Session 7

Ed Norman Syndrome

The Ed Norman syndrome follows a model of network design commonly used in the business industry. When designing a network for a business you look for established processes to increase productivity, and security is very important as it can compromise important information. Also, employees do not have the need to use any other software as everything has already been selected by top management in order to increase or keep productivity. In education this model of network design cannot work, but administrators still use it because it has proven to be effective with employees. But this model is not effective when you are dealing with students because it limits the amount of tools and resources that they can use for learning.

I have seen in one district the use of a standardized program to meet the technology needs for students. This program consists of several parts, an email software that provides communication between teachers and students, and provides a calendar of activities and assignments as student reference. Also, access to two research databases for students, and during the implementation process the district selected the different sites that students can use to conduct research mostly taking out entertainment sites commonly used by students such as hotmail and myspace, but providing access to sites that provide both teachers and students with learning tools. This overall program aims to increase communication between administration, teachers, and students while maintaining network security.

I think that the Ed Norman Syndrome is an extreme case in regards to security, but some of its features are still needed. Taking all the necessary steps in order to maintain the integrity of the network is necessary regardless of the consecuences it has with education because a network is a great investment and like any other investment you need to take care of it because it is very costly to maintain and even more expensive to fix. Also, access to the internet needs to be restricted, using a proxy serves is a bit extreme, but allowing student to browse only sites that have been prescreened for content. Access to the internet cannot change much from the Norman model because school districts are liable over what students access.

I think that technology committees in which IT, administration, and teachers communicate can help solve this issues. This committees can determine security settings, software, and overall access in order to better serve students. I think that we need to see education as a business and see that there are liabilities and responsabilities over the use of technology in the workplace even if we are looking for benefits in learning.

Session 6

My experience in regards to barriers to technology in the classroom is very limited. I have worked with teachers in the past as a technology mentor and as an assistant to a technology grant at Cal State and during that time I heard some of the barriers to technology use in classrooms from many teachers who have share their experiences. From what I have heard I think that they are still the same as the ones mentioned in the podcast. Lack of computers, lack of time, and not enough training seem to be the most common.

After hearing some cases I think that an actual barrier to technology is still the shortage of hardware. Some of the teachers comments included that there are not enough computers in the classroom, and that scheduling the use of computer labs and LCD projector setups is difficult because it needs to be done with great anticipation.

Barriers such as lack of time and not enough training can be proxys, as they can be solved by improving the communication between administrators and teachers. I have heard comments from teachers who think that technology can assist them in the classroom and help maintain student attention, but they feel they do not have have enough time during the day to complete their assigned duties and still take time to go through the implementation process. District administration leadership can help solve this problem, but their focus, specially in California, is to meet the required standards and try to raise school scores. Therefore preparation days during the year are focused on that main purpose. I think this would be different if learning with technology was more effective than the traditional way, but unfortunately this is not the case, at least what research has shown.

I think that not enough training can be similar to the explanation above, but district technolgy personnel from the districts that I have worked with are very enthusiastic and have many different technology workshops available afterschool. Unfortunately, many teachers do not attend. Some of the examples of technology that I have seen in this workshops provide great tips that can actually be implemented and save you time, for example the use of the site www.4teachers.org. I think that this problem can also be solved with better leadership skills from the district administration. Teachers attending this workshops have to do it at their own time, and most administrators do not provide insentives for teachers to attend. In one case that I heard, administrators did not feel the technology integration program provided by the tech. personnel office was of very much importance and preferred not to participate or encourage their teacher to participate.

I think that district technology personne and teachers have the will and the necessary tools to solve many of the problems barriers to technology bring, but administrators need to realize that they play a big role in this too and that their support and leadership is important in order to institute better communication.

Project Focus Area 1

For my project in focus area 1 I created an RSS feed for my program website. The RSS feed can be accessed from the home page (link is located on the right side, on the news section) at the address below, it will provide some information on how to access and subscribe to it.

http://rimspi.csusb.edu/interngrant/test/index.html

To create this feed, first you need to create an xml formatted document. This document provides the description and links of the feed, it is formatted for RSS 2.0 which provides a the necessary code to be accessed with most aggregators (e.g. Explorer 7 & Mozilla's FireFox). Here is an example of the code.

http://rimspi.csusb.edu/interngrant/test/rss/rssfeed_sourcecode.doc

There are many special features that allow you to customize your feed. I decided to use a css stylesheet to go along with my feed, it provides it with a distinctive look for navigation. Here is an example of the code.

http://rimspi.csusb.edu/interngrant/test/rss/cssstylesheet_rss.doc

The purpose of this project is to visitors who subcribe to this to receive updated content directly to their aggregators, which is similar to an email, but without spam or viruses. Some RSS feeds allow subscribers to select specific content they would like to receive, but this is a future project for our site as we add more information.

