In terms of skills acquired, I feel I have taken a long and sometimes frustrating climb up a very steep learning curve. Although I am sure I am not done, I am on more level ground. The first week I made my own life more frustrating by listening to everyone, each of who had their own individual way of doing things. I had taken a very brief course in HTML and did not particularly enjoy it. Friends said,use BB Edit, but I was too slow with BB Edit to do what I wanted to do. We had Claris Home Page 3.0 on some computers at school, but I only had Claris 1.0 at home and could not find Claris Home Page 3.0 in Mac anywhere. (I could have used the school copy on my school computer at home, but it had disappeared.) The only local Internet provider that promised they would be up and running by June1 in March did not start until June 17. The long distance call to get AOL often disconnected with our less than reliable rural lines. The one night that I tried for hours to post my material on the server, the dog ran and ran, but never got anywhere before I was disconnected. ( I did note that the dog's tail does not actually move from side to side but appears to be a saw moving up and down removing his posterior. I felt we had a lot in common.) I eventually assumed that I didn't know what I was doing with Fetch and would never learn after repeated failures and rereading the instructions over and over, only to learn the next day, that no one that tried had been able to get on. People in our group debated starting a "Whine Board." Twenty hours a week seemed to be twenty hours a day. Not to say that I didn't make enough mistakes all by myself, I seemed to find new ways every day to get things not to work. Somewhere in the second week life started to get easier. Things became more routine. I got Claris Home Page 3.0, a local Internet provider and a new modem all in the same week. I no longer dreaded the dog and I could identify problems in the HTML fairly quickly.
As we approach the end of the course, I am comfortable with my skills in most of the areas listed below. I have enough confidence that I solve most of the problems that arise by myself and can somewhat coherently explain what the problem is to someone else. I am much faster at routine processes and have learned that my best strategy at the beginning of learning a number of things is to attempt only one way until I am sure of the process.
|
Technology Tools I Can Use to Access, Manipulate and Generate Data |
Comfortable Applying in the Classroom? |
Comfortable Applying for Personal Use? |
Additional Features or Tools Needed to Learn |
|
Claris Home Page 3.0 |
Yes |
Yes |
None |
|
Fetch 3.0 |
Yes |
Yes |
None |
|
Eudora Pro |
Yes |
Yes |
Haven't set up any filters yet. |
|
Webboard |
Yes |
Yes |
None |
|
Netscape 4.0 |
Yes |
Yes |
None |
|
Flatbed Scanner |
Need more experience |
Yes, I've done a few |
More practice |
|
Digital Camera |
Fine to take pictures |
Know its features and taken a few shots , but haven't downloaded, etc. yet |
Manipulating photos |
|
MS Office 98 Word |
School is ClarisWorks only. |
Yes, basics |
Advanced Features |
|
MS Office 98-Power Point |
Not Yet |
Used it 2 years ago at CERL and was comfortable with the basics |
Advanced Features-More Practice |
|
MS Front Page 1.0 |
Haven't Used Yet |
Haven't Used Yet |
Unknown |
|
E-Portfolio |
Yes |
Yes |
Information on What Makes a Good Page Design |
|
Communication Tools |
Comfortable Applying in the Classroom? |
Comfortable Applying for Personal Use? |
Additional Communication Tools Needed To Learn |
|
WebBoard |
Yes |
Yes |
None |
|
List-serv |
Yes |
Yes |
None |
|
Newsgroups |
Yes |
Yes |
Did not really explore too many |
|
Eudora Pro |
Yes |
Yes |
Need review on setting up filters |
I found the WebBoard very useful. We were able to share everyone's experiences easily and quickly. I especially liked the ability to read so many different opinions at one time and see the different ways that issues were interpreted.
I had never used a national or international list-serv or explored finding them. It was fascinating to see how many there were. I had used one in Champaign-Urbana to set up the GEMS (Girls in Engineering, Math and Science) program and their field trips. It was very valuable particularly in raising funds with a large number of people and many different agencies.
The communication tools offer so many possibilities to teachers and society to share ideas and solutions to problems. If there is question over a lesson, almost instant feedback is available through e-mail. Students and parents can also e-mail teachers and other resource people quickly and leave questions and messages without regard to time.
