Final+Exam

**Final Exam ** **Gib Lucas **
 * EDU 653 The Read/Write Web **

Blogs
My job as a special education teacher involves two main facets: 1) Co-teacher with a different general education teacher for six periods every day. 2) Manage a caseload of about 21-24 middle and high school students with disabilities ranging from learning disabilities, emotional impairments, cognitive impairments and other health impairments. I think that I am going to start a blog so that students, parents, and administrators can follow what I do, and what I bring to the table. Special education students require more parental contacts than general education students. I make several phone calls and utilize Google.docs each day. Some contacts are required as part of the student's IEP, especially for students with behavior issues. Some of these could be more efficiently dealt with through the blog. General information such as assignments, projects, contact information, etc. would be put on the blog. I could even include links to Khan Academy or other videos students could use to get help with homework and projects. Of course, I would have to make sure that parents, students, and school staff are properly prepared and informed about blogging etiquette and emphasize that no personal information should be shared on the blog. Often, losing the priviledge to comment to the class blog is consequence enough to deep students from posting inappropriate or offensive comments (Pitlar, et al, 2007). According to the Educause website, one downside of blogs is that they can include biased or inaccurate information. Monitoring student blogging is important. Here is a Youtube video that I will use as a guide when setting up my blog:

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Wikis

According to the Educause website, wikis might be the easiest and most effective Web-based collaboration tool in any instructional portfolio. Their inherent simplicity provides students with direct (and immediate) access to a site’s content, which is crucial in group editing or other collaborative project activities. Educause also warns that it can be time consuming monitoring the wiki for inappropriate content.  Our textbook author related that students can receive many benefits from using wikis. “In using wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content; they are also learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, negotiating with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more (Richardson, 2010). I could see using this in my co-taught classes. If I could get the general education teacher to buy in. The English and history departments work together to produce a research paper each year. The paper is a large percentage of the 4th quarter grade. Many students have a real hard time completing the research and writing the paper (especially my special ed. Students). Developing a wiki about the assigned subject might be a great way to get reluctant students involved. I would want to make sure that all students are participating and not leaning too much on the other group members. A video showing the advantages of using wikis in the classroom: media type="custom" key="20560800"

RSS
“RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and if you’re an educator, I think it’s the one technology that you should start using today, right now, this minute. And tomorrow, you should teach your students to use it” (Richardson, 2010). No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it, Mr. Richardson is emphatic about the importance of this app. I have enjoyed learning about it in this class and use it regularly. Being somewhat of a news hound, this is a great way to get news and information relating to my interests. My significant other recently lost her cell phone and this may be the perfect opportunity for me to finally get the iphone I have had my eye on for so long. I will probably give my old phone to her and get myself a smart phone (not that I'm being selfish, she has no interest in having a smart phone). According to FeedForAll, many websites that are focussed on studying have created RSS feeds that contain daily questions. There are feeds for "word of the day" or "problem of the day". Students can subscribe to the feed and integrate long term studying into their daily routines. I believe that using RSS would be a great way to aggregate information for a research paper. Like Mr. Richardson said, "Say you have a student who is dong a project or paper on the avian flu. That student could actually create an RSS feed that would bring any news to his aggregator as soon as it was published - kind of like doing research 24/7, only the RSS does all the work" (Richardson, 2010). The Educause website warns that one negative of RSS is that by placing limits on the overflow of online information, you cut yourself off from resources that might prove valuable.  Here is a video showing how to get started using RSS and Google Reader: media type="custom" key="20560822"

Twitter Of all the web tools that we have studied for this class, Twitter is the one that interests me the least. I have never used it, and I can see how, “It’s a great place to connect and learn with others who share your passions” (Richardson, 2010). The whole 140 characters or less thing just rubs me the wrong way. Who wants to know that I'm cleaning the toilet at 7:05? On the flip side, according to the Educause Learning Initiative [|website], Twitter can be a viable platform for metacognition, forcing users to be brief and to the point - an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively. I doubt if I will get into it, but I said the same thing about Facebook, and now, after reading what Mr. Richardson says about it, I have put that on my list of things to do. Here <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">is a link to a good article about using Twitter in the Classroom. It includes a CNN video about a teacher who uses it in his classroom and it has brought shy students out of their shells. Another video showing how one chemistry teacher uses Twitter: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">media type="custom" key="20560684"

