End of Course Observations Leslie Pirtle Foundations of Instructional Technology INST 523 Bridgewater State University Professor Thanh Nguyen December 10, 2011

1. End of Course Observations 12-10-2011
Leslie Pirtle, Information Access & the Internet, INST 523
Professor Thanh Nguyen, Bridgewater State University

2. Week 1
Blackboard
Netiquette and Academic Integrity
Introduction and Home Page
Collaborative Learning Agreement Checklist

3. Blackboard Observations
• Given the minimal changes in BB since the late 90’s I
would like to see it:
– Update the look and feel
– Add the ability to sort posts by student, date and number of
listings
– Allow for embedded media in posts
– Add a built-in html generator
– Include emoticons in its toolbar
– Remove the ―Go‖ button next to ―Select All‖ –because it
doesn’t ―go‖ anywhere!

4. Netiquette Observations
• The most helpful ―take away‖ from this material for me
was the reminder to use a more pointed subject line
rather than simply saying ―help!‖ or ―hello‖
– I have been making this effort and striving to use a subject
that would be easily searchable as well
• Netiquette has not been a problem with my online
University of Phoenix (U of Px) students, but it is a very
important topic for my primary students

5. Academic Integrity Observations
• Academic Integrity, Student Tutorial is an excellent
resource that I will return to frequently
– The ―You write…‖ ―Is it plagiarism?‖ format is an outstanding
way of helping learners to sort through the thorny issues
and gray areas of what and when to cite
(Colorado Community Colleges Online, n.d.)

6. Introduction and Home Page Observations
• Our cohort is comprised of a rich tapestry of learners
• Yet, our shared similarities made me feel very much at
home. Commonalities for me included being a:
– South Shore resident
– Silver Lake HS alum
– Bridgewater alum
– Classroom teacher
– Technology teacher
– Former college administrator

7. Collaborative Learning Agreement Checklist Reflections
• I didn’t like this system at the beginning but tried to approach it with an
open mind. After long and careful consideration, I concluded that as a
matter of teaching style, I would be unlikely to use this with my online
classes
• I prefer the tracking of posts to be automated. I think learners’ time is
better spent working with the subject matter rather than these
―housekeeping‖ functions
• I worry that this system could actually serve to limit conversation—if the
student is only required to interact with four people in a given week,
where is the incentive to read all of the posts?
• I appreciate that the underlying rationale is to ensure that no student is
ignored. I just prefer to do this on a case-by-case basis through my
facilitation. (Perhaps this makes me a control freak?)

8. Week 2
• Telecommunication & The Internet
• Internet Safety
• Bullies in Cyberspace

9. Telecommunication and the Internet Safety Observations
• In the use of telecommunications, the technology coordinator’s
duty to students is to protect them from that which is harmful to
them as well as to guard their rights to privacy
– This entails having a solid, knowledge of what is developmentally
appropriate for each grade level as well as a clear understanding of parents’
and administrators’ expectations.
• Cyberbullying
– I feel the best tools for helping children understand the effects of
cyberbullying are lessons in which they are asked to role play and watch
videos that help develop empathy for victims.
– The message about cyber bulling should not be a one-off lesson, but rather,
reinforced as an ongoing message through signs in the lab as well as verbal
and electronic reminders.

10. Week 3
• AUP
• Copyright
• Legal and Ethical Issues

11. AUP, Observations
• The school’s Acceptable Use Policy should be written to reflect
expectations of parents and administrators for what is safe and
appropriate for the school’s learners.
• The AUP should be periodically reviewed to ensure that it is
addressing current trends in both technology and user
behavior.
• This problems with AUPs in schools can be:
– Too specifically or too vaguely framed
– Ignorance by faculty and students of its existence
– A wide disparity between ―what it says‖ and how its implemented
– Not addressing current trends and technologies

12. Copyright, Observations
• While Copyright Law and Fair Use Doctrine offer tests against
which to gauge whether or not a work is protected, there are
still gray areas.
• The technology coordinator must stay abreast of how the laws
are changing and being interpreted in order to protect the
schools and individuals
• After dedicating a lot of time to reading and studying copyright
issues this semester, I am still uncomfortable with my limited
knowledge. I feel I just do not yet know enough to make
informed decisions when ―gray area‖ arise.

