Reading Reaction #3: Censorship

“Is it more unethical to allow threats to students/schools or to deny students/teachers access to instructionally-relevant Web-based tools and content?”

I find it interesting that this question assumes both options are unethical to some extent.  Denying students and teachers access to tools and content that are instructionally relevant would most definitely be unethical.  We would be limiting what the students are able to learn by limiting what they are allowed to access.  It’s like saying you can read this book on calculus, but not this book on Einstein.  While I know I’m risking getting into a discussion on books being banned for questionable content, I don’t agree with that either.  I’m not saying we should give students free rein or that all students should be allowed unlimited access, but as students enter middle and high school they are moving toward adulthood and we need to teach them how to deal with the responsibilities they will be expected to take on.  Part of this includes how to use the internet in an acceptable way.  Honestly, even young children should be taught how to determine if a site is appropriate for their use.  Bell (2009) believes that students may end up being less safe rather than more if they go to schools with filtering where they are not taught how to determine whether sites are appropriate.  Also relying on filters can be dangerous.  It provides a false sense of security when filters are far from 100% effective (Bell, 2009).  Denying a student the right to learn about something or how to use certain internet tools because there is the potential for danger is like saying students can’t use scissors because they might cut themselves or they can’t play sports because they might get hurt.  We still allow students to do those things; we just make sure they’re supervised when they do.

However, allowing threats to students by giving them free access to web-based tools and content would also be unethical.  Fortunately, it is possible to monitor student use of the internet as we teach them responsible internet behaviors.  Objectionable materials from racist literature and pornographic materials to web pages that provide incorrect material are major concerns when dealing with K-12 students (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010).  I know we want to protect students from these materials, but who will protect them from these materials when they go out in the world?  Simply blocking the content isn’t the answer.  The best solution is to teach students how to avoid these materials and why they should while we can still monitor them to ensure their safety. 

 

Bell, M. (2009) Do you want kids to be safe online? MultiMedia & Internet @ Schools,     Jan/Feb 2009, 38-40.

Shelly, G.B., Gunter, G.A., and Gunter, R.E. (2010) Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6^th Ed.).  Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

 

ABC Week #4: Standards and Training for Virtual Educators

Many states and counties are utilizing virtual education as a way to diversify course options and to offer students an alternative to seat time classes, but are our teachers being properly trained to teach these classes?  Over the last week, I have seen several articles about how teacher training and standards for educators in online environments are seriously lacking.  Online education is vastly different from face-to-face and even blended (part face-to-face and part online) learning.  The challenges for the instructor are very different in online learning (Quillen, 2010).  Right now, most pre-service teachers receive no training in online instruction.  Many teachers who start teaching online have little to no training in online teaching prior to beginning (17% received 10 hours or less of professional development in online teaching based on a 2008 report – Ash, 2010).

While most pre-service teachers, receive training in integrating technology in the classroom that is very different from teaching completely online.  In a face-to-face classroom, you have synchronous discussions and the teacher can prompt students during that discussion and look at faces to be able to see who is getting it and who isn’t.  In an online course, you have asynchronous discussions where the postings may occur days apart and students generally only post as much as they are required to post.  It can make it difficult to have a good discussion if you have no experience with it.  Also, I have had online classes and have heard of others who have as well, where the teacher had no idea what they were doing which led to a lot of chaos and very little learning.

Many states including my home state of Florida don’t even have endorsement requirements for their teachers to teach online.  We have teaching certificates and endorsements for everything else, but not online learning.  It is somewhat alarming with the emphasis that has been placed on virtual learning with the recent applications for Race to the Top and other funding and education reform efforts.  With all the concern over having highly qualified teachers, this oversight is really surprising.  Online education is nothing new.  It has been around for more than a decade, so how is it that the education establishment has not made the time to create requirements for being an online teacher?

Ash, K. (2010) Virtual-Teacher training seen to lack consistency.  Education Week, 30(4), S8-S9.  Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04edtech_profdev.h30.html?Intc=EL102ENL.

Quillen, I. (2010) Ed. schools lag behind in virtual-teacher training: Virtual education experts say graduate programs to train online teachers make the most sense, at least for now.  Education Week, 30(4), S11-S13.  Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04edtech_teachprep.h30.html?Intc=EL102ENL.

