Self Assessment

Blog Self- Assessment

I believe my blog posts are rich in content provide insight from the point of view of an instructional designer looking at concurrent enrollment for high school and community college. I did provide clear connections to real life situations in depth and detail.

I used and cited the readings from the course and other articles, books and blogs to support my comments. I used APA style to list all my references at the end of each blog post. Additionally I chose two of the resources each week to add to the class Diigo site.

All required posts were made but most were posted on the last day. It did give other learners time to respond but posting them earlier each week would have allowed more time for discussion.

I made two substantial posts each week to other learners’ blog posts. I offered suggestions, made connections with my work and my experiences and links to useful resources.

Self- Assessment Scoring

Content – 70/70
Reading and Resources – 20/20
Timeliness – 15/20
Responses to Other Students – 30/30
Total – 135/140

Course Reflection

EDTECH 541 Course Reflection

In my work as an instructional designer and an outcome mentor for my college’s information and technology literacy student learning outcome, I regularly use and help instructor integrate technology into their curriculum. Despite that this course took me out of my usual duties and had me looking into two areas where technology is really new for me. These area are assistive technology and technology for English language learners. At my college there is another instructional designer and a whole Special Services department that handles request and looks at ADA compliance. I regularly hear from my colleagues about different technology and UDL but this was the first time I really delve into the readings, the different blog sites and looked at the technologies. Playing with the different technologies I really saw how the different products like speech to text could help all the students in the class and not just the students who needed services. When I looked at the tools for cognitive disabilities I see how they could be adopted in many of our introductory course where college is new for students. I think this course has me grow professionally in that I will start looking for new information and readings in assistive technology and see how I could use technologies for all students. So I see this as the greatest impact of the course. Of course, I love how I developed most of a Principles of Marketing course that has technology fully integrated and also justified through the relevant advantage framework from Roblyer (2016).  I also constantly kept looking back fo the National Educational Technology Plan and how make sure students were creators with technology rather than passive consumers of technology. When I look at what theory guided me through this course it was Connectivism (2005). I was always looking at where the knowledge was residing, the currency of the knowledge and how to connect students with a larger network.

References

2016 National Educational Technology Plan (2016). Office of Educational Technology.

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology Into Technology (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International

Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning, 2 (1). Retrieved from

http://itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm

 

 

Rationale for Assistive/Adaptive Technology

Schools, universities, and libraries are struggling with tight budgets. How can we justify spending a lot of money to buy assistive technologies that might only be used by a small number of people?

One of my friends who is our LMS coordinator is disabled. She has always been a huge proponent for ADA compliance and throughout she has never made it about serving a small population instead she always advocating on how it can serve the larger student population. When I started to do research on the rationale for assistive and adaptive technology I immediately found literature on what she tells everyone. From the Council for Exceptional Children, the first recommendation is “Emphasize the importance of supporting and utilizing technologies that have a strong evidence base for a broad range of learners including students with disabilities”(n.d.).

As an instructional designer I have often heard assistive and adaptive technology aligned with Universal Design for Learning. I have found that many of the services provided by our Disability Support Services at my college actually benefit more than the student that identified as disabled. An example would be when Disability Services does close captioning for videos. In online learning we have found that once other students find out that close captioning is available, it is used by students who do not have hearing impairments. We have also received requests from ELL for transcipts not because of a learning disability but because sometimes the instructor will talk too fast for them to easily comprehend. Though not yet required by our college’s ADA compliance when designing a new course we try to encourage all instructors to create a transcript with their videos.

Universal Design provides flexibility in how information is presented and also how students are able to respond and demonstrate their knowledge (Alndhdi, 2014, p. 19). My rationale for using assistive technology is that is good instructional design and reaches student in multiple modalities. It is not limited to a small group of students instead all students could benefit from technology tools and design that reduces barriers in teaching and learning.

References

Alnahdi, G. (2014) Assistive technology in special education and the universal design for learning. The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. 13 (2) Retrieved from http://www.tojet.net/articles/v13i2/1322.pdf

Council for Exceptional Children, (n.d.),  Embedding technology in education for all learners: CEC’s recommendations to the National Education Technology Plan. Retrieved from https://www.cec.sped.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Archives/Assistive%20Technology/CEC%20Recommendations%20to%20National%20Assistive%20Technology%20Plan.pdf

 

English Language Learning & Dodgeball

At my campus, co-ed intramural sports are popular and offered through Student Life. Basketball, baseball and soccer are part of these activities but there is one sport that is particularly foreign to our ELL students and that sport is dodgeball.

While Student Life has tried to explain the sport and even offer the movie Dodgeball as a movie night, Dodgeball has not been popular activity with our ELL students.

