Navigate 1.1.1 Delineating Between Synchronous and Asynchronous Content Quest

Synchronous method of delivery require students and instructors to be online at the same time. Students and teachers are at different geographical locations, but they get together at specific hour for lectures, discussions, and presentations. Examples: webinar (which I use), gotomeeting…etc.

Asynchronous method of delivery is when instructors provide students lectures, study materials, tests, and assignments that can be accessed at any time. This method is more common at this time and more flexible. Examples of technology such as email, e-courses, online forums, audio and video recordings can be considered asynchronous method of delivery.

Participate 4.1.3 Digital Health Quest

The following are consequences of spending too much time online that could directly or indirectly affect our overall well-being:

·         Our work habits become poor and lose work ethic

·         It becomes difficult to create and maintain normal social relationship

·         Losing track of time online. Poor time management leads to unnecessary anxiety of not running errands on time

·         Trouble completing a task at work or at home

·         We develop behavior disorder such depression

·         Financial problems could arise

·         pain and numbness in hands and wrists

·         Dry eyes or strained vision

·         Back aches and neck aches; severe headaches

·         Pronounced weight gain or weight loss

·         Sleep disorders

Some tips to balance our well-being and use of technology are:

·         Have activities that could decrease your Internet time to pursue some of them.

·         Have internet use goals and stick to them. Do not stay online after you completed what you needed to complete. Take frequent breaks, at least 5 minutes each hour.

·         Decide when during the day you want to go online. If you go online in the evening, stay technology-free in the morning

·         Go outside and experience the offline world. Visit newsstands, book and music stores, and participate in entertainment such as museums, music, and live theater.

My Calendar

Participate 4.1.2 Digital Safety and Security Quest

Digital safety and security is protecting yourself and others from phishing websites, malware, spyware, spam and junk mail. These programs are not always obvious; they look respectable programs. Unless we are careful, they could cause hardware damage and identity theft. You’re putting your child/student, yourself and your data at risk.

Best practices to protect ourselves and our students are:

·         Create strong passwords that cannot be guessed easily. The least we can do in creating passwords is to use combinations of letters, numbers, and symbols.

·         Your private information should remain private. Unless you know for sure who the company is that is asking for your private information, never give your full name, address, phone number, social security number and information about your banking account and credit card information. In order to download certain programs, most of the time, they don’t require all these information. If they do, probably you’re dealing with bad guys who want to do you harm. Never put these information in an email. Emails can easily be scanned by the bad guys.

·         Check the website each student is surfing and if you think it is inappropriate and not good for the student, talk about it and use it as teaching moment.

·         Teachers must make sure that they monitor discussion forums. All contributors must log in in order to comment. This promotes accountability.

The following websites with rich information on Digital Safety and Security

http://www.learnnc.org

https://www.commonsensemedia.org

http://www.staysafeonline.org

Participate 4.1.1 Digital Rights and Responsibilities Quest

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).  This is a written policy of a school or district to its employees and students on how to use the school or district’s technology. In the district I work, there is one, but the emphasis is more on not to use the district’s technology for illegal activities. It doesn’t say much on acceptable and unacceptable behavior when using the available technology. Having a detailed policy benefits everyone involved. It protects students, teachers, and staff members from getting in trouble and prevents unnecessary use of school resources. It is a good to have the AUP, but it only become effective if there is a commitment by the teacher to enforce it. It is teachers’ challenge to protect students and still give students access to the digital world within the school or district’s AUP.

Copyright.  Provides protection to the authors of the original work such as writings, drama, music, art, architectural design, software, motion pictures, and sound recordings. The owner of a copyright has the following rights:  to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, license, and to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work.

•  The rights and responsibilities must be clear and easy to understand and it should be posted in the teachers’ work room where the printers and copy machines are located. It should be also posted in visible place in each classrooms since most of our classrooms are now equipped with computers.

•  Follow the Georgia Professional Standards and school district code of ethics for educators

•  Usernames and passwords of students and teacher must be confidential and the IT department of the school or district must require these personal information to be changed at certain regular times. For example, passwords should be updated every month or every quarter in order the user to login to the school or district network.

• Teachers must not let their passwords be used by any student for any reason to login to the network.

• Students shall not alter or attempt to alter technology hardware and software.

I am providing the link for my districts’ Acceptable Use Policy below:

http://school.fultonschools.org/hs/independence/Documents/Technology%20Use.pdf

Participate 3.1.2 Digital Resources and Netiquette Quest

Participate 3.1.2. Digital Resources and Netiquette Quest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uVZVzK9jfY

Participate 3.1.1 Access to the Digital Community Quest

Every student needs access to technology- a technology he/she can interact comfortably with – to make the most out of their potential. But, as we all know it, there are access barriers that prevents this from happening. Some of these access barriers are discussed below.

Location and income disparity– students of rural and students of urban schools are at disadvantage to access the digital community. The students from rural schools suffer from lack of availability of technology and quality of teachers. The Urban schools’ students are at disadvantage because neighborhoods are segregated by social class and therefore the poor population lacks the funds to access digital resources.
These barriers can be eliminated, however, can be eliminated if there is political willingness to do it. Rural schools can get access to technology and quality teachers by expanding distance education. Impoverished communities can be helped to access the digital community by making some changes to the formula of funding schools and by building schools that can be attended by all socio-economic classes of students.

Disabilities – in addition to the challenges of instructional technology they face as any other student, students with disabilities also have basic access barriers in interacting with the educational technology product. This could be ability to use a standard keyboard, the monitor display may not be suitable to students with visual impairments, and the speech output of an instructional technology may not be understood by a student with a hearing impairment. Therefore it is imperative that the technology to be equipped with alternative input and output features for students with disabilities to interact with educational technology at equal level with other students. This can be done through "built-in" features or ones that are "added-on" to the product. Example, keyboards can be adjusted to allow for sequential rather than simultaneous keystrokes and the computer can be equipped with software that provides the capacity to adjust the size of the visual display output to a variety of enlargements.

Politics and educational policies– this is how federal, state, and local politicians give this issue a priority as they prepare annual budget.

Participate 2.1.1 Collecting Reputable Digital Resources Quest

Among the many digital resources, the following websites and software can pass the test of the following five criterias
           
            Accuracy  - reliability of the information and free from errors
           Authority - checking the author and other contributors; be able to contact the producers of the site
           Objectivity - checking from bias
           Currency - checking if the digital resource was up-to-date
           Coverage - checking if it covers the topics or lessons you want to teach

The digital resources are:

 www.thatquiz.org
www.kutasoftware.com - this is a software that you have to purchase (it especially passes the criteria of Accuracy, Authority,objectivity and coverage)

www.ixl.com - passes all the criteria and very engaging for formative assessment


In order students to use digital resources for learning safely, is teach them what to look for in any website or application so that they can safely use the resources.  As computers are becoming an integral part of our daily tools, it is the responsibility of the teacher to teach his/her students about the basic digital literacy. When a teacher assign a project, for example, it is a good teaching moment to talk about digital resources safety tips.