Survey and Evaluation

I completed the course survey and course evaluation

Internet Safety - Doing

Having a conversation with my Mom about internet safety and what to do to help keep your children safe was an interesting conversation because I was listening to her comments both from the perspective of her child living under those conditions, and also a learning adult trying to determine what it is that is best for my own future children, and in my classroom. She doesn't have any more children at home, but she certainly had to make those decisions as her children were growing up because they were the first generation that had grown up with the internet. We decided that each child and situation is going to be different and you are going to have to take many factors into consideration when making such decisions. But that one practice that is going to help across the board is just to have open communication about the dangers, securities, and possibilities about having the internet and a computer in the home. We discussed that the rules should be established up front, and what boundaries there are - for both children and parents. I was appreciative to the readings and the primetime show I watched so that I had something to start the conversation with, and something to contribute to the conversation.

Internet Safety - Watching

I have found some good resources to help with understanding what we can do to be smart about using the internet and things to be aware of about internet use. It required me to reflect on my own use. I also found one way that we can help kids realize how they can stay safe on the internet, here is a cartoon for teaching kids Faux Pas.

The other program I watched was very telling, looking at it both from the perspective of a child growing up in this world, and as an adult learning how to best help the next generation use the technology available to them for their advantage and not to be taken advantage of. Here are some of my thoughts on the program:
Section Two was pretty good to watch as an educator... I think the last comment about being private and being discrete was very poignant. Watching this Frontline program made me reflect on my own internet use, and to ensure that the pictures I put up, the 'updates' I make to my profile are those that are completely and entirely me and in harmony with those principles I believe in. I liked what part three said about being participants in the technology available to us. We each need to take responsibility for what we do, and what we get involved in. Part four had an interesting comment to make: "You forget who can see the things you are writing, you forget the impact it may have on your life and others. To you it is you and the internet and those you who want to read it, not necessarily everyone who does." I agree with the comment that you should not allow computers in the room of children.

Internet Safety - Reading

These are some great reads, and some things that I have learned from each:

Let our Voices be Heard - M. Russell Ballard

• The family is at the heart of Heavenly Father’s plan because we are all part of His family and because mortality is our opportunity to form our own families and to assume the role of parents. It is within our families that we learn unconditional love, which can come to us and draw us very close to God’s love. It is within families that values are taught and character is built. Father and mother are callings from which we will never be released, and there is no more important stewardship than the responsibility we have for God’s spirit children who come into our families.
• The choices we make in media can be symbolic of the choices we make in life. Choosing the trendy, the titillating, the tawdry in the TV programs or movies we watch can cause us to end up, if we’re not careful, choosing the same things in the lives we live.
• The time has come when members of the Church need to speak out and join with the many other concerned people in opposition to the offensive, destructive, and mean-spirited media influence that is sweeping over the earth.
• Let me say again that the family is the main target of evil’s attack and must therefore be the main point of our protection and defense.

• “Do not attend, view, or participate in entertainment that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way. Do not participate in entertainment that in any way presents immorality or violent behavior as acceptable. … Have the courage to walk out of a movie or video party, turn off a computer or television, change a radio station, or put down a magazine if what is being presented does not meet Heavenly Father’s standards. Do these things even if others do not.” 7

Things As They Really Are - David A. Bednar

• does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?
• does the time you spend using various technologies and media enlarge or restrict your capacity to live, to love, and to serve in meaningful ways?

• the devil has no power over us, only as we permit him

• Obedience opens the door to the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. And the spiritual gifts and abilities activated by the power of the Holy Ghost enable us to avoid deception - and to see, to feel, to know, to understand, and to remember things as they really are. You and I have been endowed with a greater capacity for obedience precisely for these reasons.
  

Provident Living Guidelines Regarding Internet Safety

1. Place computers in high-traffic areas of the home.
   
2. Install a filtering program
3. Teach family members about the dangers of Internet pornography, including how to escape if an inappropriate site is accidentally accessed.
4. Teach family members to tell parents if they encounter any form of pornography while on the computer. This will help reduce the fear or shame of accidental exposure. It also serves to open discussion about the dangers of pornography.
5. Teach family members to use the Internet for a specific purpose only.
6. Instant messaging is a cost-effective, easy way to communicate with family and close friends. However, teach family members to avoid public chat rooms, bulletin boards, or unfamiliar areas on the Internet.
7. Teach children not to share any personal information online without parental knowledge and permission.
8. Educate yourself about your computer and how the Internet works.
9. Be aware of school and public library policies regarding Internet use and accessibility.
10. Teach family members to never open e-mail from someone they don’t know.

