Cyber Image

Here at Three Oaks, four of us are enrolled in Ed6620 and took this week’s panel discussion “off-line” and discussed the issues in person. We took on the many roles of different stakeholders and answered this week’s questions from the various perspectives that would be presented at such a round table discussion. Hence this response is not from one individual but a collaborative response from four of your classmates:
David Ramsay (Administration)
Forrest Lilly (Parent Council)
Ryan McAleer (Student)
David McNeill (Teacher)

Opening Thoughts:
When it comes to branding, it would be difficult to be all things to all people, so we need to identify the stakeholders that are most important in the educational community, our target market. Once we have done that, we need to define our goals and align them with the image we portray on our website. Why do we need a website and what will it do for us? One of the issues that we, as teachers, have is that we really are providing different services to different stakeholders. We need a communication site for parents to inform them about issues like attendance, up coming events, behaviour, and progress. This aspect of the website must be easy to manage, update, and maintain in order for teachers to use it as a communication tool. The addition of email, simple and private, allows parents to ask questions and make comments. Our school’s website provides a list of all teaching staff and their emails. It also provides a link to Students Achieve which allows parents to access attendance and grades with daily updates. Communication tools for parents should be kept simple or user-friendly to accommodate
those parents that are less experienced with information technology. The School’s website needs to portray an image of simplicity for user friendliness. We don’t think parents are interested in cutting edge technology when it comes to their kids’ education; they are interested in their kids.

A second target market is obvious, the students themselves. The students need to be able to access content and classroom support when needed. Students want to be able to perform tasks with predictability and success. Teachers without a plan, may attempt to fill their websites with the latest in cyber imaging techniques with the hope of finding uses for it in the future. A process
which could prove discouraging and frustrating for all stakeholders. Adding sophistication to a
website for the sake of having it wastes money, time, and undermines the integrity of the
website when not supported by a plan. If students can’t understand the content and navigate
through it with ease they will become frustrated and abandon the Website as a learning tool.
We feel the pressure to make messages more attractive, more compelling, and more engaging both in our classrooms and with our online tools. This was our mindset before we took on the role-playing aspect of this week’s assignment.

Panel Discussion:
Our panel discussion consisted of the following roles:
· Administration
· Teachers
· Parents
· Students

Effective design involves maintaining a modern level of standards in Web based design. While each stakeholder may have different views on what should be contained on a website there was some agreement on the Web design. All stakeholders believed that simplicity was essential for developing a cyber-image. From the panel discussion students were most concern with entertainment value and modernization of the Web design. They were also the most educated on current trends and sought to incorporate the latest technologies in our school web page. The current popularity of social software was brought to the forefront of the discussion by students. They repeatedly used the expression “facebook for school” where students would develop an online profile and have access to various online chats and discussion boards. In contrast, parents, educators, and administrators are weary of the issues of implementing such software. Issues that were brought up were cyber safety, cyber bullying, privacy, maintenance, educational value, and the redundancy of creating a service already provided to students for free via facebook or my space.

All stakeholders agreed that the school web site should have limited deterioration and that the
information provided should be both relevant and up to date. Complaints with sites having dead links and ‘site under construction’ were aired by all parties. Teachers and administrators were particularly concerned with who would be in charge of site maintenance and updates.

We found that the average public school does not have concerns with selling courses to international students currently in their homeland via the web. The only stakeholder that seemed concerned with the issue of international education was administration. They identified the prospects of distance education courses or providing courses that would involve marketing to universities to justify a need to include these types of users. If such an initiative was to be spearheaded, some of the elements to include are the following:
· Intrinsic support
· Use of appropriate language, including multi-lingual information
· Photos depicting cultural diversity
· Usability/simplistic design

The panel had the following recommendations with regards to the purveying of photographs,
description and work of minors:
· Parental and student permission needed for any use of photos (raised by parents and
administration)
· Student names should not be connected with any photos (raised by parents and administration)
· Only appropriate photos should be used. (raised by all parties)
· Having dedicated sections on the website for various student involvement “student spotlight",
sports, clubs, social activities section. (raised by students)

Regarding the international standards that provide guidelines for purveying educational materials online, only administration and teachers had concerns. The discussion mostly centered around intellectual property and ensuring that the integrity of the school image was maintained when including other parties work on the school website. After an internet search, W3C standards seem to provide a good starting point for the creation of such standards.

Parents were very keen in using portal technology on the school website. Parents are often
overwhelmed with the various usernames and passwords provided to them by the various schools their children attend. If parents have children in multiple schools in the same region they liked the idea of having one username and password to link to the various school websites, essentially using portal technology and integrated databases. Administration was very resistant to this idea as they felt the IT personal at their schools would be overwhelmed by this administrative and maintenance nightmare.

