Chapter seven discusses critical Internet safety issues that many educators and administrators struggle to deal with.  One of the major issues concerning Internet safety is the use of copy righted materials.  Many students are uncertain of the laws protecting these objects and violate copy right laws out of ignorance.  Another major concern is the existence of online predators.  These individuals seek personal information about students for piracy or perverted intentions.  Schools who allow students access to the Internet are required by law to protect students from such individuals.  Unfortunately, protecting anyone from harmful Internet threats is an enormous and oftentimes difficult task.  The Internet is ever changing and evolving.  Often, security measures that are established can be over come by advanced coding (hacking) or other measures.  There is also the issue that sheltering students too much from problems they will face outside of school fails to prepare them for such issues.

As a future business educator I am highly concerned with Internet protection and the harms of it’s restriction.  It can be very frustrating as an educator to find resources that you wish to show your students but you cannot access these materials from your classroom because the side is block.  It is my plan to work hard to develop a strong relationship with the technology administrator for my classes.  As I gain the support and trust of this individual it will be possible for certian sites which might be restricted such as YouTube, to have temporary access permitted.  I also want to know what it is about Internet security and my students that I don’t know.  What I mean by saying this is that often times students find ways of getting around the preventative measures that are enforced in the school system.  Sometimes this even occurs without the instructor of the course ever being aware that it has happened.  By friending the technology coordinator for my school, I will be able to ask this individual what techniques the students are using to break school policies and what I should watch for to prevent this from occurring.

 As previously mentioned, the real world is not censored.  Company websites encourage customer feedback and usage of their sites to build upon the brand image in consumer’s minds.  For this reason, it might be tricky to monitor the usage of e-commerce sites and student security.  It is important that students have access to such sites and that they are familiar with the different aspects of a company site and how to use them.  Yet, getting to some of the features available at these sites might be tricky when dealing with school firewalls and other protective instruments.

I choose a presentation titled Online Student 2.0 e-remite or e-xhibitionist? by Eva R. Fahraeus. Through her presentation she discusses the expectations students have of teachers and librarians in the web 2.0 community. She also discusses the potential risks with working with 2.0 sources including false sources, inaccurate sources, and sources which might not be available for access at your school. The presentation explains that it is the responsibility of the educator to inform students about the risks of technology and to inspire the students to create their own original dialogue. Many of the tools we have used in class are discussed in this presentation including blogs, wikis, rss feeds, social bookmarks, and virtual worlds. The presentation concludes with the statement that it is the responsibility of the teachers to excite and explore these new tools. I liked this presentation because it had a positive message and it offered further suggestions for using these technologies in the classroom. I also thought the creator of this presentation was an interesting person because she has conducted research in the field of information technology and has published several articles and books.

The article I choose to read was titled “Fostering Self-Efficacy through Time Management in an Online Learning Environment”.  This article was written by Krista P. Terry and Peter E. Doolittle.  The authors were interested in the self efficacy and self regulation skills of high level learners.  They wanted to determine if a study could be conducted where participants in the study could use feedback as a form of reinforcement to enhance their self efficacy and self regulatory abilities.  It was very important to the authors to use high performing students for the study.  Thus of the 64 students involved in the study 55 of them were graduate students.  The participants of the survey were asked to document how much time they had planned to spend sleeping, studying, working, and for personal matters.  Then once, the allotted day had passed that the participants had planned for they had to document whether or not they had met this goal.  As the participants documented their progress they received feedback concerning how well they had served their goal. 

As the study progressed the participants did report that the use of their time became more easy to manage and they began to track very closely to the predetermined goals they had established for themselves.  The study did not conclude that the feedback offered by the authors had assisted these students in a positive way.  Thus the feedback provided in the study did not change the way the students felt about themselves or their performance even though the students did achieve growth in their time management skills. 

I believe that it was perhaps a mistake to involve graduate level participants in the study as the majority.  If I were conducting a study on self efficacy I would want to include secondary and beginning post secondary students in my study.  The authors reported that the average age of survey participants was roughly 31 years old.  Students who have reached graduate school and have reached this age are typically very aware of their self image. If the study were to use younger participants who are perhaps more susceptible to feedback and criticism, I believe that the feedback would have been more influential on the student’s self image.

Chapter six discusses the effect of administrators on school technology.  Administrators decided what technology schools can and cannot have access to and fight for funding to have multiple technologies in the classroom.  Many school administrators are excited about creating school blogs or wikis where teachers and parents have more open communication.  Teachers are able to instantly inform all students and parents of upcoming events or assignments due to publishing updates to all users.  These tools help support school pride and successes through keeping students and parents informed and active.  The biggest strain on administrators concerning technology advancements is the cost.  Not only can the initial price of implementing technology be quite costly for a district but, these tools cost money to maintain into the future as well.  The text suggests investing time into researching open source technologies as a potential solution.  However, they do caution that this is no easy task and much self training and research is necessary to be successful at implementing these sources. 

I think it’s awesome that teachers are able to display student work on school websites for all parents to see.  So often kids go home and their parents ask them “what did you do in school today?” and the student responds with minimal effort and will groan at the question.  Creating a way for teachers to continuously update and show parents what is going on in their classrooms pulls the parents into the experience.  It creates a channel for parents  into your classroom and this can buy you favor as an educator in the eyes of the parent.  When the parents see projects and updates on their children, they will feel curious, proud, and vested in your classroom. 

I feel it is equally important for administrators to reach out to their local businesses for technology advice and support.  The purpose of schools is for the betterment of society and the establishment of a competent workforce.  Schools are often on the laggard end of adapting new technologies and it is important for administrators to make connections to improve this trend.  Schools are a business themselves and it is always important for businesses to understand their industry.  By creating a technology advisory panel composed of local tech-savvy business officials, administrators will have a source to use for direction, advice, or feedback on specific technologies that might be worthwhile to adapt in their own school system.

It is easy to see that technology in schools is not reaching it’s full potential as mentioned in the beginning of the chapter.  I agree with the chapter that the cause of this is due to the lack of experience teacher have in creating relevant items.  Often times the teachers are asked to understand the technology and the purpose it serves but, they are not challenged to create something for their personal classroom through the introductory technology.  As a future business educator I am nervous about the lack of technological experience other teachers I might be working with will posses.  I have observed my mentor teacher being bombarded with multiple requests a day to perform simple technological tasks for other instructors who simply don’t know how.  I wonder if it would be more beneficial for me to make an appointment with that instructor and walk them through my actions step by step so that they can observe and take notes on the tasks I perform for them.  I would then provide the other instructor an opportunity to perform the same tasks and explore the technology with me present.  I think that educators helping fellow educators is a great start to increasing the productivity of technology in classrooms.  It maybe more time consuming in the short run to train other educators but you are providing them with multiple potential future benefits once they can work independently and freely. 

Many businesses use technology at a much larger capacity and are more successful in adapting these sources than educational systems.  I feel that this is because the relevancy for the task is perhaps more apparent when in a job setting.  Training is mandatory and the trainees are shown exactly how they will use technology to benefit them directly.  If educators who are learning new technologies for their classrooms could be shown authentic applications for the content they were learning I believe the adaptation rate would be much higher and match that of modern businesses.