13. Week 4
• Ethical and Safety Issues

14. Laws I Learned About
• The technology coordinator must stay abreast of laws
enacted to protect the privacy of children as well as to
shield them from viewing that which is deemed harmful
and inappropriate. These include:
– The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPA)
– Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).
– Federal Education Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health
Information Portability Act (HIPA)
– Rehabilitation Act of 1973
– The Broadband Data Information Act of 2010
– Copyright law & Fair Use
– The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act of
2001 (TEACH)

15. Legal, Ethical and Safety Issues, Observations
• This unit helped me to feel fairly secure in my ability to
understand and comply with laws pertaining to children’s
privacy and safety.
• Because of parental and administrative expectations, we err on
the side caution regarding what the students are exposed to
• My efforts this past trimester have been to help children
develop judgment about what they view. I pair this with time
management concepts. Students are asked:
– What does inappropriate mean?
– How do you decide what is inappropriate?
– What do you do if you view something that makes you uncomfortable?
– Is this the best way to be spending your time online? Why or why not?
• The Common Sense Media Curriculum is an effective way to
promote safety and good judgment among students in the lab.
The only drawback is the lack of time to go into greater depth.
(Common Sense Media. 2011).

16. Week 5
• What is Technology Integration?
• Examples of Web Resource Design
• Digital Natives
• Designing an Effective Website
• Flow charts

17. What is Technology Integration? Observatons
• Okojie, Olinzock & Okojie-Boulder, (2003) state:
Technology should be implemented in the classroom only if its role in a
given instruction is determined along with pedagogical issues related to a
given instructional task. The role of technology in education can only be
determined if teachers who implement technology at the classroom level
are involved in technology decision- making because teachers have the
responsibility of facilitating instruction
• In my opinion, these scholars are stating the very obvious ideal which
in practice is the exception, rather than the rule. Some schools may be
a full generation away from this happening.
• While some of the teachers I work with are beginning to integrate
technology, it is anything but seamless at this point. For example, one
teacher recently directed his students to:
1. Write a paper using MS Word
2. Use the internet to find images
3. Print the images, cut them out with scissors and glue them into the Word
document

18. Week 6
• Identify your target audience
• The purpose of your website resources
• Identify goals of your website resources by trying to
answer 7 items in Chapter 3 (general
goals, audience/learners, subject matter, objectives,
prerequisites, aims, rationales)

19. Audience and Purpose of My Website
• Having the opportunity to choose the audience and purpse
of my curriculum web was very helpful both to me as author
and to my teachers for whom the site was conceived.
• Because I personally know each member of my target
audience, I could be certain that none would require assistive
technologies to view my site. This permitted me to create a
purely Flash site. While there are technologies that will allow
for visually impaired person to experience a Flash based site,
the Wix WYSWYG application did not offer the option to add alt
text to my links or images.
• The objective of my website was to offer highly palatable
―spoonfuls‖ of information about the Mimio Interactive
whiteboard, its benefits and ease of use in the classroom.

20. Week 7
• Instruction
• Assessment
• Resources

21. Instruction, Assessment & Resources
• Although I feel proficient at making rubrics, I believe that assessments
are overall a weakness for me.
• I do agree with Jackson (2002) that online assessments can be very
engaging for students. My students seem to enjoy them and I like that
they give them instant feedback.
• The material provided in this unit was very helpful. I will take more time
to review and reflect upon it.
• I found the search strategy resources helpful and will add them to the
lessons I have created for my middle school students

22. Week 8 and 9
• Project Draft 1
• Project Draft 2

23. Project Drafts 1 and 2, Observations
• Having your website critiqued by others is a bit like giving birth
after a long and painful labor, only to have people tell you your
baby is fine, but also a little ugly and wrinkled. Yet, unlike with
newborns, frank critique of nascent websites is highly valuable!
• My test subjects included my professor and classmates in INST
523, three former colleagues who teach web design at Wake
Technical Community College, one webmaster and a former
professor who is now a PhD candidate in Social Media
Psychology.

24. Selected Observations by Web Design Educators
• With so much Flash, I was wondering about accessibility. How does it look
on a mobile device? Hit area for arrows on create lessons could be larger -
especially on film strip. Not sure I would like opening random files to watch
video, prefer them as part of the site. Color contrast between yellow
background & white text on leave feedback is not so good. Looks like you
have been working hard!! (Consol, 2011)
• MIMIO looks amazing! I found it confusing from the home page - while it
says click the Mimio tab - I kept trying to get the bubble to work - eventually
figured it out. Overall I like the tab structure - once I got it, could easily go
between different options. (Seo, 2011)
• I like the layout, color, sections basically layout is quite nice and effective.
There is an initial slow response to load site and some sections but that is
the only negative i see. I get who the audience is meant for so there seems
to be a nice balance between static and interactive content. I don’t see any
reason to make changes except for the response time of loading. I
rechecked with safari and Firefox on my pc and looks and works well. i also
used my flash browser on my Ipad and it also works well. (Sotille, 2011)