Technology and a House of Learning

• Successful learning in schools in the United States requires more than fluency in English; it requires learning “how to do school” and feeling comfortable in the educational environment.
• In the U.S. it is a teacher’s position and authority that puts the burden of understanding onto the student. As educators, we must become aware of when our communication style and expectations may be responsible for the difficulties students experience comprehending the required curriculum content rather than any deficit on the part of the student
  

Helping Children Understand the Media’s Influence

• As Latter-day Saints, we must be exemplary in our selection of the good and in our resistance of the evil that comes through the media. As parents, therefore, we must be aware of the media’s influence on our children’s perceptive, formative minds and help them learn to make wise choices.
• How we control the media will determine whether they become useful servants or dominating masters of our time and our mental energies.
• Programs that promote immorality or violence will not be watched—even if they have widespread acclaim.
• Some parents resist imposing restraints on their families, thinking that to manage what family members watch, listen to, or read is a form of censorship. The truth is, we all censor what we read, watch, or listen to. It’s called making a choice. None of us has the time to do everything, so we must choose how to spend our time.

Reading these articles helped me to see that I need to be deliberate in the things that I do, especially in my choices of time-wasting. It makes me more conscientious of the things I do with my time. It is a choice, I can choose to fill my time with meaningful activities, they do not have to be defined by the internet, or other media sources. It helps me to also see that as an adult I can influence the youth around me by my actions, and the choices I make in how I spend my time. Again, I need to be deliberate about what I choose to do.

Content-Specific Technology Integration Project

This Titration Lab and Sample Lab Report is my final product.
I feel like it is something that the students can use to internalize how acids and bases are apart of their everyday lives, and to probe into students natural curiosity about the things around them. This lab can only be used really the second half of the year because it requires them to stretch themselves and use the knowledge that they have acquired throughout the year. After teaching acid/base titrations, maybe using VCL to expose them to titrations and after doing a titration lab in class would I assign this. I could also see this being an extra credit project for students because it requires them to go beyond themselves to explore their world.

The CONTENT of the nature of acids and bases and the PEDAGOGY of using students natural curiosity to design their own open-ended experiment are complimentary with the TECHNOLOGY of a pH probe helps to obtain a specific and accurate reading of the solutions around the house. I hope I have shown an appropriate integration of technology and pedagogy, as well as that this activity is based on a specific content I am trying to teach. If I have done so, then this assignment shows that I have TPACK.

Content-Specific Technology Integration Project

To address the Core Standard 6 Objective 3, as noted below, I will be designs a titration lab using pH probes, logger-pro, and titration equipment - the technologies available - to help students see how titration curves and concentrations of acid and base relate.

Standard 6: Students will understand the properties that describe solutions in terms of concentration, solutes, solvents, and the behavior of acids and bases.

Objective 3: Differentiate between acids and bases in terms of hydrogen ion concentration.
a. Relate hydrogen ion concentration to pH values and to the terms acidic, basic or neutral.
b. Using an indicator, measure the pH of common household solutions and standard
laboratory solutions, and identify them as acids or bases.
c. Determine the concentration of an acid or a base using a simple acid-base titration.
d. Research and report on the uses of acids and bases in industry, agriculture, medicine, mining, manufacturing, or construction.
e. Evaluate mechanisms by which pollutants modify the pH of various environments (e.g., aquatic, atmospheric, soil).

To do this I will have to be able to manage and use pH probes, logger-pro, and titration equipment, but more than just knowing the technology, but know how to use this technology to help students gain more from their learning experience. In this way I hope to prove that have TPACK.

To accomplish this, my product for this class is going to design a lesson/experiment that students are required to demonstrate their understanding of what happens at the molecular level by using the technologies. This is going to include student instructions, and an assignment to complete.

TPK vs TPACK

Technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) is the knowledge of how technologies can be used in a general teaching context. TPK may involve an understanding of how technology can be used to support teaching strategies and methods that can be used in any content area. Some examples in chemistry might include:

• A teacher who knows basic rules for how to present information clearly using PowerPoint, and other Office tools.
  
• A teacher who knows how to manage a classroom that has pH probes, logger-pro, and titration equipment for each of the students.
• A teacher who has her students create a class website to record for parents and students what they are learning in class.