Reading Reaction #2: The Networked Student

Wendy Drexler's The Networked Student outlines what our students should be capable of doing and the role that we as teachers should play.  The networked student will acquire 21st century skills that will be necessary for the student to succeed not just in his or her career, but also in life.  The networked student will learn how to do adequate research on the internet and to create a network of other informed individuals to learn from.  These skills will allow a networked student to be better informed, more adaptable to circumstances and especially new technology, and capable of critical thinking.

In a classroom meant to create networked students, the focus is on the student and the skills he or she has acquired in obtaining knowledge to solve real-world problems.  The networked classroom is multisensory which allows for the different ways in which students learn.  In addition, the networked classroom is collaborative.  Many employers now seek employees who can work together on projects.  Collaboration allows for varied perspectives, which may result in ideas from the group that individuals alone would not have thought of or may prevent mistakes because someone else was thinking through the same problem. 

However, we also need to keep in mind the limitations of technology and encourage our students to also think about alternative solutions.  I recently read a blog by Patrick Ledesma (http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/leading_from_the_classroom/2010/09/schooled_on_my_ipad.html).  He talks about how he tried to compete with a person with traditional photocopied research articles and books and a laptop using his ipad.  The ipad definitely stood up to the more traditional methods until the other person started comparing articles side by side and doing multiple things at once with her laptop.  An ipad can be great and it's all the rage right now, but it does have limitations.  We, as teachers, need to remember that technology is not a magic wand that will reform education.  It is only part of the equation.

ABC Week #3: Net censoring at school

Usage of the internet in public schools (K-12) has been and will continue to be a controversial issue.  Should students be blocked from accessing some sites? Or should students have unlimited access with strict teacher observation and guidelines?  Should schools limit or ban internet usage?  Well I definitely don't believe that banning the internet at school is a viable option.  We live in a digital age and students need to develop digital skills such as researching on the internet.  Many students may not have internet access at home and if their access at school is limited as well, when will they have the opportunity to gain these skills? 

So we're left with either blocking some sites or strict supervision.  Blocking sites would provide safety for our students while at school.  However, many blocking programs will also inadvertently block useful websites such as Wikipedia.  That leaves us with only one acceptable option if we don't want to limit our students' opportunities for research: unlimited access with strict supervision and guidelines.  I know when this idea is mentioned most people think of strict rules that teachers wander around the room trying to enforce while students quickly hide off task windows when the teacher comes near them, but I have seen some software that would allow the teacher to supervise the student's use of the computer including the internet.  Some software not only allows the teacher to view different student's screens without their knowledge, it also allows the teacher the freeze the screen.  This means that the students don't know when the teacher will be looking and can't simply hide their off task activities.  The internet, in and of itself, is not dangerous.  It's the material that our students may find on the internet that is the problem.  If students help to create the rules and know that the teacher will be able to adequately enforce them if necessary, then I believe that we can keep our students safe while providing them with the opportunity to acquire and/or improve their digital skills, which will be necessary for a successful future career.

 

Activity Reflection #1: Searching

After exploring the Florida Department of Education's website (www.fldoe.org), my county's website (www.marion.k12.fl.us), three other websites from our text by Shelly, Gunter, and Gunter (2010: www.google.com/educators, bensguide.gpo.gov, and www.educationworld.com), and doing some indepdent searching for teacher resources, I've realized that there is a LOT of stuff out there. One thing I noticed was the number of lesson plans out there in cyberspace. While a lot of the lesson plans provide age ranges and descriptions, having to read all those descriptions to find the lesson plan you want would be time consuming. Also, when you get to junior high/middle school and high school, a lot of times they're all grouped in together so you can have a lesson plan that could potential be used for students from 6th grade to 12th grade. After eliminating many of the lesson plans based on their descriptions, you would have to review the lesson plan to make sure that you could do it and that it was appropriate for your students. If all lesson plans had tags or keywords such as technology-based, English Language Learner appropriate, explicit instruction, etc, it would save some time. Also, you'd have to have criteria set up before hand to evaluate lesson plans for quality. A lesson plan may sound like it would be fun and your students might love it, but it might be lacking in some way (goals and assessments matching, accurate time estimates, etc). Another thing to consider is teacher experience level. They could label lesson plans with beginner, intermediate, and advanced. It's not that the beginning teacher isn't capable or couldn't use an advanced lesson plan, but if it was labeled as such then he or she would know to ask a more experienced teacher where the lesson plan might be problematic in the execution and whether they could modify it to prevent problems. Beginning teachers (like me) often don't have the experience to know what activities may cause which kinds of problems and what they should do beforehand to mitigate the potential chaos.