Student Life assumed by showing the video (using a technology medium to demonstrate the sport and culture) would be an effective way of establishing declarative knowledge with the ELL students. I have been asked by one of our ELL instructors to develop an activity that would help the ELL students understand the sport and promote it. As a marketing instructor, this sounds like a situation where a certain demographic is aware of the product but does not understand the product. You can take a look at the trailer to have some understanding on the complexity of the movie when it comes to American popular culture, parody, hyperbole and idiomatic expressions.

Edyburn in (Roblyer, 2016) suggests that multilingual processing may be an obstacle in the classroom and I would extend that to Student Life’s attempt to use technology in the form of the movie. ELL students may need more time to process, look up words or may even need to have something like an outline to help them understand not only the vocabulary but also the culture.

Based on this week’s resources, I found the English Learner Movie Guide. It does not cover a long list of movies but the format is useful. It has movie guide that pulls out American popular culture, idioms and slang.

Another resource that is useful is English Idioms & Idomatic Expressions. It is a dictionary of over 3,835 expressions.

To overcome one of the obstacles in content marketing, I’m developing a lesson plan that has the ELL students making a movie guide which will also include references for dodgeball. Our next campus dodgeball tournament is on April 26 so we might not be ready for that one, but we should have a guide for ELL student ready for Fall 2016.

Resources

ESLnotes.com (n.d.) The English Learner Movie Guide. Retrieved from http://www.eslnotes.com/

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology Into Technology (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

UsingEnglish.com (n.d.) English Idioms & Idiomatic Expressions. Retrieved from http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/

Marketing, Technology and Ethics

An obstacle that educators may face when integrating technology to enhance marketing, public relations, social media and market research as a content area is to make sure the emphasis isn’t just using on the latest technology and social media but to use the technology in an ethical manner.

The advertising and marketing industry doesn’t always do the best job to  being ethical. See the video below. Advertising and marketing does has a history of selling products, choices and life styles that hurt and sometimes kill its consumers. This manipulation is discussed in Roblyer (2016, p. 341) in challenges in teaching social studies. Students need to know how to critically assess imagery and media and also how to ethically the media they create.

Now instead of pro-cigarette advertisements you’ll see #Catmageddon videos produced by The Truth part of the American Legacy Foundation.  This Washington D.C. based charity was created out of the Tobacco Industry’s lawsuit settlement with several states. Despite the cute video, this organization is not without controversy on how is now not naming the corporations that still produce and sell cigarettes.

There is another area that may happen even closer to home. We can now use technology to reach more people through online surveys like SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics. We can also easily go online to do interviewing and focus groups through technology such as Skype or other video conferencing with platforms like GotoMeeting or WeVideo. We have to keep in mind to do this ethically.

The most frequent violation of ethics I see is representation of non-research activities as research. I regularly see and hear educational institutions and non-profits pitch recruitments and fundraising in the guise of conducting research. This is a violation of the transparency portion of the Marketing Research Association Code of Marketing Research Standards.

In graduate school, I was first introduced to these two industry terms, frugging and sugging. It is very easy for someone trying  to help out a charity organization or school to do this without thinking there is any ethical consideration. Frugging is when you get a call, survey or interview that claims to be for research but ends up being an approach to fund raise for an organization or a person. Sugging is the same situation where after asking you questions about a topic for “research purposes” then tries to sell you a similar product or service or continues the discussion to the point where you are asked if you want help switching to another product or service.

Has this every happened to you? When we’re teaching marketing and integrating technology, we need to teach more than digital citizenship. We need to teach them how to be ethical marketers and global citizens.

The Truth, (2016, February 10). #CATmageddon [Video file]. Retrieved from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLtschJxRy8

MRA Code Marketing Research Standards, (n.d.), Mareting Research Association,  Retrieved from http://www.marketingresearch.org/issues-policies/mra-code-marketing-research-standards

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology Into Technology (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Relative Advantage of Digital Games

Any digital game can be an addition to the curriculum especially if they include the elements of Keller’s ARCS motivational design model.These elements are attention, relevance, confidence and success (Keller, 1987). It is up to the individual teacher to evaluate whether the game they are choosing are providing these four elements.

In a principles of marketing class there are three areas where there is a distinct relative advantage to using digital games.

Supply Chain

Marketing channels and supply chain management is an integral part of any introductory marketing course. For students to understand marketing channels and supply chain they need to understand a system. Diagrams and text do not provide the system understanding that is necessary for students to identify  feedback loops and interrelationships. The relative advantage for games and simulations is that when students play a game they are able to see the causality of their action and the impact on the system rather than reading about  it or having a teacher lecture or tell them the correct answer.

