Why learning about ethics is important

From Lindsay:
This assigment has kind of grown on me. Earlier today I was thinking about how great it is that we are learning how are student cheat, what we can and cannot show in the classroom and other ethics issues. We are essentially getting the upperhand. I know many teachers who start teaching and no clue about how big of a problem cheating is. Let's face it, not all students or all people in the world are honest. When we out in the real world teaching I think we will be somewhat prepared.

Thanks Lindsay! Hopefully most of you feel this way. Ethics is sometimes dry and boring to learn ... but very important, especially since students look up to teachers as role models. If we don't show them that ethics is important, who will?

Update on what's due this week

Class! I told ya in class this week that the only thing due this week was your blog post about the ethics mini lessons. However, I said last week that I wouldn't grade the wiki pages until next Monday, just in case you needed extra time to tie up loose ends. Don't worry and fret over the wiki pages if they're done, however! I just thought some groups may not have had time last week to do everything they wanted to with the wiki pages.

Speaking collectively, and not necessarily individually (does that sound familiar?), the wiki pages looked really good. Learning about ethics is never really pleasant because it's kind of a boring topic. But I hope this was somewhat enjoyable and useful. It appears that you really got down to the meat of the issues on your wikis, and that's what we wanted -- so good job!

BTW - if you wanted that URL that I gave today in class for the interactive virtual world, it's at tappedin.org.
It really is quite a cool and useful tool for networking with other teachers with similar interests as yourself.

Blogs names a "must have" educational technology

Interesting! Nobody knew about weblogs a year or two ago, now an article in E-school News named blogging one of their "must have" educational technologies. Here's a quote from the article:

"Rolfes also touched on the growing importance of comprehensive student information systems used to track and monitor student progress, as well as the use of blogs as an increasingly popular tool for building stronger school communities--spurring much-needed communication among students, parents, and educators."

This would be a really interesting discussion for our class! What do you think are the "must have" and "must learn" technologies for teachers? If IPT 286 was only a one-credit class (grin), what one or two technologies do you think should be taught because they would be valuable to ANY teacher, no matter what their subject matter expertise is?

Speak up! I hope to hear your ideas on this one (even if you're from another section)! Be sure to give rationale for your ideas. "I think Excel is a must have because ..." etc.

Protecting yourself from Phishing scams

Well, since one of the groups is studying internet security this week, I thought this article might be appropriate that I found today about how to protect yourself from phishing scams. If you've never seen one, phishing is when a scam artist sends you an email that looks like it's from Ebay, Amazon, your bank, or something else, and asks you to click on a URL and go to the website to verify your information. You click on the URL, it takes you to a website that looks exactly like the real one, you enter your financial information into the website, and the scam artist has you. It can be nearly impossible to tell the real thing from the fake thing, so the general advice is don't click on any URL that comes in an email. Your bank knows you're smart enough to remember how to find their website yourself, so they won't give you the url in an email.

Why are we studying about this stuff this week anyway? Why is it YOUR responsibility to know about viruses, scams, internet security, etc., and why is it YOUR responsibility to teach your students? For starters, if you are taking them to the computer lab, you need to teach your students how to not mess up the school's computers with viruses. If they are swapping files with each other as they collaborate on projects, they need to not be swapping viruses with their peers. If they are supposed to do homework at home, they need to know how to not mess up their home computers. Anytime we do something on the Internet, we need to be educated about how to do it safely. The problem with the Internet is that scammers are changing their methods every week, so that's why as teachers we need to keep ourselves up to date about scams and how to protect ourselves.

And by the way, did I ever mention that blogs are a GREAT way of keeping up to date on what the latest scam/protective method is? :-)

What if the students had GPS phones?

This just in from the Cool Gadgets department: Nokia has released a new camera phone with GPS capabilities! I'm thrilled because I really need GPS - I can get lost in my own neighborhood. But could this also have educational capabilities? This week we're studying ethics, including technology-based cheating methods and how to combat them. One student wrote on her blog that we should not allow cell phones in class because of the possibility that they could be used for cheating. I think that if it is a day when you're going to have a test, then yeah, you should probably have them put the phones away. But there are good uses for camera phones too, especially if they start to carry GPS capabilities. Imagine sending your students on a science scavenger hunt where they follow GPS coordinates to different examples of plant and animal life and then take pictures of what they find there. That's just one idea, do you have any others?

