Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Thought Provoking Question

How effective would eportfolio be for students with special needs?

Eportfolio Article Response

Open source eportfolio: development and implementation of an institution-wide
Electronic portfolio platform for students

In the article the author discusses a few types of portfolios such a business and financial. The article discussed educational portfolio and how students create their own portfolio. Education Portfolio is a collection of exhibits relating to the abilities of students or pupils. Portfolios have been in the education world since the early 1900. The article gives important steps on how students should develop their portfolio, how much time should be devoted to developing to the portfolio, and how much assistance should be given by the teacher who is referred to as the “course tutor.” The general characteristics of portfolio in education are: student-centered, competence-oriented, cyclical with regard to action and reflection, and multimedia-oriented. To give a brief description of a couple: in student-centered the student manages their own portfolios, decide on the objectives, content and format of their portfolio. The portfolio is put together by the student. While developing the portfolio the student may make right or wrong decisions in doing so. The student is the person who bears the ultimate responsibility for his/her portfolio, but this does not relieve the course teacher from her responsibility of determining whether or not the student fits within the professional profile. Competence involves all aspects of the student functioning. The student wants to develop the portfolio to show his/her competence.
To give other point of the article the author discuss how portfolios are develop in physical education and how teachers use portfolios in general education as an evaluation as an assessment tool. It also discusses how doctoral students use portfolios as their final piece of work. Portfolios can also be used as a lifelong tool after the student receives his/her doctorate. After reading this article, I obtained a great deal of knowledge on portfolios, how they are developed, how they are used, and how I can develop and use a personal and/or portfolio in the future.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ethics and Technology Video


State Information Technology Ethics

The video gave the definition of ethics. It also had people pictures in it that they considered with good ethics such as Jesus, Plato,and Mother Teresa. There were also people in the video that was considered unethical such as Adolf Hitler, Michael Vick, and Marthat Stwart to name a few. I really enjoyed the music and lyrics to the song that was playing as I read the information. There is a question in the song that ask the question "Where did all the good people go?" The video viewed information on Issues affected by techonology which included information about intellectual property which I read more about in an article entitled "Do Student Respect Intellectual Property?" Copy right laws and how to used them along with fair use doctrine and counterfiet software. The video explain that information has no ethics and it does not care how we use it. It will not stop sending out viruses, spam or highly sensitive information. Hackers has no ethics. They use the computer to obtain information that is private infpramtion of others in or to use it in the wrong way.

Do Students Respect Intellectual Property?

Summary to
Do Students Respect Intellectual Property?
This article discusses the importance of following the copy right law when reproducing others works. The teacher in the article states that she was not familiar with the law and was reproducing others information incorrectly. She also admitted that she had her students doing the same thing. When she attended a conference it really opened her eyes to the law. I could relate with the teacher because I have worked in a classroom and copied materials without permission and used it the following year because I felt it was okay it was being used for a good reason. I liked the way she researched the law after leaving the conference and introduced her findings to her 9th grade class who was in the process of completing a video project. Like students always do some followed the guidelines taught by her to the students and some did not. The next year she educated the students and other teachers on the law and saw students paying more attention and interest in following the law of Germany for copy right. The students also became knowledgeable of what materials they did not have to have permission to copy right because of the year the information was produced. I feel that teachers, students, parents, and administrators should be aware of the law and follow it to set good examples for everyone involved.