Blog 15: Wikipedia Posting

When first learning about the project that we would be responsible for in this class, by contributing to a Wikipedia post, I was nervous. I thought to myself: how would I gather information that they would consider valuable and resourceful. This was a hard task, but I managed to have most of my information stay up for a month, without it being taken down.

My user name is: Ame0401

I chose to contribute to the article on: Educational Technology

A link to my page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology
(sorry for not setting up a hyperlink, but whenever I try to do it, it never shows up. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong :(

I contributed to a few sections within this article:

#1- The first contribution falls under the CRITICISM category and the text I published is as follows: "Similarly to learning a new task or trade, there is special training that is involved with adding elements of educational technology to the classroom. Without proper training, teachers and students cannot benefit from devices that will improve the quality of education. Devices are a waste of time and money if teachers are not receiving proper training. [26] Another disadvantage is that if teachers plan on using educational technology, they must come to the classroom prior to start time and set everything up and make sure it is all working."

This information stayed up but in the discussion part of the page, I noticed that there was a comment left, basically saying that this is not criticism and it should be taken down. (Comment from Wikipedia: "The Criticism section is not a criticism so that section should be removed and an actual criticism(s) should be added.") Although this comment was made, the information I posted has yet to be taken down.

#2- Considering I am an aspiring teacher, I wanted to include a section that would be helpful to teachers, so I made the section entitled: Technology in the Classroom. The information that I posted there has remained up for a month. It reads as follows: "* Computer in the Classroom: Having a computer in the classroom is an asset to any teacher. With a computer in the classroom, teachers are able to demonstrate a new lesson, present new material, illustrate how to use new programs, and show new websites. [28]
* Class Website: What better way to display your student's work, then to create a web page designed just for your class. Once a web page is designed, teachers can post homework assignments, student work, famous quotes, trivia games, and so much more. In current day society, children know how to use the computer and navigate their way through a website, so why not give them one where they can be a published author.
* Wireless Classroom Microphones: Noisy classrooms are a daily occurrence, and with the help of microphones, students are able to hear their teachers clearer. Children learn better when they hear the teacher clearly. The benefit for teachers is that they no longer loose their voices at the end of the day."

#3- The third section in which I tried to post was entitled: "Websites that Help Teachers." In this section I began a preliminary list of websites that would help teachers use technology in the classroom. These websites got deleted because it was considered advertisement and Wikipedia is not a site to use to advertise. The two websites posted are below:
*4teachers.org http://www.4teachers.org/
*E-learning For Kids http://www.e-learningforkids.org/

Overall, my contributions were received as being helpful to the website. I took the time to do research and try to find reputable websites that would provide as a resource so that the information was not taken down. I noticed from other people in the class posting information, that unless you have a resource to back your information up, then most likely the information would be deleted by the "big shots" of the page. The information that I put up to provide teachers with helpful websites was taken down because it was considered advertisement, which in fact it was, it was advertising for the two websites that I found.

I also posted a clean up request comment in the discussion portion of the article, and it read as follows: "The part that talks about behaviorism, constructivism, etc. does not really belong on this page. I think we need to look into editing what information really is relevant and what isn't." I wrote this comment on Feb. 26th and within two days there was a response from the avid contributors to this page which read as follows: "I disagree. If it was just general overview of the learning theories, that would be one thing, but since it talks about each theory and how that affects your perspective on educational technology, I think it's relevant. If you're coming from a cognitivist perspective, you're probably focused on cognitive load and multimedia processing when you make decisions about technology use. If you're coming from a constructivist perspective, you may focus on technology that creates environments for problem solving. Second Life may not make sense as an educational tool from a cognitivist perspective because of the ill-structured environment, but a constructivist might find it quite valuable, especially for more advanced learners."

Having said that, I chose to stay away from deleting that section, and chose to just mind my own business and publish what I found would remain on the website. All in all, my experience with Wikipedia was a successful one. The majority of the information that I put up remained up and unharmed. The one major thing that I learned from this experience, is that when I go to do a research paper of some sort, I should only use the information posted that has a reference, to make sure that it is reliable. People still get away with publishing pure nonsense on this encyclopedia and one must be careful in what they pull out as reliable information.