Economies

Types of economies are introduced to students in a variety of classes to include social studies, economics and business courses. The advantage of using a game or simulation that has an economy, no matter what form it is, allows the student to see the dynamics of the system. Students can make predictions, act on their predictions and get immediate feedback.In this respect, using games and simulations with economies allow students to do be more than passive consumer of digital content and instead become actively involved in their learning (Office of Educational Technology, 2016). Since economic systems are likely to have been introduced, using a game allows the teacher to activate prior knowledge and also do what has been called stealth assessment (Office of Educational Technology, 2016) where students become so engaged in the activity that they are not aware that both formative and summative assessment is taking place.

Gamification

In marketing, gamification or the “process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems” (Zicherman & Linder, 2010) is a content topic in consumer behavior. This makes using gamification and giving students the opportunity to explore and play in different gamification platform a relative advantage over just having students read about it. Gamification also provides students to become actively involved and investigate “engagement, brand loyalty and brand awareness” (Lucassen & Jansen, 2014).

References

Keller, J.M. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of instructional design. Journal of Instructional Development, 10, (3), 2-10.

Lucassen,G. & Jansen, S. (2014) Gamification in consumer marketing – Future or fallacy?, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 148, 25 August 2014, Pages 194-202, Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187704281403938X

Office of Educational Technology, U.S Department of Education (2016). Future ready learning: Reimaging the role of technology in education. Retrieved from http://tech.ed.gov/files/2015/12/NETP16.pdf

Zichermann, G., & Linder, J. (2010). Game-Based Marketing: Inspire Customer Loyalty Through Rewards, Challenges, and Contests. Wiley.

 

Social Networks and Walled Gardens

Here’s the link to my voicethread. It didn’t embed.

https://voicethread.com/share/7625880/

Last four slides on Voice thread from Novak, K., Bennani, F. and C.Luchs (2015, November 15). So You Think You Can Tweet …in Multiple Languages? Slides presented at GLOBALEDCON. Retrieved March2, 2016. http://www.slideshare.net/center4edupunx/so-you-think-you-can-tweetin-multiple-languages

References

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology Into Technology (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Ripp, P. (2011, October 25).So you want to do mystery Skype? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://pernillesripp.com/2011/10/25/so-you-want-to-do-mystery-skype/

Ripp, P. (2013, August 8). Mystery Skype Jobs Created By My Students [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://pernillesripp.com/2011/10/25/so-you-want-to-do-mystery-skype/

 

 

Acceptable Use Policy

What is an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)?

An acceptable use policy is a protocol for the use of computers, network systems, emails and social networks for the students, staff, parents and community. It may even go as far as to include netiquette and digital citizenship.

What should be included in it?

Based on reading Roblyer (2016) I would include “safety and privacy issues” of sales pitches, spamming, access for people outside the school, identification and cyberbullying. Common Sense Education (n.d.) has a list of suggestions which include starting with a “philosophy or vision to frame it, defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior and a legal disclaimer”.

For this course, I am working on technology integration in a dual enrollment course that has 11 and 12 grade students taking a introduction to marketing course at a community college. Students in this course will be using the community college email, learning management system and network. I am comparing the AUP at four community colleges.

Institutional Examples:

Front Range Community College
Front Range Community College’s Computer Use Procedure and Electronic Communication Policy begins with a statement on the necessity of all students having access to computers with Internet access to complete assignments, do research and function as a college student. The second paragraph explains that the policy contains the philosophy for faculty, student and staff use. The third paragraph is statement on how computer labs are susceptible to viruses and how the college is not liable if you contract a virus. It then directs the reader to look at the policy in full. When you click on that link, this is the screen you are directed to:

The next paragraph covers P2P file sharing and directs you to an EDUCAUSE site with free and legal entertainment. This was the only community college policy site I saw that directed users to options for free videos and music. This intrigued me so I clicked on the link for rationale.  EDUCAUSE (2013) stated “the Higher Education Opportunity Act requires all colleges and universities to offer legal alternatives to unauthorized downloading”. The link sent me to a 404 message. Common Sense (n.d.) did suggest establishing a review and update schedule for AUPs.

The last portion of the policy page is three paragraphs discussing copyright laws with links to http://www.copyright.gov/ which are actually very informative.

Iowa Lakes Community College

Iowa Lakes AUP starts with what could be a philosophy statement on how usage should be consistent the college’s mission. I do appreciate that in expectations it mentions “free flow of information and does not condone censorship”.  It does refer to its student handbook and federal, state and local laws. It has sections on individual responsibilities and prohibited conduct which are similar to the “Do’s and Don’ts” suggested by Common Sense Education (n.d.). It also lists a number of services where it may limit bandwith. This list includes games, MySpace, social network sites and P2P sharing. It ends with a paragraph on systems monitoring and how it “reserves the right to restrict all accounts for cause or convenience at any time” (Acceptable Use Policy, n.d.)

