Educational Technology II: Professional Tools

Course number: EDDV286
Credits: 1 credit

Instructor: Gary A. Feurer
Room WHL 301B
Phone: 831-2751
email: feurer@udel.edu
Office Hours: 12:00-2:00, Wed. and Thurs.

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Description || Texts || Prerequisites|| Requirements ||Assignments

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Description:

Designed for students in the freshman or sophomore year of the Elementary Teacher Education program, this course develops competencies in the use of technology in the teaching profession to prepare lessons and track student progress. Topics include electronic gradebooks, statistics, presentation technology, educational resources and communication on the Internet, authoring for the World Wide Web, integrated learning systems (ILS), and assessment tools.

Texts:

The following text was required for Educational Technology I. Students need not purchase a new version if they still have access to the version used in that course.

• An Introduction to Computing Using ClarisWorks® for the MAC, Bruce Presley, Beth Brown & Elaine Malfas, Lawrenceville Press (1995) CW

Additional readings will be placed on electronic reserve and accessible on the University of Delaware campus via the World Wide Web.

Prerequisites:

Students are expected to have completed Educational Technology I. They should be familiar with basic concepts in hardware and software and proficient with tools such as word processors, spreadsheets, and e-mail.

Requirements:

In addition to attending class, students are expected to complete weekly reading assignments in preparation for each class meeting, and, for most weeks, a computer-based laboratory activity building on the lecture. The course grade will be based on the following:

1. Graded laboratory activities. Most weeks throughout the semester there will be assigned graded computer-based lab activities based on class lectures and laboratory experiences. Normally, written work for these activities is due the class meeting following the class in which the activity is assigned.
   
   Two activities are larger in scope, building on previous lab activities. They are due two weeks after they are assigned.
   
   Record-keeping and Analysis Activity: Using the ClarisWorks® spreadsheet program, each student will generate a hypothetical collection of student records, calculate appropriate statistics on the records, and display the results graphically. The associated computer files will be handed in on disk together with a print of the graphics.
   
   Internet Activity: Using the tools of the Internet, each student will create a log of 10 to 15 interesting resources available on the Internet. Each item should include the location of the resource and the means of reaching it (i.e., newsgroups, websites, etc.) and a short description of the resource. The description should detail the types of information and potential uses in the K-12 curriculum. Then, using appropriate authoring tools, each student will create a World Wide Web homepage and publish it on the University’s central Unix systems. This page should contain hyperlinks to some of the Internet resources identified in the Internet Activity.
   
2. Mid-term exam.
   
   
3. Final exam.

Topics and Assignments

Readings

Course readings from sources other than the textbook are available through electronic reserves.

Week 1 - Class 1: Introduction to Windows 95, Netscape Navigator, and FTP tools.

• Lab Activity

Using Netscape navigator, copy an interesting image from the World Wide Web. Save it temporarily on a floppy diskette or the hard drive of your computer. Using an FTP tool like WS_FTP or Fetch, transfer the image file to your copland account. Then, send the image to your instructor as an attachment to an e-mail message. In the e-mail message, be sure to specify the URL of the place on the WWW where your found the image. Your image should be small and in the JPG or GIF format. Almost all images on the WWW are of one of these two formats.

Week 1 - Class 2: Tools for Creating Classroom Materials. The important but sometimes difficult task of transferring data between applications.

• Readings:

CW, Chapter 9. Review the chapter on databases that was covered in Ed Tech I

• Lab Activity:

Copy the class list file clist.txt from the Ed Tech II: Data folder. Following the instructions given in class, import it into a ClarisWorks database. Create a set of labels for student folders. Each label should show the student's name and should contain a small graphic chosen from the ClarisWorks clipart library that is appropriate to the elementary school classroom. Print your labels on a standard sheet of paper.

Week 2: Tools for Record-keeping and Analysis

1. Electronic gradebooks. Using special purpose and general tools for keeping student records and grades.

• Readings:

CW, Chapter 9. Review the chapter on spreadsheets that was covered in Ed Tech I.

• Lab Activity:

Use ClarisWorks to create a gradebook based on a spreadsheet. \ Copy the names from your student database into a spreadsheet. Use one column for the students’ names, two columns for exam scores, and one column for the final exam. Add another column for a weighted average of the exam scores and the final exam score.

Print your completed spreadsheet. Also, choose the Options|Display to display formulas and print the spreadsheet with the formulas displayed. Hand in both on paper to your instructor. Save your work on a floppy.

 2. Statistical tools. Using a spreadsheet or a simple statistical analysis package to compute basic statistics on student performance. Displaying data graphically. Using a spreadsheet to create useful and meaningful charts and graphs.

• Readings:

CW, Chapter 10, Section 10.5.
Teaching Mathematics with Technology: Statistics and Graphing. Parker, Janet. (1992) Arithmetic Teacher, 39(8), (on reserve).