Blog 14: Thoughts, reflections, ideas for the structure of hypertext essay

After studying in more depth the different types of macrostructures of websites, I have come to the realization that the one that would work best for my research project is the OUTLINE format. The reason for this is that the information will originate from a central page, then at the top of that page, will be different nodes that will take the user to another page where they can find additional information.

While gathering preliminary research, I came to the realization that the information that I posted previously about my type of user has changed. Teachers, future teachers, and school administrators will still be my targeted audience, but I don't think parents will find a need to go onto my website.


My hopes and intentions of organizing my information are as follows

The information will be broken down into different nodes:

1st node- research about the implementation of technology in the classroom (as gathered from the website listed below. http://www.literacyandtechnology.org/volume5/jltvol5eevans.pdf

2nd node- Technology Literacy as a Social Practice: basically in this node, there will be information related to the topic of social practices of reading and writing and the ideological and culturally embedded nature of these practices (information also taken from website linked above. "As Snyder (2001) notes, failure to place technology literacy within its social contexts leads to unrealistic expectations."

3rd node- What technologies provide the most student autonomy and how are they used? What makes them beneficial to the teacher and to the students?

(Possible 4th node)- Budget issues and being able to get the money needed for the technologies that would best suit the needs of students.



One quote that I found while doing research that I thought was really powerful is below:
"We know, purely and simply, that every single child must have access to a computer,
must understand it, must have access to good software and good teachers and to the
Internet, so that every person will have the opportunity to make the most of his or her own life (U.S. Department of Education, 1996)."

Blog #13- Research Plan (Revised)

Focus: Education and Technology

Statement of Purpose: Through my research, I hope to discover the benefits that technology brings to the process of students becoming autonomous in the classroom.


Detailed statement of your research question: What are the benefits that technology provides to allow student autonomy and what specific technologies provide the greatest autonomy?


List of the information you need to gather:
- What types of technology are the most beneficial in allowing students to become autonomous?
- What features of the technology help the students want to learn?
- What levels/ kinds of technology will work best? Why do some work and others don’t? What makes the successful technologies work?


A preliminary list of sources:

Books:
Gordon, David. T. Better Teaching and Learning in the Digital Classroom. Harvard Education Press: Cambridge, Ma, 2003.

Vrasidas, Charalambos, ed. A Volume in Current Perspectives on Applied Information Technologies: Preparing Teachers to Teach with Technology. Connecticut: Information Age Publishing, 2005.

Websites:
Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students. Technology and Education Reform, 11 March 2009 html>.

Adams, Sharon and Mary Burns. Connecting Student Learning and Technology. 1999. 22 March 2009. .

McGhee, Ray. New Teacher and Student Roles in the Technology- Supported Classroom. 2003. 22 March 2009. .


Plan for gathering your information:
I plan on looking through education journals that are located online as well as through textbooks dealing with technology in the classroom. I feel that doing a Google search just won’t be enough and won’t give me the broad range of information that I need to cover this topic.

Blog #13- Research Plan

As mentioned in blog #11, I'm planning on doing my research hyper-text essay on technology in the classroom.

Topic: Technology in the Classroom


Purpose: To inform teachers on technology that can enhance the quality of education of their students.


Research Question: What technologies are out there that can provide a better learning environment for students? How will school districts be able to afford these technologies? What types of technology are available to teachers at various grade levels?


Websites that maybe helpful (same as from blog #11, and a few new ones):
-http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=623
-http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/effectsstudents.html
-http://www.ldaofmichigan.org/articles/early_intervention.pdf
-http://www.teachersnetwork.org/ntol/howto/incorptech/
-http://www.edletter.org/dc/wiske.htm
-http://www.classroomtco.org/publications.html
-http://www.middleweb.com/TechDefns.html
-http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf
-http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/RT/focus/
-http://catnet.sdacc.org/articles/tech_ID374.pdf
-http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/papers/chile.pdf
-http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/library/teaching_culture_article.pdf

Blog #12- Wikipedia Post

I chose to do my Wikipedia post on Educational Technology. I chose this topic because last semester I went to Patton Elementary School in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where they had something I'd never seen before. Every classroom teacher had a wireless microphone hooked up and there was surround sound in the class. While there, I asked one of the teachers why they had that, assuming it was just in the one class I went to for a child who may have been hearing impaired. Turns out that there have been studies that proved that children learn best at high frequencies, thus the reason for the microphones in the classroom.

