Rachel Bronk’s ETEC 565 Blog – Page 6 – Learning Technologies Selection: Design and Application

Toolkit: Social Software

Analysis and Reflection on Social Software

Facebook

Facebook is careful not to say that they own any of a user’s personal information or materials but they do state that a user grants Facebook non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable and royalty free licence to use IP content (video and images). They state that the user owns their content and information but that they have to control how Facebook shares it through privacy and application settings.

I would NOT use this with my students. I don’t see that Facebook can provide anything that I can’t find elsewhere in a more educational setting. I know that some teachers use Facebook in order to create a group and post homework assignments but I would rather put my students on an email group or give them read only access to a Google doc. I also think that there is a thin line with Facebook in regards to inappropriate access to communication between teachers and students. Students use Facebook to communicate how they wish with friends and to post personal photos. Teachers have the right do to this too without fear of their students viewing their personal information and images. That being said, I do have former students that have added me as a “Facebook friend”. I created a “friend list” for them whereby they can only see my basic information and they can’t see what my friend’s write on my wall or see any photos of me (the last thing I want my students and their parents seeing is a photo of me in a bikini drinking beer on a beach ☺).

I think that overall, Facebook does a fairly good job with their privacy options. They have many privacy settings that allow you to be as open as you want to viewers or virtually invisible. The only place where I take issue is the fact that they can use your images. I wouldn’t mind if they used a photo I posted of the Eiffel Tower but I wouldn’t be too pleased if the aforementioned picture of myself ended up somewhere other than where I posted it. That being said, I no longer upload images. I think that as long as users are aware of the terms of service, they can make informed decisions.

Delicious

Owned by Yahoo, Inc., Delicious states that user’s have the ability to mark their content as private or public but says that they are not responsible for how third parties access or use public content. Delicious allows a user to retrieve and/or remove posted content but does not guarantee this with regards to backup copies of said materials.

I would definitely use Delicious with my students. It is certainly an appropriate site and is great for teaching students how to organize research, categorize information and share links. Since no personal information is openly posted it is one of the safer social software to use with students.

I think that privacy issues are represented fairly. I don’t really see any areas that are lacking.

Flickr

Owned by Yahoo, Inc., Flickr is similar to Facebook in that by submitting content such as photos, audio or video, Flickr has the right to use, distribute, reproduce or modify the content via world wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license. They do acknowledge that Flickr does not claim ownership of this content.

Flickr is something that I would consider using with my students depending on what other resources I had access to. I wouldn’t see Flickr as a “must have” but I think that it is an appropriate site for students as long as the photos being posted were not of people.

I don’t like the fact that Flickr can use your content without permission. There is also a stipulation in the terms of service that allows Yahoo to disclose a user’s content information and content in order to comply with legal process, enforce the TOS, respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third-parties, respond to your requests for customer service or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Yahoo!, its users and the public. These are such broad reasons that I think the disclosure of anyone’s information and content could be remotely justified which I see as a conflict with user’s privacy interests.

World of Warcraft

Owned by Blizzard, World of Warcraft expressly states that a user does not own his/her account and that that account is forever the property of Blizzard. Since user aren’t uploading content, there are no policies regarding it but there are very strict regulations about how to proceed in chat and what appropriate names for characters are.

I don’t think this is appropriate for my students (intermediate elementary aged) although I know that many teenagers play this game at home.

The privacy interests of members seem to be represented logically.

Overall Impressions

This assignment definitely had me on my toes with regards to processing the legalities of site usage. I wasn’t that surprised by the amount of control that these sites can wield over personal information and content but I was surprised that each site seemed to have a very generalized set of conditions whereby they could disclose a user’s information. I think there are a lot of great social sites out there but I have been operating with the policy that if I don’t want something to be public, I won’t post it on one of these sites. I think many people (read: kids) operate too freely with these sites, especially Facebook and MySpace without really understanding the terms of service. This assignment further validated the fact that I show my students how to change their privacy settings in Facebook and have a discussion with them about public access. As a teacher, I operate with the knowledge that my students use these sites and that all I can do is teach them how to use them safely and responsibly. I may be biased, but I think that educators should follow suit with this.

Submitted Assignments

LMS Proposal

Note: I don’t foresee having to submit a proposal in order to be able to use an LMS. Since I don’t have a permanent contract and have been working between 2 school districts, at this point I would use my own personal website to host my LMS. For the purpose of this assignment, I am assuming that a district would want a written proposal for the purpose of having Moodle installed on the district site.

LMS Proposal

As one of the goals of our school district is to increase the use of educational technology in the classroom, I am proposing that the district adopt a Learning Management System (LMS) that would meet the needs of students and many interested teachers. As per the ISTE’s 2008 Standards for Teachers, the ability to “design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments” is listed as one of the essential components with respect to the use of educational technology (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008). By using an online platform in order to deliver content, students will be able to enhance their learning experience both in terms of subject content and digital prowess.

