Eric Gang’s BGSU Web Blog

Chapter 12 primarily dealt with the problems that arise when attempting to implement all of the wonderful technologies we’ve spent learning about in this class.  Specifically, the chapter discusses the three main aspects of strategic planning when it comes to incorporating technologies into the classroom.  The three main aspects of implementing technologies in a classroom include, legal, social, and ethical.  The legal issues of enacting technology include both copyright and fair use.  In a nutshell, copyrights are the rights given to an individual to protect intellectual properties such as photos, writings, music etc.  Fair use rights are the rights given to teachers to use copyrighted material within a classroom. Legal issues dealt with things like child’s right to privacy and the digital divide, or the lack of technologies in certain areas of the country.  Of the ethical issues brought up, I felt that academic dishonesty was the main concern.

This is the final chapter that will be discussed in this blog.  Chapter 10 deals with Distance Education and using technology to redefine what makes a classroom.  Distance education is defined as, the delivery of instruction to students who are separated from teacher by time and/or location. The original intent for distance education was to help satisfy the dilemma of teaching to students in rural locations, but has since become the convenience sensation of my generation of learners.  Beyond the obvious benefit of eliminating the physical burden of a classroom, higher education has been able to drastically expand their course curriculum offerings.  This is because they have been able to more custom tailor smaller classrooms of more specific subjects that has caught on heavily in the student communities.  Lastly, Distance education is the ultimate education technology experience, fusing everything we have learned in this class thus far, into one digital classroom.

This chapter further extends are learning into the realm of Audiovisual technologies.  The ultimate idea behind audiovisual technologies is that it will enhance the learner’s competence of a subject by using multisensory teaching methods.  The chapter basically outlines the various methods of teaching via both audio and visual based techniques. Some of the audio types they discussed included, audiocassette, broadcast audio, CD/DVD’s, optical media, internet audio/radio, and MP3’s.  The second portion focused on the visual side of learning, something I am specifically going to school for.  This included the discussion of graphical and textual elements and how we perceive certain things visually, even when it is not all being shown (Think Gestallt).  What I personally took away from this chapter is that any subject matter of any kind, can truly benefit from utilizing audiovisual based resources.  These resources ultimately stay with us more so than our traditional learning methods.

Now well into the book, we find ourselves learning even more about the Internet and the World Wide Web, specifically with regard to teaching and learning on the web.   In today’s high tech world, it is pretty common for most major organizations to have a web presence and in the case of academia; usually they also have an abundance of web-based resources.  These resources are what are making the web such a crucial role in today’s education.  These resources can range from as simple as an educators own web log (blog), and could link to articles or research that individual has done, all they way to government sites and education portals.  These are much more in depth; often times include full loads of curriculum to use.  My personal favorite example that I truly think exemplifies the whole idea of teaching and learning on the web is the fact that MIT offers all of their noncurrent (anything not currently being offered) courses to take for free online.  This includes videos, lectures, assignments projects and even the exam!

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, along comes chapter 7 dealing with everything related to the Internet, a personal favorite topic.  The internet, defined as a collection of interconnected individual networks, in my opinion, is the single greatest advancement in the sharing of knowledge.  Beyond a simple definition of the internet, we also learned about how we are able to connect to the internet, through DSL of Cable modem lines that connect the user to internet service providers which then provide the access to the open networks of the internet.  Other aspects of the Internet that we learned about all revolved around the same idea, communication.  We discussed the benefits of using email, instant messaging, video conferencing, listserv and File Transfer Protocol.  All of these different tools, each are a different way to communicate or share information across the Internet.  Lastly we discussed the World Wide Web, and web pages, along with the browser that reads the pages on the web.  We learned in brief, that the World Wide Web is the visual interpretation of the internet and actually is the aspect of the net that houses the content we so eagerly seek.

This chapter dealt entirely with Academic software, administrative software’s student counterpart. We learned that first and foremost, just because something is academic software, doesn’t mean it is always going to be the best.  Teachers should choose wisely when it comes to picking the software that’s right for their learners.  Another aspect of academic software we learned was about authoring systems.  Authoring systems aid teachers in the creation of instructional software and can very based on hardware needed as well as operating system.  There are also several types of these authoring systems including, Hypermedia authoring, internet authoring and multimedia authoring.  All of these various authoring systems, ultimately aid in the creation of various interactive components for the students, each with an emphasis on their respective area (ie: the internet authoring tool, will aid a teacher in the creation of an online based learning system).  There are also a plethora of desktop publishing software’s to also aid in the creation of learning tools, including drawing, image editing, reference, and drill and practice based software’s.

This chapter discusses the ins and outs of Administrative Software for enhancing the boring side of teaching, the paperwork.  The bulk of this chapter dealt with the three or four major administrative software’s used by teachers.  These include Word processing software, Spreadsheets software, and Presentation software.  The book also discusses database software, but I don’t know too many teachers that use that.  The word processing software is great for anything from creating assignments with, making checklists, put pictures in for printing etc.  You can also use it to check students spelling and grammar (or your own!), as well as enhance text using styles and effects.  Spreadsheet software, I see as being used for one major aspect in teaching, and that is the grade book! Spreadsheet software’s can help teachers do various formulated computations, as well as layout easy to use spreadsheets of their classroom students.  Lastly, the presentation software can be used to create slightly interactive presentations.  These can include moving graphics, images, video and obviously text.  Teachers can create summarized briefs of chapters to go over with their students. Teachers can even introduce a new project; one that has more of a bang than just an announcement to the class, the list is endless!

As I look back on the last portion of my Chapter 3 statement, I find it funny that I mentioned exactly what our course was going to be leading into.  This weeks chapter was all about the other digital technologies other than a computer, that one may find in a classroom.  We learned about the power of Scanners and the subsequent optical Charter Recognition (OCR) software that often accompanies a scanner. OCR allows you to scan in text that can then be processed into normal digital text for future editing and referencing.  We also discussed other tools for use as a presenter in the classroom including my favorite, a Pen and tablet. This is great because you are able to draw on your presentations, circle things, emphasize ideas and draw what you may be trying to explain. Some other tools we discussed included, Digital Cameras, E-books, Digital Video recorders, and webcams.

This week’s chapter dealt with computers in the classroom.  This chapter, to be honest, was the easiest chapter of the course.  This simply went through all the various components of a computer, as well as discussed to implications of both an operating system, as well as software that can be used on the operating system.  All of this information is highly relevant to our work towards being educators fluent in technology, as it provides specific details about the various components of a computer and how those function along side the other components. I for one am a strong proponent of teachers learning these things, as they will have a much better grasp on small computer problems, as well as potential 3rd party peripherals and tools that could be integrated into their own system to help aid their teaching process even further.

This chapter dealt with the designing and planning of technology enhanced instruction.  We learned briefly what a learning environment was.  This includes all conditions that effect the learner, specifically with the physical environment around them.  We then got into instructional planning.  What we learned here was basically the old saying the “failing to plan is planning to fail”.  This immediately got is into the Design Plan Act System, otherwise known as the D-P-A System.  The first phase, the design phase, discussed the strategic look at instructional delivery and thus brought us into the Dynamic Instructional Design (DID) model.  The DID model, in brief, is a model for teachers to follow to ensure that they include the overall scope of the project they are planning for.  Much of it involves the understanding of the learner you are trying to teach.  The next step, the Plan phase, is crucial because this helps ready the learners by targeting specific objectives for each period the teacher and learner have together.  The final phase, the Act phase, deals with the actual implementation of what you have designed and planned for.