While looking at the Wikipedia post, there seemed to already be a lot of information, so I thought to myself how would this post help in practicality. So, I added a subtitle called Technology in the Classroom. I first posted the information on February 26, and to this date, the information has not been taken down. I went back a few days later, and posted more information on March 1st and 2nd and that information too has not been taken down yet. My contributions thus far to the wikipedia site has been successful. Let's keep tracking it to see what happens, if anything!

Blog #11- Audience, Purpose, and Focus of Hypertext Essay

So I've changed my topic, yet again. I am now back to the concept that I am posting on, for my Wikipedia article. That is, technology in the classroom.

Questions on Page 19:
1. The people who use the website will be teachers, future teachers, school administration, and even parents.
2. The users will be either in a classroom, an office, or on their home computers. Most users will be computer literate and the information will be easy to access and in small bits rather than large chunks of information.
3. If the users are teachers, they might want information from the website on different ways they can use technology in the classroom. Possible website suggestions will be offered for them to later incorporate in their classrooms. If the user is parents than they might research what a particular technology is that their children are using in their classroom.
4. The text of the site addresses the users because it is a place where teachers can get information and ideas of how to use different technology in the classroom. A lot of teachers use simple technology, yet there are more advance ways that can get more of a good vibe from.
5. The graphics on the webpage could be pictures of the examples of technology that can be found in the classroom. Lots of times new material is unclear if we don’t have a visual aid to help elaborate on the discussion at hand. For example, wireless microphone technology would be an example that I would have, so maybe I could have a pictures of how the system looks like or a video of a classroom that uses it.

Focus:
I want to make a hypertext essay on technology usage in the classroom and how students benefit from different types of technology.


Audience:
My website will be designed for teachers and other professionals in the education field. While at my web page they will be able to get insightful information on new technology that they can use in the classroom to enhance the education.


Purpose:
The purpose of my website is to provide the information that all teachers are looking for. Teachers are constantly looking for new ways to enhance their lesson plans to help the children engage more, and sometimes don't know where they can resort to. If they visit my website, they will be provided with some interesting techniques and new technologies that they may want to consider.

Structures:
-Linear (w/ nodes)
-Outline

Navigation Devices:
-In-text link
-Navigation bar
-Forward/backward; up/down; previous/next
-table of contents (maybe-- not sure on this one yet)


Some websites that might help in my website are:
http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=623
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/effectsstudents.html
http://www.ldaofmichigan.org/articles/early_intervention.pdf
http://www.teachersnetwork.org/ntol/howto/incorptech/

Blog #10- Exploratory writing for web assignment

I just want to start this blog by saying that I'm not quite sure what exactly we are supposed to post, but I'm just going to write what's on my mind.

For my web assignment, I want to do something that relates to teachers having social networking profiles such as Myspace and facebook. I am an aspiring teacher and will have my degree by the end of December 2009. I also have profiles on a few different social networking websites: Myspace, Facebook, and Orkut. Although I have these pages, I do not post anything that is too informative of my social life (i.e. what I do outside the classroom). I feel as though everyone, including teachers should be able to have these personal profiles, but to limit the material in which they post.

While looking at other sources to gather information about this topic, there have been a few cases where teachers got into trouble. It is their own stupidity. They were the ones who posted pictures that revealed too much of what they do in their personal lives, and ultimately, their jobs were at risk.

The focus that I want to take for this hypertext essay assignment is as follows.
1. Teachers are role models and have many students who look up to them for advice and guidance. Having said that, there shouldn't be any objections to teachers having these pages as long as their content is PG rated and stuff that is okay if students happen to stumble across it.
2. What about teachers who teach at the high school level. How is the student- teacher relationship affected if teachers befriend students? (this issue doesn't apply to elementary teachers as most children at that age, do not have social networking profiles).
3. Do the risque pages matter if teacher performance is not threatened and if students and parents (and school officials) don't see them?
4. If school districts put a ban against teachers having these social networking profiles, isn't that taking away their first amendment?

