I admit to being artistically challenged. This is an on-going disadvantage in the work I do because of the need to offer web resources. Sometimes I try to convince myself that the appearance of online material is less important than the information provided. Sometimes I just admit I am better with words than with images and design.
Anyway, here is a resource that may help. AdaptiveView offers a free resource called ColorWrite that allows the identification of color appealing combinations.
The focus of the March Technology and Learning magazine was web literacy. This is a great magazine for locating resources – paper or online version.
From this issue try the:
list of online resources focused on literacy and critical thinking
Diane Barfield article on plagiarism
One of the more immediately useful sessions I attended was provided by graduate student Pavlo Antonenko. His topic was building online community through the use of FREE opportunities for online interactivity. I must admit that he provided demonstrations of some online resources I had not seen before and that I found to be very impressive. He concentrated on several sites for conducting online polls and on AIMOO – a very flexible set of tools for various forms of discussion and interaction (message board, chat).
Pavlo has posted handouts from his presentation and welcomes you to download these PDFs.
Overview
AIMOO
MY3Q – online questionnaire generator.
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The National Education Association publication NEAToday feature story for April is on class use of technology – Are you ready?
Sorry nothing has been posted for a few days. I have been on the road (New York) and while I was gone a power outage brought down my servers. Usually, a surge simply causes the computers to restart and a link in the “on startup” folder restarts the server software. In this case, the power was out for some time and both servers did not restart the software. Hasn’t happened since the flood of 1997.
Anyway, Kim Kommando, the tech radio talkshow host, offers the following kid IM slang. She suggests parents need to be aware of what this “shorthand” means.
Here are some other codes the kids use when IM’ing:
POS — Parent is over my shoulder so watch what you say
POP – Parent is on prowl and could walk in any moment
SOS — Sibling over shoulder who will tell on me
ASL — What’s your age, sex and location?
TTYL — Talk to you later
BRB — Be right back
HHOK — Ha hah, only kidding
MOATM — Music on at the moment
LQ — Laughing quietly because someone is in the room
G2G — Gotta go!
CTN — Can’t talk now
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.