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/