However all stakeholders were interested in the idea of having a “subscription” aspect to the school website, essentially having a two tiered website. One in which outside users can peruse the site with limited viewing capacity and another with a full access subscription which provides users with the ability of portaling to various sites, including attendance systems, email, course work and other educational materials.

Lastly, there were varying views on what latest trends should be emulated and surpassed. Students were very interested in using social media, blogs, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), while the other stakeholders had issues with the use of this trend. All parties did agree with using Web 2.0 and the current trend of using a simplistic approach in both style and navigation is one that would benefit the school website.

After the discussion the panel members had different perspectives on the outcome of the meeting. Teachers were frustrated with the demands placed on them by the parent and student demands for information. Teachers were concerned with the additional workload and time commitments that other stakeholders seemed willing to place upon them. Students felt that their desire for a more social aspect to the site was sidelined by safety and legal concerns.
Parents were satisfied with the balance between the increased efforts to spotlight student work and their concern for safety. In response to the panel’s input, administrators felt that students could be involved in some of the site maintenance and updating through a student based club or an actual course on Web Page Design.

Web Development

Hi all,
All comments welcome, Ryan.

1. What types of on-line features or information sources are needed learning in your field?
I primarily teach high school physics and robotics to grade 11 and 12 students. The types of on-line features or information sources that I feel are needed learning in this field would be resources that help deliver the curriculum, increase student learning and engagement, and promote teacher training and Professional Development. I have read other people's posts who have listed common sites that could be used for referencing (Wikipedia, etc.), social networking (facebook, etc.), and searching (Google, etc.). The resources that I have listed below are specific sites that enhance learning opportunities for teachers and students in high school physics and robotics.

For Students and Teachers:

• Physics Education Technology (interactive simulations)
• The Physics Classroom (tutorials, quizzes and multimedia animations)
• How Stuff Works (easy explanations from complex systems to everyday technologies)
• Colorado Physics 2000 (visual conceptualizations of modern physics topics)
• Lego Mindstorms (instructions, support, and community for building robots out of Lego)
• Labs and Exercises(PEI Dept. of Ed. learning and teaching resources)
• PASCO Probeware (resources, downloads, products and support)
• Aliant Learning Centre (on-line physics tutorial videos and demonstrations)
• Robots East (resources and competition for robot design and construction)

2. What steps can individual teachers take to enhance, and contribute to, the general collection of material that students in your field have access to?
For years teachers have created Communities Of Practice (COP) where they can share best-practices, resources, and tips for success. A relatively new trend that builds of this idea of knowledge management is the establishment of Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS). An EPSS is a computer based system created by teachers and students which has as its primary function to increase “day one performance” (Gery, 1995) and learning by enabling “quick and easy access to the information (and tools) needed at the time the task is being performed” (Sleight, 1993), regardless of the ability or learning style of the user.

In a nutshell, an EPSS is a web page that offers some of the features inherent to Web 2.0. Students and teachers can view, download and upload from a database of relevant resources. Some resources could include lesson plans, activities, discussion forums, tests, labs, curriculum documents and timelines to help both teachers and students meet their instructional goals. The information is presented in real-time, is interactive and easily updated.

Over the past year some physics teachers on PEI have come together to revise the provincial grade 11 and 12 physics curricula. During our discussions we have shared our concerns that Professional Development and training sessions are happening less and less frequently due to time and budget constraints. We also agreed that collectively we have a vast wealth of lesson plan activities and strategies for student success. This comes as no surprise to the average teacher. We all know that there are plenty of great ideas and resources available in the minds and computers of our fellow colleagues. What is needed is an accessible database to store, retrieve and update these resources.

The PEI Department of Education Science Programs Specialist listened to our concerns and created a knowledge management system specifically to be used by PEI physics teachers. There now exists an open source Web-based learning content management system, ATutor, that can be accessed by physics teachers to upload resources, pose questions, discuss strategies and share ideas in a Community of Practice that spans the entire province. The site is still new and the database continues to grow as individual teachers begin to upload and share a collection of material that has been classroom tested and supports common curriculum outcomes and instructional goals.

Resources:
Gery, G., 1991. Electronic Performance Support Systems. Retrieved Feb. 18, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_performance_support_systems

Sleight, D. 1993. What is Performance Support and What Isn’t. Retrieved Feb. 18, 2009 from http://www.msu.edu/~sleightd/epssyn.html

Thinking Computers

Respond to the following:
What is the nature of the trend that mitigates our beliefs in computer technology and its interaction with learning?