I believe GPS could be a very powerful addition to the classroom, especially in science. And if the students, or at least some of them, already have the technology, then why not use it?

Are you really blogging?

Midterms have come and gone, and it's time to stoke the blogging fire in the class again. Remember that there are points associated with your blogging. In the past, we've had mandated assignments where students HAD to reflect on what they were learning about educational technologies. This semester I wanted to give you more ownership and freedom by telling you to reflect and blog whenever you wanted, about whatever you wanted, as long you did it.

But many of you aren't doing it! In part because of that, next week there is a required reflection assignment: reflecting on the ethics mini lessons. But you need to do some spontaneous thinking, reflecting, and writing. And short replies to other people's blogs saying, "Yes, I agree with you!" doesn't work! You don't need to blog long, but we want to see that you're thinking, reflecting, and considering different ways technology could be used in your careers.

Blogging is more than just writing about what you think about something. Blogging is synthesis, creation, and regeneration of ideas. You read something on the internet, you quote it, link to it, talk about it, synthesize it into your own context, and rework the idea so that it is now your own. There have been some great examples of this in our class, unfortunately many of them weren't about educational technology but other issues! That's fine too, but let's also talk about class issues.

Here's one example of an excellent blog posted by a student in another section, Lynette Willard.

Using excel in the classroom:
Excel has many uses for teachers as well as students. Teachers can use the program to keep up with grades without using a book or teachers as well as students can mostly use it for organizing data and forming tables, graphs, charts, etc. I found many great websites that gave reasons and examples on how to use it. One website: http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/kadkins/strategy.htm#Kindergarten gave ten reasons on why it should be used. They are:
* integrates real life situations with technology.
* increases communication.
* supports many levels.
* engages students in higher level thinking skills.
* supports the principles and standards for school mathematics
* applies to cross curricular activities.
* is a great management tool.
* compliments and enhances instruction.
* is motivational.
* is just plain fun!
It provided ways to use in several different grade levels. One example for Kindergarten/first grade was making a bar graph and a pie chart showing the number and percentages comparing the pets the children have. Excel can be used to organize data from all subjects including math, science, reading, english, and writing. The teacher can make KWL charts, timelines, multiplication review, and checklists among other things. The students can organize pretty much anything into excel. The students could even use it to make a presentation for the class and show the data they found. This can all be done in the classroom or prepared beforehand to show the students a finished product. Excel allows one to continually add information on so it is great for ongoing experiments that may last for weeks, months, or the entire school year. If for some reason a teacher is not very familiar with the excel program there are websites that show how to use excal and answer questions about it. These websites could be an easy way to show the students how to use the program also. I really loves using excel and find it useful when I have a lot of information but want a neater way to have it in my notes or have a way to organize it and make it easier to read and understand. I will definitely use it in my classroom.

Granted, you don't have to write your posts as long as Lynette's but I loved how she read something on the internet, thought about it, and applied it to her own situation. That's when you're doing quality blogging!

Enough of the soapbox. Hope to hear some of your great ideas soon! This class ebbs and flows as far as homework load, so when we have an off week without a lot of homework, let's get blogging! And go Cougs!

A cool way to engage writershttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

How about this as a cool way to engage students in writing in an English class? Flickr is an online photo storage and publishing tool that allows you to easily upload and display photos for all the world to see. It's becoming very popular, and people are posting all sorts of random photos. Now the trend is towards flicktion, which is fiction based on Flickr photos. You just upload a random photo, and students try to write a fictitious story that might explain the photo. Cool idea! To read more, go to an article on weblogg-ed, or check out some fliction pieces here.

By the way, we had a really cool Blogging story started one week, and I'm dying to hear what happens to the hero and the girl of his dreams that he just bloodied accidentally on the way to his test! Let's continue the saga! I'm posting the direct link back to this story, and encourage to continue adding your voices to the tale (and if you haven't read it yet, do -- we've got some creative people in class).

