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NYSED Goal 1: Accessible Digital Content

July 29, 2009 in Policies, Technology | 3 comments

The NYSED Technology Plan’s first goal addresses digital content:

Standards-based, accessible digital content supports all curricula for all learners.

Accessible is defined as: content available anywhere, easy to retrieve using multiple technology devices, and content is universally designed. Aligning digital content to the New York State learning standards is how we will ensure quality and relevance in the PreK-12 environment.

Learners and practitioners both need access to rich digital media. Alignment with standards help make appropriate content more easily accessed by all.

New York has moved in this direction already through the auspices of state public broadcasting stations. EDVideoOnline is a portal to PowerMediaPlus which provides teachers with access to downloadable video, audio, and images for use with their students. They also include worksheets and quizzes.

Unfortunately, this is a subset of what was available in the past. When I started using this program, it included full access to the Discovery Education library. Public stations scaled back the program to the current offerings. They said too few were using it to justify the expense. I didn’t see a lot of teachers using it either, but those who did were excited about it.

Beyond PowerMediaPlus and Discovery Education, New York needs go further in digitizing and providing access to its own holdings. New York museums and libraries hold a treasure trove of material. Some institutions have done a great job digitizing materials and providing access, while others have done little.

I hope this means access to more content in the future. Access to a broader audience is also essential. While everyone can access some of the material, students are shut out of PowerMediaPlus. This repository could provided a wealth of content for independent study, exploration, and working on assignments.

Access to digital content also encompasses licensing. Let me relate my own experience. I have spent countless hours creating media rich presentations for delivering engaging social studies lessons for my class. They include historical documents, images, maps, and embedded digital video. Under fair use, there is no question that I was legally using these materials for my own classroom.

I thought it would be great to share these materials with other practitioners throughout the state (and ideally beyond), so I contacted PowerMediaPlus about doing such. In essence, they replied that there was no way I could do such legally.

We need to be able share what we create with this digital media with other learners and practitioners. They need to be able to reuse and remix that work to adapt it to their individual needs. NYSED should explore Creative Commons Licensing for content that is state owned and that of state funded institutions. They need to negotiate for means to more broadly share the content they pay for through entities such as PowerMediaPlus. Further, it needs to create a platform to facilitate such sharing.

In conclusion, there is more to digital content than availability. There needs to be access and the ability to remix it and share with others.

I will continue a discussion of New York State’s Educational Technology Plan in future posts, including a discussion of each of the six broad goals. I look forward to hearing your comments.

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Who will teach them social networking safety?

October 27, 2008 in Policies, Social Networking, Technology | 6 comments

Will Richardson expressed exasperation with a school leader in a recent post as he tried to blame parents for student misbehavior on FaceBook or MySpace. He proposed the schools need to play a big role:

There is a solution to this, one that we all know, but one that for some reason few seem willing to implement other than in the guise of a “parent awareness night” or some type of scary Internet predator presentation by a state policeman. For the life of me, I can’t understand what is so hard about opening up the first and second and third grade curriculum and find ways to integrate these skills and literacies in a systemic way. If you want kids to be educated about these tools and environments, then maybe we should, um, educate them.

He suggests that we not just talk to them about the dangers of the Internet and social networking, rather we integrate these tools in an age appropriate way from an early age.

As I posted earlier, using social networking is valuable for teaching Internet safety. These new literacies are the reality of our kids’ world and future. They are not going to disappear. Like the books we read, they can be used for good or evil. We need to harness these technologies for learning and promote their use as positive forces.

While parents should play a role, many simply do not understand these technologies. Congress has just passed a bill mandating instruction of social networking safety and cyberbullying. Since we must do it, we should do it in a way that is real and relevant, and in a way that teaches new literacies while harnessing their potential.

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New bill mandates social networking safety instruction

October 20, 2008 in Policies, Social Networking, Technology | 2 comments

New legislation passed unanimously by the US Senate and headed for the President’s desk mandates schools to provide instruction about safety on social networking sites. The language was appended to S.1492 bill Broadband Data Improvement. While the thrust of the bill is improving broadband Internet access to Americans, SubTitle A: Promoting a Safe Internet for Children includes :

(iii) as part of its Internet safety policy is educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response.

What better way to teach them than to use social networking software in instruction, rather than lecture them about online perils? A closed environment monitored by teachers would give students real life practice in a safer environment. It would add relevance and authenticity to instruction. Discussion of appropriate online behavior prior to actually using social networking software would have a positive impact on student learning and is more likely to have a lasting effect on student online behavior. Mistakes would have lesser repercussions than on a site open to the world at large. They could be powerful teachable moments.