As you respond to this consider the notions of construed reality, your own cultural influences, influences from cultures unfamiliar to you, and the view that computers will likely be able to achieve human like thinking ability.

Summerize your statement with how teachers can best prepare themselves and their students to deal with the trend (if it is a trend).

I believe that the nature of the tend that mitigates our belief in computer technology interacting and improving learning is based in the fact that technology is becoming more and more present in our daily lives. The thought of technology as not just a "nice to have" educational option but a necessary educational experience is taking hold at many levels of the educational system and is being formally recognized in curriculum.

In their paper "Technology in American Schools: Seven Dimensions for Gauging Progress" Lemke and Coughlin cite small scale studies by the National Science Foundation that present evidence showing emerging trends indicate that technology can:

• Accelerate and enrich basic skills development in reading, writing, mathematics, and the sciences;
  


• Engage students in real-life applications of academics and encourage ownership of one’s own lifelong learning;
  


• Help teachers meet the individual learning needs of their students more effectively, and connect teachers with each other across distances and time for professional collaboration;
  


• Serve as a catalyst for educational reforms, helping learners explore the world beyond the classroom and enhancing home school connections.
  (Lemke & Coughlin, 1998, p. 14)
  

Does an increase in technology always make our lives easier or better? Does the increasing integration of technology into our curricula always increase student learning? Many arguments can be made and research can be cited to justify the use of technology in the classroom and through all the debate and discussion I feel that something that can not be lost is that "The real purpose of technology in education is education." (Anderson, 1996, p.9)
My Morning News article referred to the increasing number of PowerPointless presentations that many teachers and students are forced to sit through. Email was invented to make the business world more streamlined and efficient. What’s efficient about a teacher having to sift through his/her daily 100 emails with subjects ranging from free kittens to a notification that the server will be down the day before marks are due?

Many people say that a thinking computer could never imitate the imagination, consciousness, feeling, and emotion that make humans different from all other creatures on Earth. I agree. However, my point would be that they do not need to. We are already surrounded by "thinking computers" in our everyday lives. Anyone who commuted to work today in a car, train, bus or airplane trusted their very lives to a thinking computer. None of these devices can function without a computer that is running in a constant feedback loop of acquiring information, sorting this information, and making decisions based on this information. Does the human mind really work so differently in conducting the hundreds of decisions and actions that make up our daily routine? Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum is far better educated and well versed on the subject of Artificial Intelligence than I will ever be. However, I find his belief that Artificial Intelligence may be the "final solution to the human problem" (Cordes, 1998) a little melodramatic.

But what about the soul? A pacemaker is an artificial mechanical device that lacks the complexity and regenerative qualities of a real heart. It is imperfect, cold and unfeeling. Unless you need one. Then it is truly a life saver. I say that we need not worry about Artificial Intelligence or thinking computers replacing humans. They will never fall in love, value a child’s laughter or appreciate a cold beer after a long day’s work. But they can complete many of the tedious tasks and decisions that we have to make every day.

Computers can, and do, make our lives easier. I say bring on the thinking computer and the age of true Artificial Intelligence. Encourage our students to embrace this trend and look to them to continue the technological progresses begun by our generation. The day that a thinking computer can intercept my 100 daily emails and decide which ones should actually make it to my Inbox is a day that I long for.

References:
Anderson, L. (1996). Guidebook for Developing an Effective Instructional Technology
Plan Version 2.0. Retrieved February 7, 2009, from:
http://www2.msstate.edu/~lsa1/nctp/Guidebook.pdf

Cordes, C. (1998). Colloquy. Retrieved February 11, 2009, from the Chronicle of Higher
Education website: http://chronicle.com/colloquy/98/skeptics/background.htm

Lemke C. & Coughlin E. (1998). Technology in American Schools: Seven Dimensions
for Gauging Progress. Milken Exchange on Education Technology. Santa Monica.
Retrieved February 10, 2009, from: http://www.fromnowon.org/mar98/flotilla.html

Gender Issues

In the context of using computers and technology for learning:

1. Have you observed signs of gender inequality in the ways that students use prevailing classroom technology?

I have definitely observed signs of gender inequality in the ways that my physics students use technology in the classroom. I don’t see it as much with access to technology but within the behavior using the technology. Gunn, McSporran, Macleod, and French (2003) state that recent studies indicate that inequality of access and technology literacy are diminishing. I would have to agree and do not see a significant difference between how the male and female students in my class access and use computers for research, presentations, or communication.