Flickr
According to our textbook author, "Flickr is one of the best sites on the web. It's true social software where the contributors interact and share and learn from each other in creative and interesting ways. And for that reason, its educational potential is huge" (Richardson, 2010). On the other hand, Educause warns that Flickr largely depends on the community to police itself for copyright violations, and opportunities for libel or invasions of privacy abound. On the positive side Educause explains that students who are engaged with content demonstrate better learning outcomes, and the immediacy of visual media facilitates that sense of connection to subject material. If I were to use Flickr, for a photo field trip in history or science class for instance, I would want to make sure I learn a lot more about it before I proceed. This is one tool that I probably won't use as much in the near future. I might use it to prepare presentations ( I really enjoyed our Flickr assignment), but having the students use it in class seems like a big challenge. Here is a Youtube video showing how to use Flickr to support literacy in the classroom: media type="custom" key="20561786"

Podcasts
Five classroom uses for podcasts, according to the SimpleK12 website, are: 1. Prepare substitute teachers, 2. Engage parents, 3. Assign collaborative student projects, 4. Keep absent students up-to-date, and 5. Create school announcements. They website goes on to give real world examples of how you can implement the five uses in the clasroom. The most interesting example, to me, is using podcasts to keep absent students up-to-date. If the teacher could record the podcast with a wireless microphone as part of the regular lesson (as opposed to sitting down and doing it just for the podcast), it would be easy to implement. This is something I might be willing to try. Another option would be to create a vodcast (video podcast) by saving class handouts and notes as digital images and then converting them into a video slideshow. You would then upload the slideshow as a video podcast to the class website for absent student access. The Educause website podcasting is a good tool because students are already familiar with the underlying technology, podcasting broadens educational options in a nonthreatening and easily accessible manner. One downside is that educators may need some training in the technical aspects of podcasting to make the product sound more professional. Here is a video to show how a teacher can use podcasting: media type="custom" key="20565218"

Social Networks
My resistance to hopping onto the Facebook band wagon goes way back. A few years ago my sister called me and wanted me to look and pictures from trip that she and her husband had taken. She said that I need to sign up for Facebook and see them there. I reluctantly complied and enjoyed looking at the photos. I then started to receive all these requests to become friends with all kinds of people, going back to elementary schools days. Some of the requests were from people I didn't even remember. I have never friended anyone, and have never used Facebook again, but I get constant email reminders that I have requests waiting. Will Richardson, the author of our textbook, has caused me to look at Facebook in a different light. He said, "I'll get on my soapbox here again for a bit and suggest that whether we like it or not, if we're working with kids in schools (or elsewhere), we have a responsibility to understand what Facebook is all about, even if it's just to the extent that we participate there for ouselves, on our own time, for our own connections" (Richardson, 2010). I know I keep referencing the Educausewebsite, but I really like the 7 Things You Should Know About..... series of technology briefs. About Facebook, Educause states that "By opening itself to virtually anyone, Facebook has become a model for how communities—of learners, of workers, of any group with a common interest—can come together, define standards for interaction, and collaboratively create an environment that suits the needs of the members". I don't think that I will be using Facebook in my classes soon, but as administrative resistance subsides, Facebook may become a big part of how we deliver instruction. As for the downsides, they are obvious. I went to a career day for students with disabilities last spring, and a Michigan State Trooper gave a presentation on internet safety. Part of his job, he said, was to pose as a teenager and try to get kids to friend him on Facebook. He had one profile as an attractive female and one as a buff male (with fake photographs, of course). He attempted to friend 100 males and 100 females at a northwest Michigan high school. Over 95% of both the boys and the girls accepted his request. Kind of scary! According to Educause (again), Facebook lets users make decisions that many of them may lack the judgment to make well. Here is a video where an AP History teacher describes how she uses Facebook in the classroom: media type="custom" key="20565424"

"The ability to access and contribute to Web-based information resources is a critical skill needed by both teachers and students for lifelong learning" (Lorenzo, Oblinger, and Dziuban, 2006).

"The Web has changed our habits, expectations, and norms. We have come to view the Internet as the information universe, not just the library. We expect information to be instantly accessible. In text and other formats, information is not just created by experts - it is created and co-created by amateurs. More than ever before, we can choose what, when, and where to use information. The Web - and how we interact with it - has become part of our culture. As a result, what it means to be "net savvy" is changing because the nature of information itself has changed" (Lorenzo, Oblinger, and Dziuban, 2006).

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; text-align: center;">Citations <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Lorenze, G., Oblinger, D., & Dziuban, C. (October, 2006). How choice, co-creation, and culture are changing what it means to be net savvy. //Educause Learning Initiative// (ELI) Paper 4. Retrieved August 10, 2012, from []

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pitler, Howard. //Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works//. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2007. Print.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Richardson, Will. //Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms//. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin, 2010. Print.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Smaldino, Sharon E., Deborah L. Lowther, and James D. Russell. //Instructional Technology and Media for Learning//. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.