Month: March 2003

One of the more useful sessions I attended at SITTE was provided by Michael and Ilene Berson. The Bersons combine the expertise of a Psychologist and Educational Technologist and share an interest in risky and inappropriate Internet behavior. They suggest that typical approaches such as filtering (attempting to block or control access) and AUPs (rules) are not sufficient and schools must approach issues of safety and ethical behavior as an educational topic. They suggest that there are developmental issues that have often been ignored. With adolescents, such issues might involve a desire to experiment with different “roles” in combination with assumptions of anonymity and safety. The Bersons offer resources and notes from some of their presentations on their Internet safety web site.

When it comes to using the Internet, it seems to me there is a fine line between wanting adolescents to be risk takers and wanting them to avoid risky behaviors. Establishing rules will certainly not be enough to guide productive behaviors.

Most students taking Ed Tech couses have probably heard of WebQuests. The WebQuest project was proposed by Dr. Bernie Dodge and encourages a structured (scaffolded) approach to student web explorations. Dr. Dodge is continuing to refine the idea of web inquiry and now is advancing an approach called the WIP – Web Inquiry Projects. Basically, the idea is that students will not always have a teacher around to structure their web explorations and generalizable inquiry skills must be developed.

Teachers teach as they are taught. This is likely true for many reforms including the classroom integration of technology. Karleen Goubeaud of Long Island University reported a study on the integration of technology be education faculty at SITTE. The report was based on data taken from the National Study of Postsecondary faculty and drew on a representative sample of approximately 500+ from education colleges. Sixty-two percent of education college faculty members indicated they used technology in NONE of their classes.

Cindy and I are about to take the blog on a road trip. We leave early tomorrow for Albuquerque and the Sitte conference. Site (SITTE) is an affiliation of teacher educators and is associated with the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE – lots of acronyms).

We plan to offer some comments from the conference.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has released the results of a survey of children’s use of the Internet – Connected to the Future. While the report demonstrates the continued existence of the digital divide, the report concludes that underserved groups are connecting.

Some findings:
Home use of Internet by income level – high income – 66%, middle income – 49%, low income – 29%.
Parents influence how children use the Internet and a proportion are satisfied with how it is being used.
37% of homes with children have broadband access
Time spent online similar to time spend viewing television (3.1 television vs. 2.9 online).

Learning Time offers an interview of John Bailey – U.S. Department of Education Director of Educational Technology. The Learning Times Network does require that you register before you will be allowed to connect. Note that a direct link to this presentation is not available available. If the link to the “No child left behind” interview does not appear on the home page, look for in in the archives.’

I am visiting my mom for a couple of days. She uses a webtv box to access the Internet. This system uses a standard tv as a monitor, a very simplified computer (not storage device), and connects to the Internet through a built-in modem. It is kind of the model for some of the educational approaches that feel Internet access using standard computers is too expensive. It is a little different, but it works.

I happen to be looking through my sever log file and I noticed hits from “turnitin.com.” I was not certain what this was. TurnItIn provides educational institution plagiarism assessment services. I suppose my web site would potentially be a source of information students might “lift” for classroom papers.

So long from Iowa – that’s where the tall corn grows.