Week 8 Assignment 1 The Future of Educational Technology

What I like best about blogging and tracking other blogs is being able to easily compare findings. This comes through best in digital citizenship, ethics, and netiquette.  Compared to what I found, my colleagues’ sites are interactive and relevant to the younger audience.  iSafe may advertise a young audience of students who have “bought in” with the help of their educators for sure.    

However after it is all said and done if I were a youth and introduced to these optional sites to learn more about digital etiquette, I would certainly more internally motivated to interact with these sites.  When internal motivation is triggered, learning is a bonus byproduct.

For instance, MTV came up with its own method to reach youth to young adults. I keep coming back to Izlem’s discovery of A Thin Line.  I am not certain how he found it as it was difficult for me to locate such websites, but I appreciate its ability to use notoriety.  I am not a big fan of MTV programing, however I appreciate that it is taking a stance for the safety of our youth.  As Izlem describes: “A Thin Line (http://www.athinline.org/), which aims at teaching young adult learners how to become digital citizens and Digital Passport (http://digitalpassport.org), which is a tool for educators to prepare their learners to become good digital citizens” (2012).  He continues by detailing its many facets that learners can explore from taking a stand, to empowering others, to accessing resources for information or if they have been a victim. I saw this second site a couple of times posted by other peers.  It is Brainpop.com. I revisited this site per William Caruso’s prompting and again learned something new called “trolls” who cruse the internet causing “flamewars”.  William describes Brainpop as: “A great technology or resource for the idea of Digital Etiquette is a movie and subsequent activities on Brain Pop (http://www.brainpop.com/technology/computersandinternet/digitaletiquette/)” (2012). Caruso points out that it is geared towards the youth, but I do appreciate it’s simplistic cartoon method to get its point across. Not to mention it has a variety of movies over different topics and a educator link, a junior link, and a regular member link.  I believe this would be the perfect introduction to even adult learners.  With the classes I consider moving into it fits the atmosphere.  I plan to work in an introductory level of learner.  Therefore, as I introduce adult students to the digital world this site could place all on a basic level and we could advance from there.  I could easily assign learners to take a quick tour and write a page on a resource regarding the dangers of digital citizenship and then write a page on any other resource of their choice so as to become familiar with that they can reference at another time.  As far as AThinLine, my assignment purpose would be similar however the method would be to take some action and get involved.  I imagine requesting students to either choose to add their voice in taking a stand in one of the offered areas or writing a one to two page script of what they would say if they were to post a video on “Your Story”.   Either way I my goal would be to spread the word about the power of cyber bullying and the best way to combat it.  As a dad of a 10 year old daughter, and certain that the adult learners may have children of their own, I could do my part educate and advocate for creating responsible digital citizenship learners who could grow responsible learners in their own homes.  

It appears we are losing moral ground each day.  My view is that this could originate from systemic failures.  It is similar to what I learned as a trainer with the State Attorney General’s Office, working in domestic violence. It was hard for men to take responsibility for their actions because they had gone so long without having to take responsibility.  It may not have been their fault, but it was now their responsibility.

The same can be said with youth and digital citizenship.  Our responsibility is to introduce their self-policing before cyber-bullying leads to further acts of aggression such as we have seen with school retaliatory shootings.  Morality and responsibility cannot be legislated or taught, it must be caught.   

References:

Caruso, W. (2012, December 13). Digital citizenship, ethics, and netiquette [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://carusoeducationtechnologies.blogspot.com/2012/12/digital-citizenship-ethics-and.html

Izlem, A. (2012, December 13). Digital citizenship, ethics, and netiquette [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://izlema.blogspot.com/2012/12/digital-citizenship-ethics-and.html

Week 7 Assignment 1 Digital Citizenship, Ethics, and Netiquette

Digital citizenship has become more than what I lightly referred to as an avatar on a game.  It has its own mannerisms, etiquette, and morality I believe should be enforced if the world is to interact in a global state.  Understandably I primarily found websites geared towards children and helping them have a safe internet experience.  They incorporate parental partnering to help the whole family get involved as well.  iSafe (http://www.isafe.org/) is a non-profit organization created in 1998 with the help of the US Congress to help with responsible digital technology, namely to youth.  It is geared towards the educators, law enforcement, and other positions of authority with resources to help create a safe cyber experience.  Similar to this is Wiredsafety.com (https://www.wiredsafety.org/about/). It was first established in 1995 and is run by a wide range of volunteers.  It boasts of five focuses centered on providing help, advice, education, and resources for the growing number of cyber citizens.  What I focus on is the fourth bullet point that states it supports “Information and awareness on all aspects of online safety, privacy, responsible use and security” (Wiredsafety.org, 2012).   WiredSafety has a practical side to it for adults.  The adult tab posted an article about email etiquette and the falsehoods of chain letters. The industry tab posts an article about the responsibilities corporate America is taking with regard to taking cyber etiquette seriously. Although there seems to be less direct adult information I believe many of issues relating to students (i.e. cyberbullying, sexting, child protection) help adults be aware of issues for their children as well as what could happen to them as well.  Meanwhile, iSafe offers similar assistance via online training and subscription packages.  Through package deals, educators can be equipped to guide students to conduct themselves safely and responsibly as cyber-citizens.  