The Eternal Tale link -- http://teach2edify.blogspot.com/2004/10/eternal-tale.html

Educational uses for Podcasting

Remember I've blogged a couple of times about Podcasting, which is the combination of blog technology and mp3 players, like IPods. Well, now there's a blog dedicated to research in Educational Uses of Podcasting and author Steve Sloan offers these preliminary ideas:

In my opinion Podcasting is a great tool:

* for distance learning
* to facilitate self-paced learning
* for remediation of slower learners
* to allow faculty to offer advanced and or highly motivated learners extra content
* for helping students with reading and/or other learning disabilities
* for multi-lingual education
* to provide the ability for educators to feature guest speakers from remote locations
* to allow guest speakers the ability to present once to many sections and classes
* to allow educators to escape the tedium of lecturing
* to offer a richer learning environment

He also talks about a teacher who instead of asking his students to buy a textbook, gave them their textbook in mp3 format that they could download to their IPods. Wow. Wouldn't that be cool!

Here are some more ideas about how I think Podcasting could be valuable in schools. Now, I know what you're saying, "IPods are too expensive. Nobody will have an IPod at my school." Think outside the box! DVD players are now 15 bucks at the bookstore. IPods will get cheaper in future years.

Here are some ideas:
- Foreign language: A daily conversation in the language being learned that students have to listen to. Maybe at key points of the conversation, they record their voices responding to one of the characters. Then they send their recordings by rss to their teachers' IPod for assessing.
- Students taking turns summarizing the day's lesson for the rest of the class to review if they wish
- English Literature students realizing there is more than one way to tell a story (i.e. you don't always have to write good literature, you can speak it too).
- Student presentations recreating events from history (you might not be able to make the French revolution look good on video with a bunch of high schoolers, but maybe you could recreate it well on audio)
- Personal reflection journals that are spoken, instead of written
- Journalism students could learn radio journalism instead of just print journalism, which would give them all more to do anyway (I know, I did journalism in high school and played a lot of tetris)
- Maybe even the yearbook students could create weekly audio "yearbooks" that keep students connected throughout the year instead of just one published book at the end of the year.
etc. etc.

I think there are many more ideas, but I want to hear them from you! Any other ideas?

A copyright/fair use blog!

I just learned that the Association of Educational Communications Technology has a copyright blog that one of their committees maintains. This is a great organization, so this blog might be one to keep an eye on, if you are interested. I think it's new, so I'm not sure how much info is on there right now, but maybe you could take a look!

http://aect.motime.com/

Question about the assignment

Sarah brings up a good question:
"We are also a little confused with the rubric page- are we to have an activity, do we just teach, or do we just have people go to the wiki page and figure it out themselves? It does not explain the assignment clearly"

Here's what I told her:
"Answer: You teach a mini lesson because just showing people your wiki will be boring. The wiki is there because you won't be able to teach everything in seven minutes, so if people want to learn more, they go to your wiki and you have already compiled all of the resources so they can "one-stop shop" so to speak and learn all about the issue at your wiki."

Copyright and Fair Use

First off, if you missed class yesterday, you need to jump on the ball soon and join a group. I talked to Jared today, and Jared, how about being in the Flexible Copyright group? I also emailed a couple of other students. If you haven't heard from me and missed on Monday, email me and then I'll assign you to a group. Do this quickly so your group doesn't do all the work (and get all the points).

By the way! All groups should have their names listed on their group wikis so if a newbie joins your group, he/she can contact you. Remember that you can email anyone in this class through Blackboard.

If you need links to this week's assignment, here they are:
This week's assignment - http://msed.byu.edu/ipt/west/a_Ethics.html
Our class ethics wiki - http://ipt.byu.edu/~wiki/28x/Fall04s3/Technology-RelatedEthicalIssues

Here are some other resources that you might be interested in and that might help you study up on your topics for this week:

My PowerPoint slides on copyright/Fair Use - I used to teach ethics lecture style before we decided to let you teach yourselves as a group. These slides have condensed some of the basic info that we taught down into one presentation

Copyright Jeopardy! - test your knowledge of copyright and fair use by skimming through this jeopardy game.