• Lab Activity:

Working with the gradebook spreadsheet you created last week, add cells that display the average and the standard deviation for each of the hour exams, the final exam, and the course average. Print your completed spreadsheet. Also, choose Options|Display to display formulas and print the spreadsheet with the formulas displayed. Hand in both on paper to your instructor. Save your work on a floppy.

Using the built-in function VLOOKUP to assign letter grades, A,B,C,D, and F, based on the course average. You may use any criteria you like for setting the breakpoints between letter grades. Use the built-in function COUNT2, add to your gradebook spreadsheet a tally of the number of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s and F’s. Then create a piechart to display the distribution of letter grades. Also, create a line chart that displays the averages for each of the exams. Print your completed spreadsheet. Also, choose Options|Display to display formulas and print the spreadsheet with the formulas displayed. Hand in both on paper to your instructor. Save your work on a floppy.

Week 3- Class 1: Classroom Presentation Hardware and Software. Demonstration and comparison between types of projection systems.

• Readings:

CW, Chapter 12 I

• Lab Activity:

Using the slide show feature of ClarisWorks, create a presentation for Parents’ Night at your school. There should be at least three pages in your presentation. One page should show your chart of the grade distribution of the class averages that you completed earlier.

Week 3- Class 2: Mid-term Exam.
Netiquette, Search Tools, and Newsgroups. Review of concepts of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Searching on the Internet.

• Readings: Murray, Janet, et al. (1995). Searchin’ the Net [On-line]. Available http://arlo.wilsonhs.pps.k12.or.us/search.html
  
• Newsgroups at UD
  udel.general
  udel.bull
  

Lab Activity: Choose a topic to search for on the Web and the Newsgroups. Use one subject index and at least two search engines to conduct your search. Report on your search describing what you were searching for, comparing the approaches used with each of the tools, and the results with each tool. NOTE: Try this for an assignment you really have for a class. The results will be more meaningful if you have a real task at hand.

• Readings:

University of Delaware. (1996) Responsible Computing: A Student Manual. [On-line]. Available http://www.udel.edu/eileen/Ecce/toc.html

• Lab Activity:

Subscribe to two or three listservs pertaining to education and follow them for at least a week. Report on each of the listservs detailing how you subscribed, what topics were covered, what kind of traffic was generated, and whether the discussions were useful. When you have finished with this assignment, remember to unsubscribe if you are not going to follow the list.

Look here for more information about listservs and searching the web for topics pertaining to education.

Week 4: Creating World Wide Web Pages

1. Creating a Web page, Part I.
Using the Web page authoring tools in Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0 to create a page that uses a variety of text styles and includes in-line images.
Anchors and links.

• Readings:

UD brochure on creating a Web page (to be released in September). This will be distributed in class.

• Lab Activity:

Using the standard UD policies for creating and publishing Web pages, create a Web page and send the URL to your instructor. The page must contain the following elements: title, heading 1, text, an image, a list (ordered or unordered), links to useful materials, and a link to enable other users to send e-mail to you.

• Your page should contain a series of links that will be useful to your study of education

2. Creating a Web page, Part II. Using audio and video in multimedia presentations and on the Web.

• Readings:

ITML, Chapter 8.

Lecture Notes

• Lab Activity:

Either using a MAC in the WHL 203-I classroom or a Windows PC in the WHL 309 classroom, capture a short audio narration. If necessary, use an audio editing tool appropriate to your chosen platform and convert your audio file to a format suitable for use in a Web page. Copy your audio file to your Web page directory on the central Unix system and add a link to it in your homepage.

See the Web Pages

Week 5: Classroom Management and Support

1. Integrated Learning Systems.

• Readings:
  
  Integrated Learning Systems: What Does the Research Say. (1995) Warburg, Karin. The Computing Teacher, 22(5), (on reserve)

Can Integrated Instructional Technology Transform the Classroom?(1995) VanDusen, Lani. M. & Worthed, Blaine R. Educational Leadership, 53(2), (on reserve)

• Lab Activity:

Sometime before the next class meeting, visit the exhibition of ILSs that is available in the Willard Hall Building. Complete the checklist of features of ILSs for each system being shown.

2. Technology tools for traditional and alternative assessment strategies. View video on the Sunburst Learner Profile system. Demonstration of test generation software.

• Readings:

Portfolio Assessment and High Technology User Handbook. (1992) UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation. [On-line] Available http://www.cse.ucla.edu/Products/ACOT.html

Touching the Mind: Technology and Assessment. (1994) Jenkins,Yolanda L. The Computing Teacher, 21(6), (on reserve)

Technology-Supported Assessment Portfolios. (1994) Barrett, Helen C. The Computing Teacher, 21(6) (on reserve)

Portfolio Assessment in Mathematics: Lessons from the Field. (1994) Johnson, Judi M. The Computing Teacher, 21(6) (on reserve)