Course Requirements
EDUC 439/639: Google Sites in Education
This course is all about figuring out how you will decide to use Google Sites based on the principles of how people learn. Thus, the course requirements revolve around you and the nature of the framework you adopt based on how you believe people learn. Google is changing the world by making it possible for everyone to create Web content instead of only consume it. Anyone can get a free Google account and author Web pages publicly available on the Internet. Google gadgets enable you to embed on these pages a wide variety of media including word processed documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photo libraries, and videos. Google tools enable you to create announcements to which users can subscribe, file cabinets from which users can download documents, and lists to keep track of the status of things. Many schools are adopting Google for their email, document sharing, and web authoring. There is no charge for schools or the general public. Making this free for schools is part of Google's brilliant business plan because Google eventually makes its money when students are hired by companies that pay for these services, and google also profits considerably from the ads that users can choose to put on their pages if the user wants to monetize their site. In this course, you learn how to harness these powerful tools to improve education in four important ways. First, you learn how to create a well designed website that can increase home-school communication. Second, you understand how students can use these tools to create webs that demonstrate student learning. Third, you use multimedia to establish an authentic context for learning that makes your lessons more engaging. Fourth, you experience how teaching students to author makes their thinking visible, thereby enabling you to do a more effective job of diagnosing where they struggle and providing the scaffolding they need in order to succeed.
Participants will be expected to spend at least twelve hours per week studying articles and tutorials, practicing Google Sites authoring techniques, and working on projects.
In the sidebar is a list of the specific assignments and how much they count toward your grade in the course. You can think of these assignments as consisting of three major parts, each of which counts for a third of your grade. The design and implementation of a Google project site will constitute one-third of the final grade; online class participation will count another third; and your blogs will constitute the final third. All students must make effective use of the course discussion forum to communicate with your fellow classmates and your professor. Students will keep track of their projects by logging their progress in blogs that the instructor will visit periodically to review and comment.
Assignment #1: Goal Statement
Your first assignment is to state the reasons why you enrolled in this course and what you hope to accomplish by taking it. If you have only a general idea of why you chose to enroll in this course, go ahead and describe your goals in general terms. If you have more specific goals in mind, please enumerate them. I will use this information to help advise you and guide you through the appropriate course materials.
Assignment #2: E-mail Registration
In response to the e-mail registration assignment in your online course environment, you tell your course instructor what is your e-mail address. Yes, there is an e-mail address on file for you here at the University of Delaware, but just in case I need to contact you about something related to this course, I want to make sure I have a good working e-mail address. Being able to reach you when I need to is so important that I am giving you 5 points for telling me: What is your e-mail address?
Assignment #3: Discussion Forum
Every student in this class is required to participate actively in the course discussion forum. To enter the discussion forum, log on to the course and choose the Discussions option. One of the first messages you write in the forum should inform your fellow classmates about the nature of the project you are hoping to create. The forum is an excellent place to network with your fellow students and form teams in which you can work together to create your projects.
Assignment #4: Cool Tool Wiki
This course has a wiki that you can enter by following the link to Wiki after logging on to your online course. In this wiki, we want you to write a message in which you share with your fellow classmates the coolest tool you discovered while taking this course. On your page in the wiki, tell us the Web address of your cool tool, and describe the reasons why you think this tool is cool. In addition to creating new pages, the wiki also enables you to modify or add to submissions made by your classmates. If you have more information about a tool submitted by one of your classmates, for example, you can select the option to edit that page and add your own thoughts. Through this process of having every member of this course contributing to the wiki, we develop a shared knowledge base of cool tools and best practices for using them.
Assignment #5: Blog Checkpoint #1
This is your first checkpoint for submitting project logs to be reviewed by your instructor. You submit your logs by writing in the Blogger that you will find in your tools menu after logging on to your online course. In your blog, please write about the contributions you made so far toward accomplishing your project's goals. You may also write about problems your project encountered and tell how you plan to solve them. The deadline for submitting this log is flexible, but in general, you should try to submit it about one third of the way through the course.
Assignment #6: Blog Checkpoint #2
This is your second checkpoint for submitting project logs to be reviewed by your instructor. In your blog, write about the contributions you made toward accomplishing your project's goals, and describe any problems your project encountered and tell how you plan to solve them. The deadline for submitting this log is flexible, but in general, you should try to submit it about two thirds of the way through the course.
Assignment #7: Blog Checkpoint #3
This is your third and final checkpoint for submitting project logs to be reviewed by your instructor. In your blog, write about the contributions you made toward accomplishing your project's goals, and describe any problems your project encountered and tell how you plan to solve them. The deadline for submitting this log is flexible, but in general, you should try to submit it during the final third of the course.
Assignment #8: Google Sites Project
Final versions of Google Sites projects must be mounted on the Web for Dr. Hofstetter to review and grade. As mentioned in the course preamble, the purpose of your site is to demonstrate the manner in which you have decided to use the various Google tools and gadgets.
Assignment #9: Course Evaluation
Your final assignment in this course is to evaluate it. Toward the end of the course, you will receive an email from the School of Education sent to your udel.edu email address. This email tells you when the course evaluation window is open. You must log on to the course evaluation system within this window of time. The Web address of the course evaluation system is www.udel.edu/course-evals. After you complete the course evaluation, your instructor will give you credit for completing it. The responses you give are completely anonymous. While your instructor will be able to see the ratings and comments, it is impossible for your instructor to identify the person who gave a certain rating or made a given comment. Once you complete the evaluation, your grade on this assignment will be an automatic A.
