Lesson 8: The Security Finale

For this last week in educational technology we studied the importance of security on the internet.  We place such a grand emphasis on using technology on a daily basis we have to account for the dangers that threaten our hardware.  As an educator so much of what we do is completed upon technology and I have been sweating bullets a few times when I couldn’t find my flash drive, which contained all my lesson plans and resources.  Professionally we have a responsibility to teach our students proper security measures and ethical treatment of technology.  In our ISTE standards for teachers we are to model and promote digital citizenship and responsibility.  Whenever we have students using technology we need to be teaching them the importance of maintaining security of their usernames and passwords.  We teach them to look for good and reliable sources and avoid simply opening emails and such. 

In the classroom I notice how our servers have several anti-virus programs in place that block students from going to unreliable sources that could potentially transfer malicious software.  Email is limited to using outlook because of their greater control with the school system.  Students are encouraged to connect to the wifi network within the school, but they also know they will be monitored in their usage of the net and they can’t go to several websites they could otherwise go to on their own.  I think it’s very important to teach internet security to the students because they generally don’t have much of a concern about it.  I have had to tell students about keeping their usernames and passwords safe and only used by them a lot recently.  If another students forgets theirs then another is quick  to say, “They can use mine.”  That is admirable that they want to help their fellow peers, but this behavior keeps students at risk because they don’t worry about losing their identity or what others can do with their identity.  Students really don’t think about someone else acting as them and going to inappropriate sites and then the real student get in trouble for it.  I try to explain to them that even though it doesn’t seem to matter now, they still need to help their personal data to themselves.  I don’t give students my username and password and they ask why so I tell them that anything could happen if I know that only I know my username and password.  I can’t allow myself to not have control over my username. 

This transfers to my own personal accounts.  I try to maintain security as best as I can by using a password that has capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers within the password.  I have dealt with viruses in the past and I always check to make sure emails are from people that I know or I understand the subject title.  I don’t add people to my facebook unless I know them personally and I don’t go to lots of links on facebook as well.  I know that I do need to get a more updated anti-virus program, but until I do so I try to search the web as conservatively as possible. 

Lesson 7: The Brain & Web 2.0 Tools

This week we learned about the importance of the brain in learning for students.  We focus so much about practices and strategies that will help students understand a topic, but we can also gain a lot more insight on the learning process by looking at the functions of the organ that does the processing itself.  We looked at the correlation between art forms and the growth of knowledge in other content areas.  I think practices that involve us using multiple parts of the brain are more effective to build learning in students.  When you become accustomed to using many parts of your brain you will be adept and using it in other areas as well.  When you use more of your brain you are more likely to commit learning to memory. 

Another important practice that can help learning is the use of games in learning.  This has to be very purposeful because games can quickly become about the winning or losing aspect and learning doesn’t matter as much.  If you maintain that balance you can present interesting and informative games that students will be engaged in and learn through their engagement. 

We were asked to choose one of the web 2.0 tools that we have learned about in our tech explorations and apply that into the classroom and evaluate its use and effectiveness in the class.  I chose to use webquests in my classroom and made a webquest specifically for my content area that I could use in the first few weeks of school.  Webquests are great tools in that you have everything available already on the internet so students can complete the activity just as efficiently at home as at school.  Webquests also bring out more engagement and interest from the students.  This does not mean you can have any normal workbook page as a webquest.  There has to be real world applications into your webquest or its not being used in a purposeful manner. 

I completed my webquest with my students this week and it took a couple days to complete but I really enjoyed the products that were created as a result of the webquest.  The students created more in-depth maps of the school and incorporated elements just as a professional cartographer would.  The objective was to learn about elements of maps for students to make better connections and understand what maps are trying to convey to them.  This is the same webquest I posted in lesson six from QuestGarden. 

The students were indeed very engaged and had creative products in the end.  They showed an increase in knowledge about geographic elements within maps.  I wish that I would have provided more in-depth activities on the different elements however.  All I had was for students to provide basic understanding of the element such as latitude and longitude and then had them incorporate that into their school maps.  I would have liked to have extended this by having students apply understanding of the elements in another form other than the visual maps.  I enjoyed completing this activity with my students as it made the class more interesting and built comradery with my students. 

Lesson 6: Webquests!

Here's a link to my webquest:  http://questgarden.com/147/11/7/120804060110/

During this week I was asked to create my own webquest that I could legitimately see using in my classroom this year.  I actually have experience with webquests already and so I already had preconceived notions about how they are used.  When I completed undergraduate work, one of the things we had to do was create our own webquest.  This was done using Microsoft Word and creating templates that we used over and over again.  We would hyperlink to each additional page and save our pages as html files in order to use them as a web application.  If anything I have said seems difficult you will understand when I first thought about this task I kind of rolled my eyes a bit.  It’s not that the task of thinking up a webquest is too difficult, but the process of making one is rather long. 

If felt much better after reading on in the directions and understanding that we were going to use an online application in Quest Garden.  From the Lesson Six reading I found some interesting information about webquests that I never paid much attention to.  I thought that when you use technology in such a way it would always be good not matter how you were assessing.  Our reading states that webquests are designed to imitate higher order thinking activities that adults would do in the workplace or at the very least a real task they would perform.  This idea along with my new views on creating more cognitive thinking activities I see that webquests, when used properly are great ways to influence learning in the students.  When they are not used properly they are those fun activities that we do, but don’t get much out of.  Even fun things with little to no purpose will lose engagement from students.

So the actual process I took when completing the webquest came about fairly quickly because I already had an idea on a webquest I would like to do.  I got an idea from a fellow teacher this past week while cleaning up my room and she had previously taught 6^th grade social studies the year before.  She said she completed this activity on the elements of maps using the school map and having the students make it into a more professional looking map.  She said the administration really enjoyed the activity and so I was already keen on using the activity.  I decided to turn this into a webquest and make the students look for the information necessary to complete the activity on their own instead of me presenting all the information to them.  When they find the information on their own it will better placed to memory. 

When using the Quest Garden application I found it to be a blessing and a curse at the same time.  I enjoyed having a layout for how to put everything together and having everything already online instead of making my own links and html formats.  The main problem I had was the lack of choice when choosing a color.  I think color is a big thing for students because it’s something that catches their eye and draws them in.  Sight is the major sense in humans and to have better coloring would have been nice.  I also found it extremely frustrating when I thought I saved my work and when I would go to another section and come back to my tasks to reference back to and see nothing there.  That was a bit your lip moment to keep from lashing out irrationally.  However, I soon would click the save button three times before moving on and that seemed to make everything stay where it was supposed to be.  Overall I really enjoyed working on the webquest and it wasn’t difficult at all to complete the tasks.  I would like more choice in the editing of the webquest, but for streamlining the process I guess I won’t complain too much.