Social Justice

The technology gap also affects our classrooms and we as teachers have a responsibility to work towards closing the gap between the poor and rich in the area of technology. As it mentions in the article if we do not use technology in the classroom we are doing a disservice to our students. But as we discussed in class, what about those students who don't have access to technology in their homes?

I would argue we can still teach them as much as possible about technology in our classrooms. There's a lot that can be done in the class with technology. I would argue we would be doing our students the greater disservice if we did not use technology as much as we can.

Cell Phones in Class?

I lean towards not allowing cell phones in the classroom because I think they are just too distracting. However, I can see using them in specific situations as long as the guidelines were very specific and clear.

I personally think the first fellow didn't make a very strong argument against cellphones because he was going off on his own personal soap boxes. I think the girl for cell phones was much more reasonable and therefore I wanted to side with her because her arguments were more reasonable.

Power Point

I've really enjoyed going through the readings and info on power point. I have found the emphasis on story-telling and simplicity to be enlightening and something that I want to implement more thoroughly.

I have actually found it a freeing concept because focusing on good images and one idea a slide is so much easier than trying to cram in the right amount of info.

I also thought there were some helpful design ideas such as making a box around the text and contrasting white and black.

Is Chat Speak Destroying English?

As usual, I think that both sides have valid points to make. Howard argues that chatspeak is destroying English because young people are beginning to write like that so often that it is becoming more natural to them than standard English. As Howard wrote in her piece, "I am concerned whether students are learning
the skills to fully express themselves through writing
as they move toward adulthood."

However, Monfils argues that kids can chatspeak and easily switch between standard English and chatspeak. I can understand Howard's concern especially in the case of those students that struggle academically. Students that don't have a lot of academic support or skills may have a hard time discerning what is standard and what is not.

Shortening Attention Spans?

I actually agree with both sides to some degree. I do believe it is true that technology can shorten our youth's attention span. However, I also think that we can help balance this tendency by training our kids to take the beneficial aspects of technology and try to minimize the negative aspects of it. I think being in denial of technology's negative by-products is not helpful.

I think Marcovitz shows a balanced, sober perspective when he writes, "Does that mean that educational technology is all bad? Of course not. There are great things that can be learned with technology. But Postman teaches us that every technology is a Faustian Bargain; for every positive benefit, there is an often unseen and very serious downside." Being aware of the downside of technology is an important key to avoiding its pit-falls and making the best of its strengths.

Cyberbullying

Define cyberbullying. Do you have personal experience with it as either a victim or perpetrator, even if you didn’t know it at the time?

Cyberbullying is picking on and abusing someone through the internet often anonymously. I have never been the victim of cyberbullying to my knowledge at least. I think the reason for this is that it wasn't the bullying style of my generation. My time was the time of bullying by writing on bathroom doors and so forth. And I did see that happen to kids I knew in Jr. high.

Describe the problems schools face in dealing with cyberbullying. What are the legal issues? How would you know students are being cyberbullied? Should schools step in and regulate what is happening off-site?

The problem with cyber-bullying is that it is hard for schools to control and monitor. It is also difficult to prosecute legally as in the example with the mother that impersonated a boy online. It was hard to find legal grounds to punish her. I hope that the federal government is working on cyber-bullying laws that will better enable them to prosecute serious cases.

I think I wouldn't know that students are being cyber-bullied unless they told me. So I think it would be prudent of me to address the issue in the beginning of my class and let students know how they can address the issue if they are a victim of cyber-bullying. I believe schools should have concrete rules concerning cyber-bullying and methods of addressing the issue if it comes up.

Copy Right Laws

What are some new things you learned about copyright that you hadn’t known before?
Before this class, I had very little knowledge of copy right issues. I now realize that I have often broken copyright laws in class, unfortunately. I have shown clips of movies as illustrations of particular subjects in a class many times. And I'm sure that those clips were longer than the allowed length. It was also helpful to learn that many educational sources allow their work to be open source.

Do you believe that copyright laws are fair as they are currently written? What specifically do you believe to be fair/unfair?
On one hand, I can understand wanting to protect one's work and wanting to control where it is used. However, I also think these laws are burdensome, impractical and difficult to enforce as a teacher. If I was trying to make a profit by using other people's work or showing someone else's work to thousands of people then I could understand the concern. But I am simply a teacher trying to use multimedia in my class to make it more interesting, so I think the laws should make it easier for copy-righted materials to be used in an educational setting.

Tell me what you must do to make sure whatever you are using in your classroom will fall under Fair Use protection.
I think the first step to making sure my work falls under Fair Use protection, is making sure I know where to go to check if I'm not sure. So I will be sure to keep the links that were provided to us for future reference. I will also have a list of common Fair Use issues and how to make sure I'm abiding by Fair Use printed out and in a place where I can easily access it in class.

How will you enforce copyright within your own classroom with your students?
I plan on having a brief explanation of Fair Use issues as well as examples of how they can use video, music and so on within Fair Use. We also go through these guidelines in the beginning of class.