It would be difficult and time consuming to go through everything available on the web to find what you needed.  There are tons of articles, websites, apps, videos, and blogs dealing with education. There's just no way for any one teacher to keep up with all of it. I think that's a good reason for supporting collaboration among teachers. If each teacher in a group keeps up with a part then they can share the useful stuff with others.

Shelly, G.B., Gunter, G.A., and Gunter, R.E. 2010 Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom (6th Ed.).  Boston, MA: Course Technology.

ABC posting week 2: Net-Age Students Have Different View of Plagiarism

Net-Age Students Have Different View of Plagiarism

This article from The Associated Press on Education Week kind of annoyed me. Just because information is out there and available does not mean students can copy it wholesale and not understand that what they're doing is wrong. They may think that it being available on the internet makes it common knowledge, but copying and pasting is still copying and pasting not stating something that is common knowledge. This situation isn't just a problem of not being able to determine ownership. If the student in this article had used information or ideas from an online source to help him write his business plan then the situation would have been very different from what he did, which was directly copying parts of an online business plan. I think we as teachers simply need to make it clear that if you copy anything (hardcopy or digital) word for word without quotation marks and a citation, then it is plagiarism. Perhaps we should go over plagiarism and appropriate citations in every class and then students wouldn't have not knowing as an excuse.

ABC posting week 1: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I read this article by Prensky (2001) and I thought I'm not quite a digital native, but I don't quite fit in the digital immigrant category.  I turn to the internet for info first, I install and try to learn a program by using it and only use the manual as a reference if I can't figure out something, I don't print out email unless I need it as proof, I send urls rather than calling someone in to see a website, and I don't call to check to see if someone got my email.  However, I also don't speak txting fluently.  I know the basics like lol and lmao, but some phrases I have to look up.  
Also, this article was written in 2001 and he talks about not waiting for these students to grow up to teach other digital natives.  Well, that's already happened, I'm 29 and most people younger than me are digital natives.  Some of them may well be teaching by now, but they've been trained to teach in the manner of a digital immigrant.  I really like the idea of incorporating technology in my classroom, but I worry that I may not be able to because I may be given a specific curriculum with specific lesson plans to follow.  Due to the situation with accountability, I know that many school boards have adopted very specific curriculum and how strict they are on following it would limit how much a teacher could adapt that curriculum for digital natives.
I've seen the curriculum for my county for high school social science classes and it is very scripted.  Technology is used to lecture and for review/quizzes, but not much beyond that.  Also, I have so many ideas I would like to employ such as students having discussions on a blog or having a choice what kind of project they want to do whether it is a traditional report, a powerpoint presentation, or something like making a documentary, but what if I work in a low socioeconomic status school where most students don't have access to a lot of technology at home and the schools don't get as much funding for technology in the classroom.  There can be many limits to what teachers may do and even digital natives may not teach in a way that relates to other digital natives.

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.  Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Reading Reaction 1: What students need to be successful in the 21st century

I liked Fisch & McLeod's video, Did You Know.  It clearly points out the digital reality for those who may not see it clearly.  For some teachers who feel that traditional teaching strategies are the only way, this might give them a wake up call and help them to realize that traditional teaching strategies won't work with students who interact on a completely different level.  
I also really liked Alice Mercer's response to Dr. McLeod's blog. There are two factors: effectiveness and convenience.  Teachers shouldn't spend all their free time on work.  That being said we also need to make sure our curriculum is effective.  We can balance effectiveness and convenience if we try.  Mercer's highly effective, very convenient category should be the goal for all teachers though the reality is probably somewhere in between that and highly effective, not convenient.
In order to achieve this highly effective, very convenient goal, we need to keep in mind the 21st century skills students will need to be successful both in school and in their future careers.  Students still need the traditional core subjects, but integrated within those courses they should also acquire information literacy (knowing how to find, use, analyze, and communicate information), flexibility and adaptability, technology skills, and innovation skills (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010).  Students need to be able to adapt to the rapid changes our world is going through and be able to use the technologies available to them which means we as teachers need to be able to do this.  We need to learn new technologies and integrate them in our classes not because they're shiny and new or because they might hold our student's attention, but because our students will need to know how to use these technologies.  Many teachers fall back on traditional teaching strategies because they are comparatively easy and definitely more comfortable since they are well known.  Therefore, we need to stay on guard and remind ourselves of what our students really need to know regardless of whether it is comfortable to explore new strategies.