ECOMP 7010: VoiceThread Debate

Directions: You will be on a debate team and will argue, either pro or con, the statement: "Handheld Mobile Devices Should be Banned in Schools Say No to BYOD! (Bring Your Own Device)" We will use VoiceThread to conduct the debate. Each team will consist of a team captain who will provide the opening statement, 3 topic presenters, 3 rebuttal presenters, and a closing statement presenter. Statements are to be around 3 minutes in length and include specific examples to support your position, including quotations from sources when appropriate.

NOTE: Because I'm not the owner of this thread, I am unable to access the permissions for public viewing, so you may or may not be able to view the contents below, sorry!

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http://voicethread.com/share/3269668/

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My Quotation/Reference Sources

• Scholastic. (July 27, 2012). Left The Cell Phone Ban. Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3751073
• Juggle.com Debates. (July 27, 2012). Debates: Education - Should cell phones be banned within schools? Retrieved from http://debates.juggle.com/should-cell-phones-be-banned-within-schools
• Media Shift. Watters, A. (Aug. 8, 2011). Why Schools Should Stop Banning Cell Phones, and Use Them for Learning. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/08/why-schools-should-stop-banning-cell-phones-and-use-them-for-learning241.html
• ISTE: International Society for Technology Education. (July 27, 2012). NETS for Students 2007 Profiles. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-for-students-2007-profiles.aspx
• Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2007). Information, media and technology skills. Retrieved from http://route21.p21.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=8

ECOMP7010: Google Reader & RSS Feeds

Google Tools in the Classroom

Directions: Post an entry with one RSS website that you would recommend and examples of three feeds at that site. 

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FreeTech4Teachers

Source URL: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/freetech4teachers/cGEY

Story Recommendations:

Say Goodbye to iGoogle and Hello to Symbaloo

It is disappointing when a service we get to know and used to using is discontinued by the provider; iGoogle is one such example. Thankfully, Richard Byrne’s blog is an excellent resource for finding alternative resources and services. iGoogle is a popular organizational tool used by both my teachers and students in the 1to1 laptop program, so Richard’s blog post will be a valuable communique to forward to them.

Welcome to Online Textbooks

Guest blogger Cristina Conciatori, a Biology and Chemistry teacher in New York, talks about the the debate between traditional and digital textbooks and how you can make the transition to digital a little bit easier.

21 Must-Read RSS Feeds

Blogger Richard Byrne shares his RSS feed list that he checks on a regular basis and uses as a source for his own blog topics. Richard divides the list into feeds that focus on education topics and those that deal with technology integration.

ECOMP 7010: A Collaboratively Created Sampling

Directions: By definition, Emerging Technologies are becoming available all the time, with promising educational possibilities for the classroom and useful tools for your own productivity. Together, we will put together a collection of very brief reports on a variety of gadgets, one for each of you. Sources of information will be websites, blogs, videos, and other resources. This assignment will focus on gadgets and devices, rather than website resources.

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"1 TB External Hard Drives"

1. Name of Device: WD “My Passport” Portable Hard Drive (1TB)
2. Primary Source: CNET.com (click for video review)

 

3. Retail Price: 

• Buydig.com: $149.00
• Beach Camera: $119.00
• Buy.com: $106.99
• Newegg.com: $109.99
• Amazon.com: $108.99

4. Description:
Western Digital (WD) has made a name for themselves making external hard drives that are portable, durable, and reliable. The ‘My Passport’ series is designed to be highly portable and provide fast data transfer speeds. Because the My Passport is “bus powered,” meaning it has a single cable for both data and power, it is an attractive choice for laptop owners who need something that doesn’t have extra cables to fumble around with.

5. Classroom Possibilities:
As we continue to innovate and integrate new technologies into the classroom, so too do our students continue to create more and more digital content that we must then collect. Some may argue against a portable hard drive in favor of a USB flash drive because they are small, cheap, and have average storage capacities. The downside of a USB flash drive is they are small (easy to loose), cheap (can break easily), and have average storage capacities (can’t handle a whole classroom of users). A My Passport drive was salvation for me when I assigned my students a project whose final product would be either a podcast or iMovie. These types of media love to eat up storage space, and when I multiplied that by 18-24 students in each of my eight academic blocks it was clear a USB flash drive just wasn’t going to cut it.

Another use to keep in mind is that of for teacher’s personal use in backing up critical files, projects, and other data. The common rule-of-thumb in the digital world today is to have three copies of all of your critical data: i.) on your local computer, ii.) on an external storage device, and iii.) in a virtual storage device (i.e. cloud-computing). As teachers create more media-rich and tech-heavy lessons and activities, they need storage to keep up with the size and complexity of these projects. Finally, both of the major manufacturers of computer operating systems, Apple and Microsoft, have provided built-in backup software into their OS’s that will automatically configure your external hard drive for automatic backups, with plans to provide procedures to destinations in the cloud soon.

6. Screenshot:

7. Additional Resources:

http://www.g-technology.com/
G-Technology provides storage solutions for Windows, Mac, and portable devices via USB 3.0, thunderbolt, and WiFi.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358135,00.asp
From PC Magazine, this article walks you through different drive types, connector and cable options, and how much attention you should pay to drive speed.

http://desktop-external-hard-drive-review.toptenreviews.com/
Top-Ten Reviews provides a side-by-side comparison of 10 of the most popular hard drives currently on the market based on categories such as price, performance, security, ease of use, and design.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CategoryIntelligenceArticle.aspx?articleId=200
This article from Newegg provides a guide for buying the right hard drive for your needs.

http://peripherals.about.com/od/removablestorage/bb/BYBExternalHardDrive.htm
This article from About.com covers hard drive types, size, security, and speed with major emphasis put on why it's important to backup your important data on a regular basis.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/backup-and-restore
This page contains an introductory video tutorial on how to take advantage of the automatic backup features found in Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. (0:53)

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics
This page contains a video tutorial guide on how to use the application Time Machine which comes pre-installed on all of Apple’s desktop and laptop computers. (2:47)

ECOMP 6012: What Does The Research Tell Us?