Article on Technology cheating - good article about how to prevent kids using technology to cheat.

Have fun this week learning about the ethical use of technology!

Here's another good thought from this week's lesson plans ... from Mary:
"You learn better by doing and creating, or being interactive, than in any other way."

Remember the focus!

I'm grading your lesson plans, and have been pleased with some of the really creative ideas you've had! One thing I have noticed, however, is most of you are listing things like "make a powerpoint," or "make a website," etc. as your learning outcomes. Is that really what your purpose for the lesson is? I hope not! Your purpose should be to teach science, math, history, or something, and the technology should be a resource, not a learning outcome. I know that it's easy to lose that focus in our class because we talk about technology so much, but we should always keep it in context. Remember the "mindtools" article?

Anyway, I'm not really docking points for it, so don't worry - but I do hope that for the rest of the semester, you can always remember that technology is a possible means to a learning end ... not the end itself.

On another note, Erin had this interesting post about class management:
"One of the biggest challenges with using technology in the classroom is keeping the students on task and out of sites they shouldn’t be looking at. (I subbed in a high school technology class this spring and was shocked by the amount of time the students spent doing anything except their assigned work. The Instant Messaged each other, emailed their friends, checked out movie and song websites and played computer games. I am not entirely sure how to combat that however, I am sure that the teacher CANNOT sit behind his/her desk and trust the students to stay on task. The allure to get off task is far too high if they are left to themselves!) "

Weblog technology for kids

A new technology, Kidzblog, has an easy to use, and fun to watch interface to encourage elementary kids to blog. For parents and teachers, there are security features to protect the kids. How cool is all this? Can you imagine a class of fourth graders expressing opinions, analyzing stuff they've learned, and telling stories through blogs? What a great way to motivate kids to write! Check out the technology -- it looks fun!

Important announcement - put names on homework!

Hey class,
One thing that will help Alyssa and I immensly when we are grading your stuff is if you would PLEASE PUT YOUR NAMES ON YOUR HOMEWORK. This is especially important when you are posting your homework on your blog. Many of you do not have your names on your blog, so when we are grading, we know that "ILuvElmo.blogspot.com" did the homework, but who is "ILuvElmo" anyway? Same thing with emails, make sure you always put your name on the email if it's not in your email address. If you are worried about putting your first and last name on your blog for the whole world to see, then sign all your homework posts with your first name and last initial, or something like that.

A better idea is to probably just to put your name in the paragraph at the top of your blog that explains your blog. This paragraph shows up in our aggregators so we'll know who you are. You can rewrite this part of your blog by going to Blogger and going to your "settings".

Congrats! Our class is referenced by a major blogger

Congratulations class! Will Richardson pointed all of his readers towards our IPT 286 class wiki as a good example of using wikis in education. This is very exciting because Will's blog, weblogg-ed.com is one of THE most widely read education blogs out there. Great job!

I have a question for you: Does knowing you have the possibility of being seen and read by anybody out there influence how you write in your blogs or wikis? Does it matter? Does knowing this about your audience shape your ideas and what you write?

BTW-we're going back to the wiki in a week for the Ethics assignment, and who knows who will be reading!

Applying Mindtools across many disciplines

A few students have blogged their frustrations that there don't seem to be many technologies applicable to their specific fields (such as history, language learning, home ec, etc.). Remember that there are subject-specific technologies, like geometer sketchpad, that only work for one subject. There are also Mindtools (remember our article we read at the beginning of the year by David Jonassen, still available on Blackboard--you can also search for "mindtools" on Google and gets lots of stuff). Mindtools are great because they support higher-level learning in any subject. They are subject-independent; they are merely learning tools. Examples of these types of technologies are Excel, Concept-mapping tools, web authoring, desktop publishing tools (like Publisher and InDesign), and others.