Each of these examples demonstrates a teacher’s ability to use technology to help with general teaching strategies that are not specific to teaching chemistry.

Technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) is the knowledge of how to use technology to support content-specific pedagogical methods and strategies. Some examples in chemistry might include:

• A teacher who designs a titration lab using the technologies available to help students see how the titration curve and the pH relate.
  
• A teacher who uses chem draw to help students visualize molecular interactions by modeling representations of them.
• A teacher who uses Virtual Chem Lab to allow students to explore in a lab, while not having to worry about the liability of such potential problems, while still allowing students to go through the scientific method of thinking through problems.

Each of these examples shows an appropriate integration of technology and pedagogy, these activities are based on a very specific content area, and require teachers to target specific pedagogy strategies.

Synchronous and asynchronous communication

Synchronous communication


Asynchronous communication

Another synchronous shot - this took forever to figure out where it was saved to, I really think that it was use error that caused this fault, but it will be easier now in the future.


I certainly preferred the synchronous communication because it allows there to be instant feedback, and less video like. It allows for a greater span of information to be shared because questions can be answered and addressed immediately, you don't have to wait for it. Asynchronous communication is nice because like we have seen on our class website, it can answer mass questions that many students may have, or to give instructions. So, really they both have their advantages and disadvantages, you just have to choose which one is best for you.
In my classroom it could be possible to include video communication to help students with homework, or on assignments that they have to complete. It could also be nice to record experiments done as 'proof' students have to submit to you or that are done in class that can't be repeated for those students who were absent one day.

Discovering New Tools

Guess what? I learned what a wiki is, and how to start to navigate it.... that is exciting. I am excited to get a webpage started, I am going to have to play with it more before I am excited about what I have created, but it is a start. This is the biggest thing that I said that I was excited to learn, so here we go.
It is difficult getting started with these new tools and not really knowing what they can do, so you don't really know how you are going to use them despite that you know they could be useful to you. But I have seen classroom websites that are really useful, so I am excited to get going with this one. I can see that it can be useful to have a place that students and parents can go that has a calendar with assignments/events past and coming up for the class. I can also see that it could be used as a great tool to feature future careers in chemistry or chemistry related fields.

O.k, another tool I learned how to use: Qualtrics - a free survey builder software. I am so excited to come up with good questions to use all of the question types.... like rank the order and side by side. I am so excited about this.

Well, I am just getting started for now, but here is my class website: Everydaychemistry

Teaching Limiting Reactants

The purpose of this video is to use it as an introduction to limiting reactant products so that students see that it is similar to things in their everyday life, and to see that life issues are sometimes harder than the chemistry behind figuring out these problems. There should be a worksheet to accompany the movie that has a list of the lanyard options, it holds students accountable for the information, and gives them an opportunity to start the thinking process for the day. Hope that you enjoy.

Finding How to Reach Students

There are many challenges that teachers have to face in order to teach the the core standards to students. One approach to overcoming this is to incorporate multimedia projects - especially when it can help to better explain a concept. As a teacher it is important to recognize what is legal to show or not, and honestly I had never really thought about the seriousness of this, but I am glad that I went through a copyright tutorial so that it
a) brought the issues to my attention, and
b) described what is allowed and what is not.
I found the most useful piece of the tutorial was the fair use video. Anyways, I decided that I wanted to demonstrate learning through multimedia and help show how limiting reactant problems are all around students, sometimes even in more complex terms than you find them in chemistry. But that they are still important and they help us to function in the society we live in. Hopefully it turns out well, but here is my idea....

Background

What is it that defines this day and age? Honestly, it is technology, and the rapid pace that it changes at. I am grateful to my father who has allowed me the opportunity to be exposed to recent technology. I laugh because he wants me to be more "hip" with the latest and the greatest, but there are times that I do not feel like I need it. I feel like I have enough background to get me through. Yet, months later, I think, maybe I should take him up on that, it would be nice to have this or that.
Technology wise, I know the basics. I know how to use word, excel, powerpoint, the internet, I've never uploaded a video onto anything, but I certainly enjoy podcasts. I'm not afraid to learn more, but I like help at learning how to do new things, I don't like being left in the dark to figure things out.
I remember a funny experience that has to do with my progress in technology, when I first came to college I would instant message my brother to ask questions about chemistry, and he would say, look it up online, that is what I am doing..... I've learned a lot from using google.