I would like to propose Moodle for the LMS as it is the most logical platform both for students and teachers. As we are working in a K-12 environment in the public school setting, I first made a list of “must haves” that I took into consideration before recommending an LMS. My list was influenced by Bates and Poole (2003) SECTIONS framework which was created in order to provide a framework for the selection of educational technology tools. In reviewing this framework, I considered “Ease of use”, “Students”, “Teaching and Learning”, “Interactivity”, “Organization” and “Cost” to be the most applicable with “Cost” ultimately being the decisive factor. I think applying the SECTIONS framework is essential in ensuring that the district adopts an LMS that will provide the best fit.

–    Free
–    Support must be available
–    Ability to upload documents (.pdf, .doc, .ppt), images (.jpg, .tiff) and multimedia (.mov, .mp3).
–    Discussion forum in order to support an interactive environment.
–    Ease of use for teacher and students – The chosen LMS should be relatively easy for teachers who are technological novices to learn and should be easy for students as young as 10 to navigate.
–    Organized – It must make sense… activities and assignments need to be located in a logical and obvious position.

After researching other LMS (WebCT/Vista and Sharepoint LMS), I have concluded that both of those would meet the needs of our district in every area except for cost. At this point an LMS is a new technology for the district to adopt and in the process of seeing how teachers and students use it, I propose that we adopt an open source system that does not have a price tag. The cost for this implementation with be nothing. The Moodle code is free and existing expenses in the district will cover the web hosting required. Support is a crucial issue when considering new educational technology, as evidenced when the district brought in SmartBoards last year. Technological support for teachers will not be instantly provided through a third party but there is a lot of great help guides and video tutorials on the web and the Moodle community is also very supportive. The District Technology Team could take it upon themselves to provide some after school inservice about getting started with Moodle and use the District Technology Sharepoint site as a forum for educators to ask each other support questions. I recognize that hosted support through an LMS is ideal, however, I think you will find that many teachers in the district are already familiar with Moodle and our district is very supportive when it comes to teachers helping teachers. Everyone using Moodle has had to rely on online tutorials and literature, therefore, these materials have been refined into very user friendly and easy to understand resources.

Several of Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education would also be supported, particularly the ability of Moodle to use active learning techniques. In my experience navigating through Moodle courses and starting to build my own Moodle course, I am confident that students will be thoroughly engaged through interaction with peers, navigating through content and links and producing their own content and ideas for others to see. The Moodle environment has all of the functions to support an active learning environment and this can be further achieved by applying Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) principles during the creation of course content.

I feel that Moodle is a great platform for the purpose of the district’s educational objectives and by installing Moodle, I think that both those experienced and starting out with educational technology will be able to provide their students with an active and progressive 21st century learning experience.

Please see the following links for more information:

–   Moodle as used by most of the teaching staff at Maple Ridge Secondary
–   Moodle’ official site
–   Moodle tutorials
–   ISTE’s Standards for Teachers 2008

Reference List:

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p. 3-7.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. Retrieved May 30, 2009, from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Sta ndards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm

E-learning Toolkit

Toolkit: Synchronous Communication Tools

Post author By Rachel Bronk
Post date May 29, 2009
1 Comment on Toolkit: Synchronous Communication Tools

The toolkit activity didn’t necessarily expose me to anything new but it did, however, force me to think about what synchronous communication tool(s) I would use if I were running a course via LMS. I briefly explored Skype and Wimba and reflected on Elluminate – a synchronous communication tool available to BC teachers that I used very successfully to complete a group project in ETEC 510. I loved Elluminate because of all of its affordances – the way you could have audio, visual or both, the “whiteboard”, the web tour option which allowed one person to navigate the web while the group watched and many other features. The downside of Elluminate is that for a free account, the maximum number of participants is 3 people. The best part about Elluminate, from an assessment and accountability point of view, was that you could record your chat session and save it as an audio file. This worked well in the group setting as we had one session that a group member couldn’t make so we had our session and then sent the audio so that the missing member could listen and be quickly “on the same page”.

Wimba seems to be a good option for synchronous communication although I don’t think that it is free. I searched around on the web and I couldn’t tell how much it cost but assuming it costs money, I can’t see myself using it with students unless I was working in an environment that paid for WebCT/Vista with Wimba integration… not too likely in the K-12 world (yet). I logged into the Wimba site the was set up and everything looked relatively easy to navigate. I haven’t actually ever used Skype before so it was nice to do a little research on it. Many of my friends have been using it as a communication tool and I could really see myself using it with students in the K-12 setting. The fact that it is free is a huge factor and I also like that it is a “cool” site in the eyes of kids. I like the idea of taking a “cool” site and having students use it in an educational way (ie. Skype, Facebook etc.). I guess the biggest consideration would need to be access to the correct technology for students if I was going to include this as a “mandatory” activity. I know that my beloved MacBook Pro has everything built in but many computers don’t include microphones, video etc. I don’t see video as educationally necessary for my target students (middle school aged) so a Skype voice call seems the most appropriate, accessible and least distracting.