Here are two other content-independent technologies that with creativity can be used for many different disciplines:

One is Muds and Moos and MUVEs. They sound weird, I know, but they can be useful. These are virtual online worlds, where students "enter" a place and can interact with different objects in the room. Think Legend of Zelda, except with an instructional instead of entertainment purpose. I'll bet there are some out there built around Roman society where students could "experience" life in Roman society ... virtually. I've also been to a Shakespeare one that pretends to let you experience Shakespearean England.

I've also seen a very well-developed virtual world used to teach environmental issues and social studies. The students go on an expedition and enter "Atlantis," where a young lady of Atlantis pleads with the students to help her save her nation. They are suffering from a burgeoning population, corrupt governments, and many of the same social and environmental issues that we deal with. The students have to solve the problems in "Atlantis" and they can see the results on the screen of their decisions. This helps them understand how policy and culture affect our own world.

A second useful tool that can be creatively applied to many disciplines is computer-supported collaboration. This is stuff like blogs, wikis, discussion boards, instant messenging, etc. With these technologies, you can hold "debates" with "political philosophers" through online communication. Or, you can help students communicate with real or pretend "authorities" on a certain subject. For example, I heard of one teacher who asked a Literature professor from the University to pretend to be "Shakespeare" in a chat room, and her high school lit students asked "Will" questions about his life and writings. You could do a similar thing with famous people in any discipline--just find someone who really knows the person to pretend to be the person. The kids know it's just pretend, but it's still a fun and different way to learn about somebody.

What other ideas do you have of "subject-independent" technologies that could easily be used for many different subjects?

I will be there Monday, but I'll be there late

Hello class,
If you remember, we're not holding class on Monday. However, I said I'd be there to help students with questions on their projects. I am now ammending that to say that I will be there ... late. One of THE landmark, HUGE people in my field is coming to BYU to speak to my department, so I'll be listening to him on Monday (he's also a BYU alumni - cool!). He's presenting from 2:30-4:30, so I will come after that and get to the McKay Lab sometime before 5 p.m. I can then stay an hour or whatever is necessary to answer any questions and offer help.

So I will be there on Monday, but I make no promises until 5 p.m.!

Blogs go political - Catch the local story!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

A lot of people are talking about how bloggers have influenced the political scene this week. It was bloggers that kept Howard Dean's campaign alive. It was bloggers that blew the cover on Dan Rather and CBS's story using false documents about Pres. Bush. A student from Dr. Allen's class linked to a story about how impactful bloggers have been this year. In our own class, Jared and Caroline have been doing some political blogging, in fact it sometimes has gotten a little heated! And blogs can get that way, for better or worse--but discussion is important and blogging may be just one more way to discuss ideas.

In case you are interested, KSL radio is airing a story on Friday morning about this issue. It will probably be on their website later that day (and did I mention you can add an RSS feed for KSL to your aggregators?) :-)

Wrapping up class today

Like promised, here are some URLs and other tidbits that I mentioned in class and promised to put on my blog.

1. The URL to the Office of Information Technology Workshops is http://www.it.byu.edu. Click on "training" and then "courses by date."

2. Remember that everyone this week is supposed to blog and discuss the following question: "What technologies do you feel will be most valuable to your specific teaching goals, how confident do you feel in these technologies, and what kinds of lesson plans, learning activities, etc. would you use these technologies for?"

3. The direct link to this week's assignment is here. If you want to check the assignments for next week, and the week after, it may give you a better idea of where to go with your project. This week the homework is light, so start learning the technology you have to learn for this project. Don't save it to the last week or you'll be hating life!

4. Remember to zip me off an email as you start to come up with an idea and check with me to see if it's an appropriate technology (especially those of you that are not required to learn a specific technology). You can email me at rw@byu.edu.

5. If after class today you still think web design is your thang, and you want to learn more, here are some resources for you:

A good place for tutorials on Composer and other programs — http://www.fgcu.edu/support/
A good site on web design, from a graphic artist perspective — http://mundidesign.com/home.html
Another good site on web design — http://www.people.memphis.edu/~kjob/wbi/Index.html

There are, I'm sure, many much better websites on web design and many better tutorials for Composer. Do a search on Google and you'll find lots. Let me know if you find one you really like and I'll add it to my blogroll.