Directions: Post a summary and general commentary on one academic source and one popular source on a topic of your choice relating to cyberbullying, Your popular and academic source should be on the same topic and focus on a group that is often targeted. 

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Academic: Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: The Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy, and Gender

I was searching for information on Cyberbullying and Gender when I came across this academic article by Rebecca P. Ang and Dion H. Goh. While they do discuss the differences in gender an underlying theme emerged from their research: that of affective and cognitive empathy. As they look at how boys and girls were able to experience the emotions of others (affective) and also their ability to understand the emotions of others (cognitive) they noticed that these two variables did not behave the same between the two genders with respect to likelihood of perpetrating or being victims of cyberbullying. In their results, Ang and Goh stressed the need for students to undergo empathy training in addition to discussions about Internet etiquette and social behavior online. It would appear that the age old adage of taking the time to “walk in another man (or woman)’s shoes” hasn’t diminished in importance with the advent of the Internet. In fact, it may be more important now then ever considering how easy the Internet makes it for us to see others online as just a screen name, avatar, or profile picture instead of a real person.

[for access to the full article on EBSCO Host, click on Google Scholar Search, find the fifth item listed from the top, and click on the Full-Text @ My Library link.]

Popular: Empathy in the Information Age: Catalyst For Cyber-Bullying?

From Change.org, this article asks the question as to whether the Internet itself is a possible cause for anti-social behavior and the “diminishing a key component of our humanity: empathy.” The article continues by looking at how the Internet affects, for better or worse, the development of the human brain and in particular the anterior cingulate, a region believed to be where empathy and decision-making skills develop. Because the Internet makes it easier for us to dehumanize others based on interactions with usernames, avatars, and digital communication then we are also reducing our empathy “muscle” to spending out energy in other areas of the brain.

I think the big question being asked here is how do we use the Internet to communicate and interact while maintaining the part of ourselves that gives us our humanity, which used to be strengthened and honed through interactions made in-person? Is it simply a matter of taking the time to stop and remind ourselves that behind that words that make up that YouTube comment, tweet, or wall posting is another living, breathing, thinking human being with dreams, desires, and emotions not so dissimilar from our own?

ECOMP 5004: Website Evaluation

The Awesome Highlighter

Facebook

Twitter

Site Description: 

The Awesome Highlighter, referred to sometimes as AH, was started by three guys from Florida. According to their Facebook page, the company was founded in February on 2008. There are no names provided for the founders or who maintains the site, only an online form to request support.

Classroom Use:

This web tool gives students the ability to use a digital highlighter on any webpage of the Internet. Students can highlight text as well as pictures. AH provides a toolbar at the top of the page for students to add a virtual sticky note to the page, access their “Help” menu, and best of all: change their highlight color. 

Once a webpage has been highlighted, students then click the “Done” button on the toolbar. They are taken back to AH and are shown an overview of the information they have highlighted. Students may then choose to email the notes, copy them to the clipboard, or share their notes via variety of social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Students may also copy the unique URL provided at the top of the page for later access. There is also an option beneath the summary for the student to return to the page to add additional notes and/or edit the notes they have already highlighted.

AH can also be used by teachers who would like to point students to important and/or specific information on a webpage. Teachers could use the sticky notes tool to instruct students on what they need to do with the information on the webpage. Here is an example of AH in action: http://awurl.com/3zTmJLYRh

State Standards Connections:

Maine Leaning Results (MLR)

English Language Arts

A. PROCESS OF READING
MIDDLE GRADES 5-8

7. Summarize whole texts by selecting and summarizing important and representative passages.

H. RESEARCH-RELATED WRITING AND SPEAKING

MIDDLE GRADES 5-8

7. Use search engines and other Internet resources to collect information for research topics.

Recommendation:

With the presence of technology in schools and the classroom today, using the Internet as a research resource has become a common occurrence. In fact, when given the choice many students will turn to the Internet before accessing more traditional resources. In my school, the current standard operating procedure is for students to print out the Internet resources they find. This translates into a lot of printing and a lot of wasted printing supplies, since webpages often do not print neatly onto an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper. Awesome Highlighter gives students the ability to pick out the important pieces of information on a webpage and refer to those notes for use later when they write their reports. If students are working collaboratively on a research project, AH allows team members to easily share their web notes with one another.

I think this is a great tool for teachers who want to move closer to working completely within the digital environment. Awesome Highlighter makes it easy for both student and teacher to takes notes on webpages and then save those notes for later reference or for sharing with others. The add/edit tool, in tandem with the different highlighter color tool, could also be a vehicle for collaborative activities. While the site does have a login so that you can save your highlights on their system, use of AH is free and does not require registration to use. 

However, as with any web-based tool there are a few glitches in AH that users should be aware of. For example, the “+ add a note” tool often takes several seconds to respond (I was having to wait upward of 5-8 seconds for the note to actually appear). In addition, when using the add/edit tool to return to the webpage your previous highlights are not displayed on the page save only the last item you had highlighted. This could create confusion for students and discourage them from using this service. There is an available AH add-on for the Firefox browser they may improve the performance of this web tool. The service also offers a feedback section to leave comments on their service, so I forwarded this concern to them in the hopes they will make this tool more robust and reliable.