My personal opinion, as mentioned above, I don't see why there is an issue if teachers have these profiles, as long as certain rules are followed. Those are that they should set their profiles to private, so that students can't have access to their pages. They should not post any picture which are too revealing or explicit of how they live their lives outside of school. And most importantly, they should make sure their information is not R rated (i.e. "young, single teacher, looking for lover"---> stuff along those lines). Thus concludes what I intend my focus of the web assignment to be on.

Change in mind for hypertext essay topic

Professor Chandler,

I decided that for the hypertext essay, I am going to change my topic. My topic choice is no longer going to be the same as what I am posting for my Wikipedia post. My wikipedia post is going to remain Educational Technology (where I have added a subtitle and posted information under the subtitle "Examples of Technology Usage in the Classroom"). For my hypertext essay, I still want to do what I was originally planning on doing, which was on Teachers and Social Networking websites.

Thank you!

Blog #9- Produsage

So, how does the concept of produsage connects to : 1) the features of the internet; 2) internet mindsets (as set forward by Lankshear & Knobel); 3) the concept of remediation; 4) the ideas underpinning the intensive information exchange for flash mobs; and finally, the community that underpins Wikipedia itself.

After trekking my way through the Produsage article, I am able to come to some common ground as to what all of the articles have in common. I will go into specifics within my post, but the bottom line is that we are all producers and consumers.

The Produsage article talks about people being producers and consumers. In terms of the features of the internet, there a few different aspects to show how we are producers and consumers.

#1- Features of the internet- First off, think of the internet and all the possibilities that are out there. There are websites to research different material, online shopping, online banking, etc., which make those consumer based websites. On the flip side, if you look at websites that give research material, such as Wikipedia, than that is a website that can be both consumer based and producer based. On Wikipedia, an average citizen is a producer when they come up with an article to write about and they post it. That same citizen can then go onto Wikipedia and look up an article. Some of the other features of the internet are anonymity, interactivity, and immediacy. Anonymity is seen on blog websites where the user name is concealed or even on social networking websites where photos of the profile is "privacy protected." In terms of interactivity, there are so many websites that people can go on where they are connecting with the outside world: social networking websites, blogs, forums, chat rooms, etc. And lastly, immediacy, is a key factor of the internet. As long as you have a good internet connection, you can have information at your fingertips.

#2- Internet mindsets (as set by Lankshear and Knobel)- There are different discourses in which each and every one of us belong to. Our Primary Discourse is how we learn to do and be. How did we learn how to be producers and consumers on the internet. Most likely from peer influences or watching those around us (such as teaching in a technology class, older siblings, parents, etc.). Our Second Discourse (and we each have many of these, although they differ from person to person) are those we are recruited to through participation in outside groups and institutions, such as schools, clubs, workplaces, churches, political organizations, and so on. Think of how you became a member of the social networking websites. Mostly likely someone in you high school or college class, told you about it, and then you signed up and joined. Another example of produsage comes with eBay. People are selling their merchandise and then other people are buying their stuff.

#3- Remediation- There are many mediums in which give us the chance to be producers and consumers. Take for instance the radio- who's to say you or I couldn't be a radio DJ, for example. If we were, than we would be a producer, but because most likely we are not, than we are consumers (just listening to whatever they are saying). The cell phone is another example- we are producers when we go to send a text message because we are typing it. Likewise, we are consumers when we receive a text message. Other examples of different mediums were we can be both producers or consumers are: print, television, and the computer.

#4- Flashmobs- The whole concept of a flash mob is still one that boggles my mind. Why would someone be the leader in organized a mass crowd. Flash mobs are both consumer based and producer based. The men and women in charge of organizing these flash mobs are sending out messages either by e-mail, text messaging, or other form that mass contact can be made. With the flash mobs example, the leader is the producer and all of the people who come to participate in the 'mob' are the consumers.

#5- The World of Wikipedia- Ever since really being introduced to Wikipedia during this course, I have seen the mass collaboration that the general public can make. So many people sign into Wikipedia daily to explore the website. Again, there are producers and consumers of the information. Those of us, who go onto the website and create an account and choose a topic to post on are considered producers. Likewise, those of us who go onto the website and read the information that is posted are being consumers.

Having said all of the information, the concept of produsage surrounds our daily life. Think of the clothes that you are wearing at the very moment. You are the consumer, because you bought them, but there are one (if not more than one) producers of your blue jeans. Everything in our lives has a producer and a consumer.