Course Reflection

The idea of being safe online is of course something that I am aware of and I often worry about when I purchase items online. However, I had not given copyright and plagiarism much thought. After taking this course, I now worry that I have crossed the line of plagiarism many times without even realizing it. I now feel that I am starting to understand what copyright laws are and what I can do to protect myself from getting into trouble with the law and also protect my personal information. I still think that I will violate some of these law by mistake, but at least I am more aware of what I am doing.

Privacy Online: Is there such a thing as privacy online?

Yes there is, or at least there should be. With the amount banking and shopping we do online, there has to be programs out there to protect our privacy. I feel like there is a different between posting your information for social or even educational networking and private Internet usage. I purchase all my flight tickets online and I often buy books or music online as well, but that does not mean that everyone out there has the right to my passwords and credit card information. Now if I post a picture of myself and add a phone number or another piece of personal information, then yes, I have set myself up for allowing others to collect my information. I guess I am not too concerned about my photo floating around in someone else’s page (as suggested in the article Beware: the Internet could own your future by Husna Najand) because I’m not sure it matters. While I agree that we live in an era where candid camera shots can easily passed around, I’m just not sure that it’s so dangerous. Maybe I’m just naïve and want to believe that people and perhaps future employers will take those kinds of information with a grain of salt. Getting back to the idea of privacy online, I suppose that there is such a think as privacy online but I guess we have to then go onto defining what privacy means.

Understanding Web Connections : Where does the power of the Web lie?

I have used voicethread and blogs with my kids and they think it’s terrific. I was also recently introduced to a program called Story Bird. I love it because we can send it to family and friends overseas and they get to experience a little of what goes on in the child’s classroom. I think the power of the Web lies in the fact that we can stay connected with people far and wide in so many ways. Students regularly skype with grandparents and not only do they get to hear each other’s voices, they also get to see their faces. I have students who love playing with Google Earth and look at the streets that they used to live on. I have yet to show my kids how collaborate learning can truly exist, but I think that would be real cool and help add a whole new dimension to the online world for my students.

Student Safety/Bullying : Who's responsibility is it to teach students to be safe online?

If my students are using computers in my classroom, it is my responsibility to teach them how to be safe and also how to be accountable for their actions and comments. Our jobs as educators should be to teach and prepare kids to become safe and responsible digital users. When I teach my first graders how to read, I also have to teach them how to take care of the books and teach them how to choose ‘just right’ and appropriate books. When I teach them how to work in groups, I first have to teach them how to communicate properly, how to take turns, and how to listen respectfully to one another. The same rules apply for working with the Internet and computers. Students should learn that working alone or collaborate online is not much different that working together face to face. All the rules we have for face-to-face meetings should apply when working online. Parents of course play a big role in helping us teach students to be safe online, they are the ones who get computers for their kids; they are the ones who buy the software and games. They need to make sure they themselves understand the ramifications of cyber safety and cyber bullying so that they can better educate their children.

Copyright Usage and Plagiarism : What's our role as educators in copyright usage in schools?

We so often say, “well we live in China, who cares about copyright and plagiarism?” The kids here are so used to walking into a DVD store and picking up the latest Hannah Montana or Ben 10 movie. It seems so natural to them but I wonder if many of them understand truly what is happening here. They might just think that this is how movies and music are produced and disturbed. This issue is on course something that should be discussed, but more importantly I think is for schools to make sure they are buying authentic software and not copied versions (even though it is very tempting and easy in a place like China). We have become so dependent on the Internet that I think many students (and adults) do not realize they are infringing on copyright laws and plagiarizing. It is important that we teach our students how to properly use and cite information they collect online. This will become increasingly more important as they continue to use the Internet to do research projects or other kind of work.

Digital Footprint and Digital Profile: When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint?

Students should always be aware that what they view on and what they post up on the World Wide Web can be traced. As soon as students are introduced to the Internet, they should simultaneously learn about their digital footprint. It has to be presented in the right way though because it is quite an abstract concept for the little ones. I could see my students confusing it with the Carbon Footprint, and thinking that digital footprints somehow relates to the environment. It would make for an interesting lesson to discuss and compare the natural environment we live in and the digital environment that is all around us.

Reflection on the process of creating your final project

I really like teaching about weather and I feel like I finally have sometime more to offer the kids. In the past, whenever we studied weather, the kids are just naturally excited because there are so many natural phenomena that occur with weather and air. However, as I was completing this project, I started to gain a whole new perspective on how I can facilitate their learning and keep them engaged throughout the unit. This project that includes a real life scenario and Voicethread is the perfect way to grab their attention. Last week, I tried out a program (2Create) on our computers at school where kids had to record their voices to match an illustration they had made. I was so surprised just how trilled they were to be recording and playing back their voices. While I was looking through the ISTE NETS, I really had to be careful about what my goals were. Since this is the first time I am creating this kind of project, I wanted to cover them all! I ended up only selecting 3 standards and I still think that I am being overambitious. I am getting ready to do this unit with my kids this year; I plan to use it as an assessment for my weather unit and I look forward to seeing if I over did it and how the students will respond to it. I expect that this project will motivate students to do some research about their weather condition and also the Voicethread component will provide an venue for kids to practice reading and fluency. My only concern is that my kids will be unfamiliar with Project Based Learning and may find it too overwhelming. But we’ll see…