Hillsborough Community College

Hillsborough’s AUP has an initial posting date of 2019 and lists a revision date in 2010. It divides the AUP into two portions, purpose which is a one sentence section and second section which is policy. The second section starts with access (section 2.1) which is a mission statement on college sanctioned activities. Unlike Front Range and Iowa Lakes, Hillsborough’s AUP focuses on data and network security. The largest section 2.4 Network and System Integrity is devoted to worms, viruses, denials of service and hacking either the system or hacking using the system. There are also sections on fraud, political activities and harassment. The last section of the AUP encourages everyone to report irresponsible or inappropriate use to the Vice President of Information Technology.

Sandhills Community College

More than the other three community college AUP sites, Sandhills looks more like a terms of service or a TOS. It makes no reference to the Student Code of Conduct and reads like the person who wrote it might have experience more with software users than students. It has five sections: Purpose, Definition, Use Agreement, User Responsibilities and Establishing Procedures. I don’t find fault with it being concise. I just wonder if it this was the work of a committee of stakeholders as suggested by Common Sense Media (n.d.) or if one individual from the office of information technology wrote it.

References

1-to-1 Essentials – Acceptable Use Policies (n.d.). Common Sense Education. Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/1to1/aups

Acceptable Use Policy (n.d.). Iowa Lakes Community College. Retrieved from http://www.iowalakes.edu/technology_center/acceptable-use-policy/

copyright.gov (n.d.) U.S. Copyright Office. Retrieved from http://www.copyright.gov/

Frequently asked questions about copyright. (n.d.) U.S. Copyright Office. Retrieved from http://www.copyright.gov/

Legal sources of online content. (2013, May 16) EDUCAUSE. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/focus-areas-and-initiatives/policy-and-security/educause-policy/issues-and-positions/intellectual-property/legal-sources-onli

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology Into Technology (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

 

Video Integration

Video Integration Vlog

If you are interested feel free to also take a look at these also.

Video Library

Video Enhanced Lesson Plan

References:

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.

Chee, Y. S. (1995). Cognitive apprenticeship and its application to the teaching of Smalltalk in a multimedia interactive learning environment. Instructional Science, 23, 133–161.

Gladwell, M. (2004, February). Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce. Ted. [YouTube Video] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce?language=en

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A., and Weigel, M. (2006) Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21^st Century. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Office of Educational Technology, U.S Department of Education (2016). Future ready learning: Reimaging the role of technology in education. Retrieved from http://tech.ed.gov/files/2015/12/NETP16.pdf

 

Defending the Basic Suite

According to Roblyer (2016) “three of the most widely used software support tools are word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programs”. This isn’t only education, you’ll also find the basic suite listed as a required skill on most electronic job posting.

Looking at the 2016 National Education Plan, these foundational tools are not mentioned but “engaging and empowering through technology” (Office of Educational Technology, p. 7) is put forward as the goal. Students will need to be fluent with these three tools before they move on to more advanced programs. This would be aided by having the teachers also fluent in these three tools.

The two basic suites I see used in education and the workplace are Microsoft Office and Google Documents or Apps (Bradley, n.d.). Most of the instructors while not necessarily fluent in these three production tools, do use them and have their students use them for assignments. While Roblyer (2016) writes that all basic suite tools provide “support for interaction and collaboration” I have preferences when using these tools and as have also seen brand loyalty among my college’s faculty and instructors. Microsoft Office is the official software of our community college system. Google Apps is being used by some early adopters but there has also been resistance. Having to create a gmail account to access google has been considered an impediment to using Google documents. There is also a belief that on a collaborative Google document that someone may go in and erase all material. Google Apps not being officially approved by the systems IT is also a reason often cited in committee meetings.

I do believe our instructors and our students should be able to move between these two popular basic suites. This includes being able to use these production tools on mobile apps. Microsoft Office is now available on mobile (Ravencraft, 2014) and compares favorably to Google Drive. This basic suite is the foundation for our students to go on to more creative and complex tools in and out of the classroom.

References

Bradley, T. (n.d.) Office 365 vs. Google Docs showdown: Feature by Feature. Retrieved from http://www.pcworld.com/article/231294/office_365_vs_google_docs_smackdown.html

Office of Educational Technology, U.S Department of Education (2016). Future ready learning: Reimaging the role of technology in education. Retrieved from http://tech.ed.gov/files/2015/12/NETP16.pdf

Ravenscraft, E. (2014, November 14). Battle of the mobile office suites: Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/battle-of-the-mobile-office-suites-microsoft-office-vs-1657871272

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology Into Technology (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.