ED 202F Class Notes

Week 3: 4/14/10

I. Tour of Blackboard website.

• Susannah personally works with Blackboard and took us through a

quick tour.

• The homepage shows what is going on across courses, and by

clicking on a course/workshop link you can see specific announcements.

• Susannah allowed us to see the sight from instructor perspective.

• Sections include: assessment system (surveys, quizzes),

discussions, portfolio, videos, audio

II. Discussion Section

• Karen: What changes have you seen in technology systems (ex.

Blackboard) regarding critical literacy? Who is responsible? How can you
get involved? These are now shaping courses, not just supporting them.

• Susannah-has seen that it took Blackboard a long time to change their

interface and feels like there hasn’t been a lot of changes in response to
users.

• Karen-Gaucho space can become a container

• Tory-faculty can become scared of new technology and feel out of their
comfort zone. Do we reinforce systems to make faculty/students more
comfortable? Or do you make radical changes, which might
disenfranchise users?

• Lisa-has used Webct at Northridge and made students post.

• Rebeka-was forced to learn how to use all aspects of Gaucho the first
time she experienced it because it was part of her grade. This
experience gave her skills for other websites. Problem: she can’t go back
and access the site. Professors may fear that they will lose content after
putting so much time into posting it.

• Susannah-has seen faculties fear during workshops. They ask where it is

going, where is will be kept, how long will it be avaialbe, and who can
access it.

 Karen: Federal Educational Records Protection Act

• Privacy act that says after the age of 18 (for most states) your
 health and educational records become private. Problem: What is an
educational record? The law has said the educational record includes
your grades and cannot be released to parents without consent.

• Issue: Does students sharing drafts and grading each other’s

papers break this act? Supreme court decided that reading others
papers is not a violation.

• Issue: Does announcing on Gaucho space who is an official

member of the class violate the act? What is the difference of being in
class?

 Privacy on Gaucho space

• Shaun- having a password makes a difference.

• Karen- you can add visitors. (Showed on Gaucho how much

information professors can see: when you log on, how long you stay,
what participant you look at, what you search for)

• Shaun- privacy of responses. Thoughts become public, but

students are aware of it, knowing it is a collective discourse increased
student awareness.

• Tory- students are willing to share and over share. Example: Form
Spring-people can post anonymous comments and questions.

 Rate My Professor

• Karen- Who owns what? Protection for teachers too. Issue: Does it
affect 10 year? You officially can’t look at those sites when considering a
specific case. You can look at official surveys collected in classes, but
not rate my professor. It is not official record and you don’t know who is
commenting.

• Henny- other colleagues look at RMP ratings.

 Additional Internet Issues

• Susannah- Professors talking about students on their Facebook, or

employers “googling” potential employees.

• Shaun- people losing jobs based on internet conversations

• Karen- appropriate email names. Where does email end up?

• Karen- Sunshine Law. If you are a state employee your documents

are public, including emails. These are examples of critically literacy:
Who is in charge of what? Why?
 Intellectual Property

• Tory- If you publish something on gaucho, does the university

have ownership?

• Karen- if you have used university money, they have certain

percentage of intellectual property.

• Tory- Example. At K-12 she worked for they wanted all teachers to
backup their information on the server and update curriculum map. They
end up using this information even after the teacher leaves.

• Karen- latest issue is can you sell your curriculum on eBay?

• Lisa- intellectual property fear…what are you going to do with it?

Collaboration can make sharing more comfortable.

• Rebekah- What part do they own? What part do you own?

• Karen- need to watch for places you upload photos, most of these
sites claim copyright.

• Rebekah- Example of critical literacy:not being trained to read

clauses.

 Distant Learning

• Henny- When she started teaching with Blackboard at Ventura

college the dean said she owned the class but the current dean is
controlling it in a different way. There is no language in their contracts
about dealing with distant education.

• Karen- this relates to hearing faculty resistance to online system.

How does this save money? Have you thought through what it takes to
get system/course up and running? Figuring out bugs? Getting students
involved and trained? People are afraid that the response will be Master
teacher creating courses one time, and then having T.A. teach the
course in following years.

• Susannah- no mention of support of faculty or students.

• Karen- need to be aware of type of technology that schools are

trying to adopt and pay attention to claims being made. Hybrid is not
cost saving but can enable flexibility. Cost saving to students who live
far away and can ease up classroom space. This is where you see
benefits. Issue: we are putting a lot of effort into teaching course
management. Why aren’t we using the same systems that businesses
use to collaborate? Are we training people on certain types of software?
 • Rebekah- functional literacy, or are we teaching types of
questions?

 Gaucho Space

• Lisa- there is no way on Gaucho space to do collaboration work.

Gaucho has respond format, students are only writing for the teacher,
not each other. Google docs could be better because you could work
together and professor would only see final product.

• Tory- other systems are more constructivist approach, but Gaucho

is behaviorist. On Gaucho there isn’t equal access, more instructor
controlled. You can only contribute as much as you are allowed too. On
Google everyone is equal.

• Shaun- literacy is tied into politics. Are these technologies being

adopted by educational institutions to just train a new generation of
technological clerks? Amount of time and focus taken to learn
technology takes away from other critical thinking.

• Karen- ironic to only teach school systems, not what you use in
work force

• Susannah- the more technologies you learn, the more marketable

you are. Brings illiteracies that allow you to move from metaphor to
metaphor.

• Karen- What is the transferrable skill? We are shutting down

student’s creativity.

 Conclusion

• Karen-showed youtube Search Stories

• Selber book has useful division frameworks, but could be improved with
multimedia examples. The book won’t be as useful in the future because
the examples with be out of date.

III. Announcements

• Next weeks chapters are online

• Looked at websites that show remediation, posted on Gaucho

IV. Activities

 Shaun-Codes and Texting

• Understanding Pig Latin

 • Everything is in context: 4:20, barking (Lassie is barking),

• Gave handout of text abbreviations

• Practice:

-Read Hamlet’s text message

-Shorten Dicken’s text message

-Take text and shorten it, then try to get other group to decode it

 Kara-Critical/Rhetorical Literacy

• www.dontdatehimgirl.com

• Section 230 of the Communication of Decency Act-web

administrator is not responsible for content

• Relates to students being authors on web, form of social action

• Interview of CEO-discussion is only between users, uncensored,

equal access, communication decency act, men can improve
relationship with women