25. Response to Feedback
• While I had checked my site on Firefox, Chrome, IE 32 bit, and
Safari, one of my test users reminded me to ensure that my site
renders properly on handheld devices. This was not a concern
when I was teaching web design in early Y2K and it is not
something I thought about now because I do not use my cell phone
for Internet access.
• I found it intriguing that my tagline and one of my animated
graphics elicited polar opposite reactions from my classmates. It
demonstrates how important it is to have a wide selection of test
users who resemble my target audience.
– I removed the animation
– I hope to construct a better tagline

26. Technical Issues
• After quite a bit of study, I found the Wix site and WYSIWYG
application fairly easy to understand and navigate. The site offers
the ability to create a site from scratch as well as templates at
varying levels of difficulty
• I chose a moderately challenging template that allowed me the
flexibility to make some changes
• The ―Wixipedia, Videos and Webinars‖ were easy to search and
rendered clear and helpful directions
• The only thing I was unable to fix was the Facebook Widget that
seems to ―drift‖ from one spot to another each time I bring up the
site. Wix addresses this:
―The Wix HTML Widget is here - but it's still in Beta! Wix is a Flash platform
and we offer support directly related to our product. By adding external HTML
code you are adding products /code we have not created or tested.‖
("Wix support," 2011)

27. My Next Steps: Site Changes and Improvements
• I would like to create some detailed help/troubleshooting documentation for Mimio and add
it to my website
• I would also like to develop an archive of quality lessons using Mimio Studio 8 (I was able
to locate very few)
• One tweak that I need to make on my site is to go back into my ―Create Lessons‖ page and
fix the hit area on the buttons that lead to the movies. I need to create a Transparent
shape, send it behind each black button, group the two objects together and then reinsert
the links and behaviors. (There are 26 of them, so this will be a little time consuming)
• If the site grows substantially, I will need to add a search feature and a site map page.
• I would like to add a widget that allows users to ―add a link.‖

28. My Next Steps: Promoting The Site
• Had planned to present in detail using the projector at a staff meeting. Had to
cut it short when the principal asked me to present on something else.
• Addition of the site’s URL to my e-mail signature
• Will send e-mail blast to faculty notifying them of any changes or additions to
the site

29. My Next Steps: Future Websites
• Now that I have learned to use Wix, I think it would be an excellent
solution for showcasing student work. I do not foresee accessibility
issues as we are a private school with a very homogenous
demographic in terms of ability (our one visually impaired student
recently left to attend a school where she could be better
accommodated)
• As much as I enjoyed working with Wix, for next web project I will
be scaling the learning curve or the First Class web page author

30. Concluding Observations
• This experience afforded me the opportunity to develop a
curriculum web with more structure than I have done in the
past. It was very worthwhile.
• This course helped me add to my knowledge the legal and
ethical issues of instructional technology
• I still feel that I have a long way to in developing a working
knowledge in the areas of assessments and copyright

31. Sources
Colorado Community Colleges Online. (n.d.). Academic integrity student tutorial. Retrieved from
http://www.ctdlc.org/Members/Hot_Topics/AcademicIntegrity/Students/CaseD.html
Common Sense Media. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/alignment-gradek-
commoncore.pdf
Consol, A. M.Ed.Internet Technologies Department Head Wake Technical Community College, Raleigh, North Carolina. A.
(2011, November 29). Interview by L Pirtle [Personal Interview]. E-mail exchange.
Cunningham, C. A., & Billingsley, M. (2011). Curriculum webs. (2nd Edition ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Firpo-Cappiello,R. ASCAP & Schreer, S.P. BMI. (Composers). (2011). Wings of the wind. [Song]. Retrieved from
http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?t=f&i=50
Jackson, L. (2002). Motivate while you integrate technology: Online assessment . Retrieved from
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech125.shtml
Pentilla, B., M.Ed., Former Internet Technologies Department Head, Wake Technical Community College, Raleigh, North
Carolina (2011, November 30). Interview by L Pirtle [Personal Interview]. Facebook exchange.
Okojie, M., Olinzock, A. A., & Okojie-Boulder, T. C. (2003). The pedagogy of technology integration Epsilon Pi Tau. Retrieved
from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/v32/v32n2/okojie.html

32. Sotille, L, Instructor, .Internet Technologies Department ,Wake Technical Community College, Raleigh North Carolina, A.
(2011, November 28). Interview by L Pirtle [Personal Interview]. Facebook exchange.
Smile Templates. (2011). Look powerpoint template. Retrieved from http://www.smiletemplates.com/free-templates/powerpoint-
templates/1/0/6.html
Seo, Catherine, PhD Candidate in Media Psychology, Fielding Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara California. (2011, December
1). Interview by L Pirtle [Personal Interview]. Facebook exchange
Wix support. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.wix.com/support/