Online Communication Tools and Security Issues

In order to teach good 21^st century skills, and because the nature of work has changed and people are working more remotely, the use of online communication tools is growing. Students need to develop these skills in order to participate in these changing times.  Online communication tools provide students with invaluable experience in remote collaboration that prepares them for future careers.  Technological variety within the educational environment can aide in providing optimal learning for diverse groups of students.  By using a range of instructional approaches utilizing different types of technology, I can not only addresses the various learning styles of the students in the classroom, but keep learners more engaged in their learning.  

The paramount goal of school in our society is that it will provide students with the background knowledge and skills that they need to interact and live in the real world.  As evidenced by the ability of students to graduate high school without being able to read, much less use a computer, this is not always the case.  It is important that teachers take time to motivate students and monitor their learning, instead of just passing them off to the next level, and computer-based applications provide an interesting and fun way to disseminate knowledge instead of the traditional lecture-based system.  The school, and each teacher, is ultimately accountable to society to provide a functioning and contributing future generation.  Parents also play a crucial role in their child’s development, so there needs to be an open partnership and communication avenue between them and teachers.  Online communication tools are excellent ways to foster a student’s learning, provide information to families, and initiate feedback from them as well.

Standardized testing is not the only answer for determining a child’s success in school, or the teacher’s success in the classroom.  There needs to be other, more individualized, options for determining what a child has learned and measuring their progress.  One such option is the use of educational software that teaches the same information through a variety of formats, such as CompassLearning Odyssey.  Reports detailing a student’s activity logs, grade level averages, and skill strengths and weaknesses are just a click away with this program.  Another idea that I would use is creating a e-Portfolio of a child’s work throughout their schooling that includes written work, drawings, journaling, classroom records and assessment of the work, and interactions with parents.  Extensive descriptions of the child's total involvement in the learning process would also be included.  Analysis of such documentation can provide meaningful evaluation of children's learning.

Along with the many benefits of technological resources, comes the potential for security issues as well.  As seen by the ability of someone to hack even Dr. Goldberg’s computer, there are many ways to get in even with the upmost security.  Unfortunately, some students in this day and age have the knowledge to get around almost any type of controls that the school can implement.  There is also the danger of the Internet allowing people or programs into the computer system of a school.  Most computers labs that I have seen utilize standard parental style controls limiting access to inappropriate information as well as necessary log-in procedures so that if a computer is infected or an unapproved site is visited, it is fairly easy to track down the individual responsible.  Antivirus and firewall protection is also key in securing the school’s computers.  While it is the responsibility of the district to put these controls in place, it will be up to the teachers to ultimately supervise the students.  Continuing professional education courses on technological applications should be required to give the teachers the knowledge necessary to both educate their students and keep them, and the school computer system, safe.     

Educational Software

The educational software that I chose for my future classroom is CompassLearning Odyssey.  Teachers in our school district use this program to provide students with interactive learning both in and outside of the classroom.  This software is designed to motivate students and improve their performance in various subjects.  Subject areas such as Reading/Language Arts and Mathematics contain assignments that are marked by the teacher for completion by the student, who has his or her own username and password to access the site from school or at home.  Differentiated learning is made easy with this program, as the teacher can assign each student their own lessons. 

Learning can be differentiated by individual skill level, intelligence type, and learning style.  Students take a beginning adaptive test, and the results are used to determine individualized activities based on the student’s dominant learning style as well as any areas of strength or weakness demonstrated.  As the student progresses through the assignments, this information is refined to provide the teacher with an update on how well the learner is performing so as to change the types or levels of activities accordingly.  The objective is to determine each student’s grade level and abilities, and to track and store their progress.  Teachers are provided real-time information on a child’s activities and, ultimately, can choose which activities to mark for each child to complete.  In addition to the individualized assignments and feedback, teachers can also monitor group or class progress through unit-based quizzes and tests.

With exceptional database management and reporting functions, as well as web-based teacher support through professional development courses and technical support, this software adds assessment tools and curriculum-based lessons to the teacher’s arsenal.  The ultimate instructional objective of any teacher is that the students will comprehend the lesson and be able to demonstrate the skills taught.  This application helps do just that, in an efficient manner that saves time for both the teacher and the student.  This software can also save valuable classroom time in that it reduces the amount thatthe teacher has to focus on individualized instruction. 

The benefit for the student is multifold:  they can practice classroom lessons in an individualized setting, obtain additional instruction in areas in which they may be lacking, while learning technological skills at the same time.   Students who have families that stress high educational expectations are more likely to do well in school, therefore the education of the child is first and foremost the responsibility of the parents.   With the teacher’s role as a facilitator of knowledge, sharing in the responsibility of student education, this software allows the parents to see which lessons the child is working on so they can monitor and reinforce them at home.

Challenges with incorporating this into my classroom are like those with any computer application: lack of student access to a computer at home and limited computer access time at school.  To combat this problem, I would use this software primarily so that the in-school activities are mandatory and part of the child’s grade, while the activities assigned for outside of school are merely for additional practice or extra credit points.  When the class is divided into groups, a portion of the students would be given computer time to complete their lessons.  I would also use laminated ID cards with early elementary students, with bar codes related to their in-school account, so that login would be less tedious and prone to error.  Our local school uses this technology for computer access, and I think incorporating it with CompassLearning, where the sign-in information was saved under the child’s school account would greatly benefit the student and teacher.