Multi media is probably the area I need more experience in. I tried scanning and found that at our school it makes a big difference which scanner you use. The first one I tried was difficult to use. I asked for more instruction on how to use it and was told that step one was that you don't use that scanner. I found out that there was another one that was much easier to use and much quicker. I have taken some pictures with the digital camera on field trips, but have not worked on the computer with them afterward.
My experience with video on Web sites has been exploratory. Sometimes I can get it to work and sometimes I don't. I have seen some excellent ideas that I think students would respond to on Web sites both in areas of performance and instruction. I especially like the idea of using it in e-Portfolios. Students could show a minute of a musical performance or a ice skating show or the winning shot in a basketball game. Teachers could produce a Web site that covered topics in their classroom that would be available to those that needed review or had been absent. We often have students that are absent for one to two weeks which is difficult to make up in science, because we are often working on labs. Many of the students have access to the Web at home and on trips. They could view key points and have some idea what was going on when they returned. At the present they call the Homework Hot Line and can get a day by day report. A key question for any teacher is "Is the time invested worth the return?" The multi media applications are engaging, but do they warrant the time that it takes to produce them or is it better just to have Sally show Johnny what we did yesterday?
Although I have worked with students with disabilities in the past including a blind student and made modifications in the classroom, and I knew it was an issue in Web sites, I really did not think of modifying my Web pages to be more accessible. I thought of that as something that professionals did. Bobby was easy to use and it was fun to see if the Web pages would pass. Modifications were explained well and not difficult to use. Bobby also reemphasized that content, rather than bells and whistles, was the key to a good Web page.
I had no idea that software piracy is as organized and as prevalent as it is on the Internet. I will make my students aware of the Electronic Theft, (NET) Act passed by Congress in October of 97, which makes it a criminal offense to pirate even when no monetary gain is involved. Under the new law, penalties could be as high as $250,000 and five years in prison per title infringed. Students have been expelled from colleges in Michigan and Washington. Students at the eighth grade level often express the opinion that if they are just "sharing" it, there is nothing wrong with it. I want my students to respect the intellectual property of others. I hope that most will respond because it is "the right thing." I am not sure that we can control every student with the ever observant teacher mode or even the protection that does not allow them to save to the hard drive.
Copyright laws and how they apply to the Internet has been another area that I have become more aware of the responsibilities that I have as a teacher. I certainly do not have all the answers but I know where to start looking with such sites as the Copyright Web Site and The Copyright Society of the U.S.A. Particularly, at our school this year as the primary use of the computer leaves the computer lab and goes to the classroom teacher, many teachers will not have even thought about these responsibilities.
I think that one of our mainstays in the areas of copyright, software piracy, sexual predators and appropriate use of the Web will continue to be the Acceptable Use Policy. It is very necessary for that document to be something more than one of those endless papers that parents sign at registration. There must be continual education for both the student and the parents on what each part of that policy means. I was not aware of how good ours is in Urbana until we compared it to others and to the standards for AUP's. I do feel that we need to add a "no chat" policy immediately to our policy after reading discussions on EdTech and our group discussions. We also need to get the policy online. Computer and online resources offer tremendous potential in the classroom, but they also have many responsibilities for the teacher and the student to use them wisely. I feel that I am much better aware and prepared to consider those issues in the future as I work with students.
Integrating student assessment activities into our project will be a major goal of work that must be done in the following courses. E-Portfolios for each student at the eighth grade level is not possible with our current server nor the people we have to set them up. I would like to do some variation of that using disks, however. Portfolios give students and parents a much better idea of what the student is capable of and what areas they need to focus on rather than the traditional percentage. Most students are more highly motivated when they know their parents and others will be looking at examples of their work. They see tangible results of their progress and are more involved in identifying areas that need work. Work that was never attempted is much harder to explain away.
Authentic assessment is already built into our project with the chemical water tests and the identification of macroinvertebrates. Students like "doing real tests." Students will also be able to check each other by comparing tests that are repeated.
Will we develop rubrics for portfolios? Are we assessing technological skills, problem solving ability, as well as content? Are there other assessments that we could use? Do students need to prove a basic knowledge of legal issues such as copyright law, of acceptable use policies, of the standards for credibility of resources on the Web before working on the project? Those are all questions that we will need to consider as we implement our project.