Course Reflection

The journey that I’ve taken throughout this semester in Computers in Education, IT 645 has been amazing. I’ve taken a number of online courses but never have I taken one that was as organized and effectively planned as this course. The format of the course made taking this class online very easy. Everything needed to be successful in this course was readily available on the course site. IT 645 offered the opportunity to explore the proper usage of technology within education. As a result I have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge as it pertains to the use of technology in education.

Blog

I really enjoyed this portion of this course. The various functions offered to create the blog, such as layout, font and inserting links were very useful in making it look professional. Due to my past experiences using www.blogger.com creating the blog for this course was very easy. Even though I’d previously used blogger there were many functions that I had not had the opportunity to fully utilize. This course offered several opportunities to use each and every component available in blogger. For example in my past creations of blogs I was never required to link anything to the blog. As a result of taking this course now I have a lot of experience with linking documents within the blog.

The chapter reflections provided insight into specific topics and issues that were presented in the textbook. Reading and commenting on the blogs of our peers provided another point of view on the material in the textbook. I would use blogging in my classroom in as a bell ringer, in which students would be required to comment daily on a current event.

Threaded Discussion & Listserv

The threaded discussions offered a great form of unified communication. I loved the way we were able to view the thoughts of other students. There were times when I may have had a question about a topic that another student had already asked. I found this to be very useful form of clarification. The listserv was fairly easy to create. But I didn’t find it as useful as some of the other online tools.

Podcast & Video Clip

The podcast and video clips to me were a form a lecture that is often not offered in online courses. It provided visual and auditory learners with the visual and audio portion of a traditional class setting. Each of these tools provided the additional information and instruction needed in an online course. I feel that these items were essential to the completion of many of the assignments.

Hands on Projects

We were required to complete a number of hands on projects in this course. All of the projects challenged my creative abilities and introduced new tools. I learned how to create a variety of items that will be helpful in my classroom. By using these tools in my classroom I will be able to complete all required administrative tasks with ease. The prompt manner in which Dr. Wang responded to our projects with constructive criticism also aided in the successful completion of this course.

Week 13 : Chapter 11 & 12 , Question #1

1. What are the legal, social, and ethical issues arising in the Digital Age? Summarize each.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have grown rapidly from a research project into something that involves millions of people worldwide. Much of the Internet's usefulness comes from the fact that it is shared by users, service providers, and others, in the sense that each depends on the other and needs to support the other. Hopefully, that sort of sharing and respect will continue. Your behavior, your expectations for others, and your activities will make the difference.
"It is important to realize that the Web is what we make it. 'We' being the people who read, the people who teach children how to surf the Web, the people who put information up on the Web. Particularly the people who make links.... The Web doesn't force anything down your throat. If you are worried that your children are going to read low-quality information, teach them. Teach them what to read. Teach them how to judge information." Tim Berners-Lee (Scientific American Dec 97)

Privacy and Civil Liberties
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was formed in 1990 to, among other things, bring issues dealing with civil liberties related to computing and telecommunications technology to the attention of the public at large, legislators, and court and law enforcement officials. As a nonprofit public interest organization, EFF maintains collections of files and documents.

Email Privacy
When you send a message by e-mail, the message is broken into packets and the packets are sent out over the Internet. The number of packets depends on the size of the message. Each message has the Internet address of the sender (your address) and the address of the recipient. Packets from a single message may take different routes to the destination, or may take different routes at different times. This works well for the Internet and for you since packets are generally sent through the best path depending on the traffic load on the Internet, the path doesn't depend on certain systems being in operation, and all you have to give is the address of the destination. The packets making up an e-mail message may pass through several different systems before reaching their destination. This means there may be some places between you and the destination where the packets could be intercepted and examined. One example of a law to ensure the privacy of e-mail is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) passed in 1986 by Congress.

Intellectual Property and Copy Right
The notion of ownership of something, whether it has a physical form, does still make sense as intellectual property. There are a number of laws and agreements throughout the world to protect intellectual property rights. The right to copy or duplicate materials can be granted only by the owners of the information. This is called the copyright. Many documents on the Internet contain a statement that asserts the document is copyrighted and gives permission for distributing the document in an electronic form, provided it isn't sold or made part of some commercial venture. Even items that don't contain these statements are protected by the copyright laws of the United States, the Universal Copyright Convention, or the Berne Union. Most of the copyright conventions or statutes include a provision so that individuals may make copies of portions of a document for short-term use. If information is obtainable on the Internet, and there is no charge to access the information, it often can be shared in an electronic form. That certainly doesn't mean you can copy images or documents and make them available on the Internet, or make copies and share them in a printed form with others. Quite naturally, many of the folks who create or work at providing material available on the Internet, expect to get credit and be paid for their work.

Ethical Issues
One of the most significant ethical issues is the freedom of speech and the Internet. The content on the Internet is not regulated and , as a result, does contain materials that are objectionable and inappropriate for children.

Week 12: Story & Listserv

Creating the listserv was a breeze but the video was very challenging for me. There were so many things that went wrong with this project. For one I just bought a laptop which has Window Live Movie Maker on it. It seemed to be easier to use than the regular Windows Movie Maker but I couldn’t figure out how to add the audio. So then I ended up having to start all over on my older computer. Once I started using the computer I was used to I had better luck. Check out my movie. My listserv is http://groups.google.com/group/hdrummonds.