are writing as English paper but not while they are learning algebra. This is where the knowledge of multiple intelligences would come in handy.

Cells Phones

After receiving my new smart phone for Christmas, I was excited to learn new ways of using my phone for personal and as an educational tool so I read the chapter called “Cell Phones” with vigor. I did not learn anything new but this chapter may be helpful for others. Teachers can use cell phones to send texts to students to remind about exams and pending project timelines. Students can be encouraged to use the calendar feature to add important educational dates such as exams, quizzes, project deadlines, etc. Student possessing phones which have internet access can be used to research questions that arise during classroom discussions. In our school, teachers generally have one computer in their classroom and often they are using it to project their lessons. While the teacher continues with the lesson, students can use their phone browser to research questions or a topic in more detail perhaps promoting more indepth conversations. Smart phones have many educational applications and among them are dictionaries, language translation tools, etc.

Students can listen to educational podcasts and can download books onto these devices. Downloading books is handy and makes them available for impromtu reading. Students can also take pictures to document projects steps. The pictures can be downloaded to a pc to create project documentation or create a class slide show for a parent’s night.

Along with using these technologies in the classroom, teaches must teach proper phone etiquette and the proper use of phones in the classroom. Smart phones are relatively new to most students and will take some time before students use them effectively in the classroom without monitoring.

Teaching with the Tools Kids Really Use: Learning With Web and Mobile Technologies by Susan Brooks-Young

21st Century Skills:

What does the phrase “21st Century Skills” mean? 21st Century Skills refer to the content, skills and knowledge students will need to be productive in a world that is constantly evolving. Does this mean that educators should use the latest technology without any regard to the curriculum? How can schools keep up with the latest and greatest technology? Is it really necessary to keep up with the latest and greatest technology to cover the skills outline in NETs*S? Brooks-Young states that educators must not replace the content in the curriculum but use technology and “modern tools” to enhance and support the curriculum whether students move into the work force after graduation or go to college.
The National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS*S) identifies the standards that are needed to help students thrive in a rapidly changing world.
1. Students can use web tools, power point, word processing, photo and video processing tools, etc. to promote and enhance creativity and innovation.
2. Group and project-based learning is necessary to teach communication and collaboration skills. Tools available to enhance the communication and collaborative process are email systems, wikis, blogs, social media sites, web meeting applications, etc.
3. Learning skills to quickly effectively search the web to find and evaluate quality research information and disseminate between fact and fiction is imperative to research and information fluency.
4. Solving real world problems involve critical thinking, problem solving and decision making skills.
5. Teaching digital citizenship to students encompasses ethics and social responsibility while using technology and 21st century skills
6. Incorporating the use of technology and operations is important but is it important to keep up with the latest and greatest? Learning technology is similar to learning a foreign language. Once you know one foreign language, it is easier to learn another. This concept can be used when learning technology. Once you learn to use one email system, blog application, photo applications, it is much easier to learn others.

When using technology and modern tools in the classroom, educators must ensure that the tools used in the classroom are not for the entertainment value or merely an updated look of a lesson. Technology and modern tools must engage students in the learning process and encourage students to “dig deeper” into the subject resulting in higher achievement. In my opinion, rewriting lessons into power point presentations to display using an overhead projector does not count.

Big Waves - Video Post from YouTube

Amazing

ECOMP 6008 - The World Wide Web as an Educational Resource

I want to learn the best and most efficient ways to add/use technology into all types of classroom activities.