WebQuest Creation

Let's Travel to Another Planet!

Who wants to go on vacation?  My webquest allows this third grade class to do just that – to another planet in our solar system!  I created this lesson to teach the students scientific knowledge about the planets, online research skills, and core competencies in writing.  They were also given the assignment of designing a creative project that would be presented to their fellow classmates, both to develop their own oral communication skills and help the other students learn about the planet they want to visit.

Learning about, and then creating, a webquest has been a very rewarding and educational experience.  Webquests are great tools, especially for the young students who have limited research skills, in that they can provide guidance as to where to look for information.  Students in the early elementary years would be best served in learning how to navigate websites for relevant information instead of navigating the entire internet for relevant websites.  I limited the number of research tools, while providing access to sites that included all of the information that the students would need for this lesson.  For students that were interested in learning more about the solar system, I included additional links in the conclusion section for further study.

As a first step, each student is to identify the planet that they would like to visit on vacation.  There are two online research links provided for each planet, as well as a third online link that compares and contrasts each of the planets.  After choosing their planet, the students have a choice of whether to create a travel poster, brochure, or PowerPoint presentation to later present to the class.  Using their research skills, they will respond to the prompting questions in the lesson to create this project and will then write a one page paper to reflect on why they want to visit this planet.  To promote higher level thinking, the students will also give an oral presentation to the class so that everyone can learn about what they have done.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating this webquest, and I choose a subject that was also pertinent to my own child’s learning at this time as well.  When I presented my first draft, my daughter told me it was too simple and that I should include a writing portion in addition to just creating a poster.  This gave me the idea to also include an oral presentation task so that students would be exposed to the information at various levels.  I have always felt that teaching others increases my own learning exponentially and, since public speaking is such a great fear for many, it would expose the students to this medium at an early age.

The only real problem that I faced when completing this webquest was finding child-friendly sites that weren’t oversimplified in their design and that provided relevant content for student research.  It took some time, but I am extremely satisfied with the end result and my daughter gave it a thumbs-up as well.  The only other problem that I faced was the timing out of the questgarden.com site due to weather-related internet issues.  After losing some of the project, I learned to keep hitting save every few minutes but realized that this could happen in the school setting as well.  To circumvent this, the students would be better served if the webquest (and its related links) were made available in an offline format to also combat any issues with limited online classroom access at the school.

Online Communication in the Classroom

My only form of technology use in the classroom comes from my own experience as a student, not as an educator.  As such, I am going to date myself here because we did not use online communication in high school – in fact, I vaguely remember learning DOS applications on a Commodore 64 and had never heard of any Windows except for the ones in the building itself.  In college, there were obviously online communication tools out there, but I honestly did not learn much of them as none of my instructors used or required them for class.  Looking back, I find this amazing considering that I graduated from the University of Louisville in 1996. 

Fast forward to today, I cannot wait to use online communication tools in my own classroom!  As I don’t yet teach, I have based most of my expectations on what I have seen my children’s teachers use, what I have learned from my classes at the University of the Cumberlands, and my own ideas of what would work with students based upon what worked for me in the business world and the continuing education therein.  I continuously used online communication during my accounting career and understand how important it is in today’s world.  I want to be able to use that knowledge in relation to the education of tomorrow’s leaders to create students who are comfortable with technology.

Since I do not teach, my thoughts went first to what online technologies I would use with my students at the beginning of the school year.  I think that a Wiki would be a great tool for students to be able to create pages about themselves in an interactive and fun way.  Enhancing the usual “meet and greet” that takes place during the first weeks of school, I would implement the use of a Wiki where I would have pages created for myself and all of the students. 

In addition to our personal pages, I would want to implement pages where students could communicate on what they would like to learn during the school year, feedback pages on lessons that are currently being taught, and collaboration pages for students who are working on group projects.  Another feature that I would find helpful is that a Wiki allows the teacher to also create informational pages that are un-editable, containing assignments, due dates, lesson standards, and classroom information normally found on a traditional Website.  By having everything at one site, it would decrease chances for miscommunication and any potential confusion having multiple sites could create.

Concerns that I would have in using this online communication are the obvious:  that students could change another student’s personal information, that students working on a group project may not agree with the changes made to their contributions, and that some parents may not want their child’s information out there in a public forum.  I researched these concerns and learned that not all Wikis necessarily have to be open to modification by anyone with web access and an internet connection.  They can contain password protected pages where each student would have their own password to change their personal page, can have editing privileges where only group members can edit content, and can be set to private viewing. 

As for peer revision of group projects, the teacher can view who has made changes, but it will ultimately require teaching students how group collaboration and cooperation work as a cohesive lesson in itself.  The first things that students will need to learn is how to create the pages, edit and add information, and access the site using their password.  I would create a PowerPoint presentation of the step-by-step process this entails to instruct students during class, and would make it accessible on the site as well as in printed form for students to take home for later reference.  Class time would initially be allocated to allow students to create their pages as a writing assignment and gain exposure to the workings of the Wiki.