Session 5

After listening to this weeks podcast I started to think about technology's best practices that I often use. I think that a technology integration best practice that I often use is programming (html, cgi, php, etc...). As technologies change the basic understanding of programing keeps constant. There have been many software programs that assist you in creating a website. From netscape composer and frontpage to dreamweaver and adobe software. Even though the programs change knowledge of programming allows you to manipulate them at your convenience and get the result you want. Knowledge of html coding allowed me to better understand CSS as it was necessary when setting up the site's different layers. Knowledge of cgi and php scripting has allowed me in the past to create feedback forms for the websites that I have maintained. Even if many different companies provide online services that create this types of forms for you, knowledge of scripting allows you to create your own customized forms to receive the information you want and interact better with your audience.

Weekly Activities
Listen to podcast and posted results
responded to other posts
Project 1
integrated RSS to my website
tested subscription capabilities
created tutorial for users
created first feeds
Project 2
Started compilation of data that will be part of my presentation
Selected the Ed-Media conference for submittion
Project 3
Brainstorming ideas for my proposal to better establish my objectives, budget, and expected results.

Session 4

After thinking about Rogers categories I consider myself to be an Early Adapter. I cannot consider myself an innovator because I often work with technology that has been proven effective in other areas not necessarily related to education. I feel that as an early adapter I'm often looking how to implement new ideas in current work processes to make them more effective.

For example, in my current job as a project assistant I'm always looking for ways to improve communication with our target population consisting of faculty, supervisors, and students. As a web administrator I new that the next logical step from using plain html was to implement CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to a website in order to improve navigation. Also, CSS provided easy ways of changing the appearance of a site as it was all contain in the attached style sheet. I had seen the effectiveness of CSS in several other pages around the net and decided to adapt an implementation that would meet my needs. After sharing my finds several of my coworkers saw the benefit of implementing CSS as it made their program sites more effective and was less complicating than creating complicated server site websites or html sites that were difficult to update.

Activity Log:
Monday - Listened to podcast, posted responce item
Tuesday to Thursday - continue work on Project 1 and Project 2
Friday - post comments on other responces.

Session 3

Responce Item
Can technology integration in US classrooms be expressed in a hierarchy?

I think that a hierarchy is adecuate to express technology use in classroom. I do not have experience as a teacher, but I have been assisting many teachers in my different jobs at CSUSB. I noticed that a pyramid structure like the one described by Dr. Newberry is very adecuate and I believe that teachers today move up the pyramid as they gain more experience. Today because of the NCLB teachers are under great pressure to give results and therefore many new teachers do not try to integrate technology into their classrooms as they begin their careers. It is important to realize that there is no significant difference in the way children learn with technology compared to traditional techniques and this often drives new teachers away from non traditional learning techniques. Knowing this experienced teachers often try to integrate technology based on personal experience and success with technology. New teachers I believe do not apply this into the classroom as they are not comfortable enough with their environment and will try to work with traditional techniques used in their teacher preparation classes. I think that the hierarchy shown by Dr. Newberry still applies to today's classroom even if it is several years old and the teachers at the bottom of the pyramid will be newer teachers and as they gain more experience in their profession they will tend to move up the pyramid.

Activity Log
This week I listen to the podcast and posted my responce. Also, my project topics have been approved and I have uploaded my proposals to my blog. You can find a link on the right side menu. This weekend I will respond to other posts and begin work on my different proposals.

Project Proposals

Proposal 1
Proposal 2
Proposal 3

Session 2 - Activity Log

This week I listened to the podcast, posted comments for responce items, commented on different posts, and send project ideas to Dr Newberry.

Project Ideas

Focus Area 1: Use of Web 2.0 technology in my program website. Using expert reearch to implement blogs, podcasts, and RSS to increase the use of our website from our supervisors and students.

Focus Area 2: Submitting a proposal for a technology conference. This will be in regards to one of the online assessments that we created in order to share our analysis, testing, implementation, and results.

Focus Area 3: Proposal for creating a recording facility to create podcasts to share some of the experiences of our supervisors and teachers with new intern teachers in our program who are first time teachers.