Course Reflection

The best part of this course is that it has giving me a new definition on what technology integration is. I am beginning to see that simply having the students sit in front of a computer and using it to create weather graphs and draw pictures of different weather conditions is not really technology integration. We could do the exact same things the old fashioned way - with paper and pencil. I've learned that tech integration is teaching kids to use different forms of technology to connect with the world outside the classroom thus enabling them to explore the topics we teach in greater depth. I really like how the course was set up. I liked the readings that we did and the chats I have had with fellow cohort members were meaningful and interesting. It still baffles me that I was in Shanghai and was able to be a part of a course happening in Bangkok and still feel that I got as much out of the session as the people sitting in the room. Being a part of this course has gotten me really excited about technology and connectivity and I know it's only been a month but I can already see a change in the way I tackle and use technology in my classroom.

What are the implications for teaching and learning?

My grade 1 class is studying air and weather in science and I told the kids that we were going to go outside and look at clouds and feel the wind and talk about temperature. Immediately a kid said, can’t you just look up clouds on Google and show us? We have quite a few ESOL kids in the class and Google has been great to find images of words students do not know, but after a comment like that, I’m worried that I’m using the internet all wrong with my students. The readings tell me that we need to teach students to view technology as a means to help us participate in social networking, yet here I am still teaching kids that the internet is just used for finding images and videos. We have pen pals in Australia, why am I not skype’ing them with my kids or even emailing them? We send handwritten letters back and forth, but why can’t we connect digitally. Wouldn’t it be great if we could ‘meet’ them online and hear each other talk? By doing so we are not just practicing letter writing to some imaginary friends who live far away, suddenly those friends become real people that we can talk to. We will hear how their accents are different from ours, we will see the way they behave and act, we may even be able to go on a virtual tour of their school. Maybe they could bring their laptops outside and we could experience what the weather is like in Perth, Australia and compare it to what we are experiencing here in Shanghai at the exact same moment. Wouldn’t that be way cooler than just looking up images of clouds on Google?

Reflecting on your reading: Writing a project sketch

I just finished a course that touched upon PBL's and the final project was to create a PBL for our grade level. I was working on this fantastic unit about weather using all the new ideas I had just learned about but then when I went back to my class and tried to implement the unit, I very quickly realized that the project was far to grand and extensive for my grade 1 kids. I started thinking about what I needed to change in order to make this PBL work for young kids who are just still learning how to read and write and gather ideas and form opinions. I guess I'm still trying to decide if 6 year olds are ready for Project Based Learning and learning through social networking and online communities. Do the students have enough prior knowledge to really make PBL truly meaningful and relevant? Are there social networks for kids that are appropriate?



I was trying to answer these questions and came acorss a first grade classroom in New Zealand where they posted work they had done with "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss. We will be working with the book for Earth Day and I'm now trying to see if we can get in touch with them and maybe have the kids share ideas and see what comes out of it. It might be fun for kids to not only compare ideas but also writing styles, artwork and information. I am starting to think that social networking is more useful for teachers in the lower grades; and that the students will benefit from these forums through us and our research and networking.

How are my thoughts changining?

Bloom's Taxonomy was used and talked about greatly during my years in college when I was studying to become a teacher. We discussed it, dissected it, studied it, memorized it and believed that it would be just as useful 10 years from now as it was back then. Althought, I still sometimes bring it out and use it to help me with structuring my lessons and assignments, writing blurbs for my newsletters, and (maybe most often) for when it comes time to write comments on our progress reports, I am beginning to see that vocabulary and skills no longer all apply to our 21st century students, who are all now learning in a very different manner. 



The article Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally was a perfect way of taking a great idea and extending it to incorporate technology and the learning styles of our students. I teach grade 1 and the first stage on Bloom's Taxonomy is knowledge and which has always made a lot of sense to me. Students need to know 'stuff' before they can process to applying that knowledge and learn more. However, reading how Lorin Anderson changed the the first stage from knowledge to remembering has made me re-evaluate how our jobs have changed. Of course we need to teach students information and help them move forward to achieve Higher Order Thinking Skills, but isn't it more important that students are taught the skills of finding the information?



I really like how the article says "[Remembering] infers the retrieval of material. This is a key element given to the growth in knowledge and information." At my grade level, this is exactly what we want students to learn, how to retrieve information taught and use it to learn more or to grow.

What I hope to get out of ADE 634

I hope to become better at communicating about what goes on in my classroom to the parents. I would like to develop better ways to do so and help cut down on the time I spend on creating newsletters and photo CDs of my students. I would also like to improve on integrating technology into my classroom. I teach grade 1 and I currently feel that technology in my room is still being taught as a separate course rather than integrated into my lessons. I hope that by the end of these courses, I will have a wide range of technological tools and websites, which will help me intergrate technology into my curriculum more naturally