However, there is definitely a more dominant male behavior present in the class when using computers or other technological devices. I find that the women in my class are more apt to follow directions and procedures. The males are more apt to play and explore before asking for help. Although this male “thinking outside the box” type of inductive learning is to be encouraged in all students, I find that the females are more likely to complete the instructional goals by following procedures and asking for help when encountering an unknown problem or glitch.

2. Does the type of technology being used make a difference toward enhancing or diminishing gender neutrality?

Absolutely. In my physics class, students use a handheld data logging device for collecting experimental data, testing hypothesis and formulating graphs and equations (http://www.pasco.com/featured-products/xplorer-glx/index.cfm). When using this unfamiliar technology I have noted a strong difference in comfort and behavior between the males and females in my course. Ron MacDonald, an education professor at the University of Prince Edward Island, has conducted a survey of physics students using data loggers and the early trends seem to indicate that females are much less comfortable using this new technology. Many of them become frustrated and anxious when asked to use the device to obtain data that will be used in an assessment. It’s curious that the same females do not seem as frustrated or anxious when encountering problems using a familiar technology such as PowerPoint or Google. However, as I stated above, the female students are much more apt to ask the teacher for help and end up getting as good results, or better, than the males in the class who use the devices with little or no assistance. These results seem to be in accordance with those concluded by Gunn et al. (2003) that “women often perform better than men despite the observable difference in interaction style”.

3. Have circumstances in computer mediation changed in the last ten years?

The pervasive nature of technology in today’s society certainly indicates that circumstances in computer mediation have changed in the last few years. The whole evolution of Web 2.0 has created new levels of collaboration and interaction never before seen within the Internet. The advances in Information and Communication Technology have drastically increased students interaction through social networking, cell phone use and email.

4. How do females participate differently than males in an on-line activity?

I feel that depends on the setting and level of supervision. I f students are completing an on-line activity in a carefully supervised classroom setting (i.e. they know they are being watched) then I find that males and females participate and behave equally. However, Karen Frenkel (1990) raises a good point in her article stating that “women view computers as tools instead of toys”. I find that most females in my class will use the technology to complete the task then turn it off. The males in my class have a harder time turning it off. I believe that this speaks to the more obsessive, highly focused behavior that many males exhibit when using technology. Not many women will spend 20 hours over a weekend playing X-Box!

5. What beginning steps would you recommend to insure gender equality in use of computer technology can take hold in a learning setting that is familiar to you?

From points that I raised in questions 1 and 2, I feel that I need to ensure that females in my class are less anxious when it comes to using new technology that they might be unfamiliar with. Coupled with that is the fact that I need to encourage the males to ask for more assistance, without discouraging them from learning on their own and “playing” with the new technology.

I also think that allowing students more time with computer technology would increase student familiarity, engagement and learning. As teachers, we are often in a rush to complete and activity, measure the instructional goals and move on. We need to recognize that as tech-savvy as some students are, many males and females are stressed by new or unfamiliar computer technology.

Finally, I feel that it would be helpful to create mixed groups of males and females within the classroom. Identify male and female “experts” who can help other students if they become frustrated or stuck. This may help reduce the male dominant behavior that can sometimes exist in the classroom.

6. What does research say regarding strategies that might be useful to insuring that gender neutrality is introduced and maintained?

I believe that teachers must act as strong role models to instill in their students a sense of fairness, equality and respect both in the online classroom and in the traditional classroom. The idea of increasing students “Netiquette” (Cyndrekit, 2001) is very valid. Males need to understand that much of the misogynist behavior and comments seen in IRC channels, FaceBook, gaming sites, etc. is unacceptable in the school or in society. We need to educate our students that the proper behavior they use in face-to-face interactions still applies in cyberspace. Anonymity is no excuse for disrespectful, hateful or prejudiced comments or acts. Some ideas to help alleviate these actions and maintaining gender neutrality are:
• closing a topic of conversation that is considered rude or offensive;
• speaking up in defense of those being picked on;
• stating that a topic is not appropriate to discuss in a public forum. (Cyndrekit, 2001)

References:
Cyndrekit (2001). Gender Inequality on the Internet. Retrieved February 1, 2009, from the
Kuro5hin website: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/3/1/154933/1604

Frenkel, K. (1990). Women & Computing. Retrieved February 2, 2009, from:
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/Computing/Articles+ResearchPapers/women+
computing

Gunn, McSporran, Macleod, and French (2003). Dominant or Different? Gender Issues in
Computer Supported Learning. Retrieved January 31, 2009, from:
http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v7n1/v7n1_gunn.asp