Although there is not much practicality with these technologies to be of much use in my current role as a trainer, they could become a good foundation prior to any class with online interaction as I move into an adult educator role in a community college.   If funding would allow, I could become certified to educate students on the iSafe application and conduct trainings on the cyber-responsibilities.  With this program’s peer to peer mentoring I could allow my students to hold each other accountable to proper etiquette as they engage in tweets, blogs, and other social media for learning expansion.

It would be similar when incorporating the WiredSafety product into the same environment. However with WiredSafety being more of a resource geared towards students, I believe incorporating this site as part of the curriculum to be the best approach. An assignment would be centered on discussing what WiredSafety has to do with two topics of their choice from the Main Subjects section.  Here the method could be to educate the students on this resource, but to also allow them to discover the repercussions of illegal or improper activity as a cyber-citizen. Improper activity not only relates to plagiarism, but also to bullying and sexting.  Although one can argue as Downes concedes regarding the grey area of plagiarism…“But even where the concepts are not explicitly attributed to me (and very frequently, they are not), I do not consider this to be theft.”  He does concede there is a line that is crossed in even the lighter topic of literary theft “What I have also seen, though, disturbs me a lot more. Many of the concepts and ideas that I and others have distributed through the open web have been appropriated by others as their own personal property” (2011, p. 12). Therefore how much more offensive are the issues of cyber stocking and harassment.  The once innocent world of individual gaming has matured to become its own nation.  And with such growth there must be parameters and legislation enacted to guide its citizens. 

References:

Downes, S. (2011). Free learning: Essays on open educational resources and copyright. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/files/books/FreeLearning.pdf

WiredSafety.com (2012). Overview of WiredSafety. Retrieved from https://www.wiredsafety.org/about/

Wk6Assgn1 - Educational Technologies Blog

I am still getting use to the idea of Open Education. As an aspiring entrepreneurial person it is a difficult, but welcome concept to comprehend the fact of giving away a virtually free education.  Although this concept especially appeals to my community and helps personality, my realistic side wonders how long this can be sustained. For now I will enjoy the concept of planning for my future degree with the help of free materials from top universities.  I wonder if this is the future of my doctoral degree. 
At any rate although I am behind the curve in discovering this type of education, I plan to keep my finger of this pulse of learning.   These resources will come in handy for me in my personal continual education as well as my professional positions. There is so much promise for many with the advent of these resources.

The flag ship of this whole movement was Massachusetts Institute of Technology so naturally sought information on this higher learning giant.  It’s official website name is MIT OpenCourseWare found at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm.  According to About.com MIT is “The forerunner of OpenCourseWare, this college provides dozens of detailed courses, as well as audio and video lectures” (About, 2012); OpenCourseWare (http://distancelearn.about.com/od/isitforyou/a/opencourseware.htm)  this site tells all about the latest developments with OpenCourseWare and what universities are involved;   Secondly, Tufts University “Provides users with access to material from a number of disciplines including medicine, nutrition, arts, and sciences” (About.com, 2012).  The Url it lead me to is (http://distancelearn.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=distancelearn&cdn=education&tm=94&gps=30_6_1120_604&f=00&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//ocw.tufts.edu/)   MIT boasts on their website of reaching 100 million persons worldwide while offering 2000 courses free in their first 10 years.  Their next goal is to reach one billion lives by 2021 (MITOpenCourseWare, 4Dec12).  With this passion behind them I am interested in how they will accomplish such a feat.  Mainly, I admire their insight and drive to move education within reach of the world.  Tuffs University is no less ambitious with their statement on their website: “A great university constantly expands its reach, working across traditional boundaries to grasp and meet the global community's most critical needs” (About, 2012).   Although, like other OpenCourseWare facilities, Tuffs does not offer credits or degrees it does make all of their life sciences (Medical, Veterinary, Dental and Nutrition Schools) available.  I admire this simply due to the fact that I can imagine the number of underserved countries that could use this information to better their communities.  Bonk touches on this feat by mentioning “With this one innovation called OCW, you can now instantly compare classes and programs offered by institutions in different corners of the world” (2009, p. 169).  I imagine using the information in much the same manner, as a secondary resource at least to direct students to for further research.  Namely, instead of purchasing books we could have saved some YWCA grant funds by seeking out OCW information relevant for educating our adult learners for a future career in highway construction.  The monies saved could have been diverted for assisting with stipends while the students were in all day classes, or used to help them gain commercial licenses needed to be marketable.  Similarly, this is how I will direct my future adult learners.  I imagine in my goal to reach out to adult learners where they are I may find myself in a position with limited funding.  In these situations I will start with the MIT OCW to find curriculum specific to my topic and tailor it to the class needs, if nothing else as supplemental learning tools.  I expect to take advantage of their, or another educational facility’s, video or visual aids on course specific topics.  Had it not been for what I heard how underprivileged countries are using the free educational materials I would not understood the potential.  They say ingenuity is product of necessity.  

References:

About.com (2012). Distance learning. Retrieved December 4, 2012, from http://distancelearn.about.com/od/isitforyou/a/opencourseware.htm

Bonk, C. J. (2009). The world is open: How web technology is revolutionizing education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.