I plan to use this to bolster my case for the use of social networking software in our school. What impact do you think this may have on schools and their potential use of social software?

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K12 Elgg Security

October 19, 2008 in Elgg, Policies, RSS, Social Networking, Technology, open source | 6 comments

Elgg 1.1 is arriving soon. The project is maturing with more plugins and themes becoming available. It’s time to plan for deployment in the K12 environment. I have been mulling over several special issues in deploying Elgg in a K12 public school setting. I invite you to join the K12 Elgg group on the Elgg Community Website. I am also considering Web publishing and educational technology issues in my Educational Technology Policy Site. Policies need to be in place for working with Elgg and other Web 2.0 applications.

The first thing we need to consider is security. In our situation we will need to have a walled garden. Our school requires anything that is open to the world on the Internet be moderated. Since we cannot moderate in the Elgg environment, all content will have to be kept in house.

The Walled Garden plugin from the Elgg developers does much of what we will need. It disables registration so that  any user accounts must be created by the admin. This prevents outsiders from registering and gaining access to student content. It falls short in a couple ways. As configured, users can choose to make content available to the public under the access controls. In addition RSS feeds could allow outsiders to view content if they obtained the appropriate urls.

In response to my concerns expressed in the K12 Elgg area of the Elgg community, Dave Tosh offered some solutions. He pointed to engine/lib/access.php as the place to eliminate the “Public” option. Students will only be able to select permissions for access to people within the site: private, logged in users, or any collections of friends. I plan on creating a plugin offering this functionality soon leaving the core intact for easy upgrading.

With RSS feeds, Dave suggested that I eliminate the options to subscribe to an RSS Feed and Syndicate OpenDD from the owner’s block menu, then delete RSS and and OpenDD views in the views directory.

Dave is looking into administrative options to toggle public access OpneDD and RSS feeds from the administrative interface. I think this is a good idea that will make it more appealing to the K12 audience out-of-the-box.

If we allow students to work in Elgg without moderation, we need a way to monitor what the students are doing so that they are accountable for their behavior on the site.

Elgg offers several tools to this end. There is the log browser with the ability to refine the results by username and by start/end dates. As admins, we can click on a user’s avatar menu and explore their log. There is also the user option to report content to the administrator.

Use of the log options require active searching and the logs have a lot of entries not related to content. Are there ways to filter out some of the non-content related noise making it easier to monitor students? Would it be possible to create plugins to make this process easier?

These are just a couple areas of concern that I will need to address with school administration and tech committee before deploying Elgg. I hope to have answers to the questions that I know I will face. I’d like to hear what others have to say about these matters. Please comment!

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Moderation and Student Blogging

October 9, 2008 in Blogging, Policies, Technology | No comments

Karen Fasimpaur and I have been discussing student blogging recently as we are mulling similar issues.  She just posted a request for comments on her thoughts regarding moderation and student blogging.

She posed her main question: Should all student blogging be moderated? My answer is: It depends. Let’s look at some of the issues raised:

I am really conflicted about this. I believe strongly in the benefits of student blogging. I think that if blogging is done in a closed (non-public) environment, it isn’t really blogging and doesn’t have the benefits of writing for an authentic audience.

I agree that blogging done in a closed environment isn’t nearly as beneficial as publishing to the world at large. This is a separate issue from moderation. Indeed, in many settings, the only way you could allow students to publish to the open Internet is by having the posts and comments moderated. Policy makers are more likely to object to students publishing to the world at large if they are unmoderated.

In general, I think that teaching students to be responsible is a far better approach than trying to block or filter everything that might be dangerous. We should more time talking about 21st century skills and how to act prudently in the world that is out there.

I can’t argue with any of this. Unfortunately, we face the reality of filtering. I think it is a lazy approach, but that’s way it is. We must make a case for what we know is right, yet work within our constraints.

Also when making a district-level decision about blogging policy, the feelings of the administration, board, and community need to be considered. Or do they? Is this a cop-out? This has been keeping me up nights.

When we are using school and community resources, we have an obligation go beyond the feelings of the administration, board, and community. We need to have policies formulated by stakeholders and approved by the school board which represents the community. To proceed without doing so is risky.

We also must consider that when blogging from a school website, what students post represents the school–not just the individual. This could become a source of community objections putting the whole enterprise in jeopardy.

One of the most important stakeholders are the parents. How do they feel about all this? Before we ask them to sign a document, we need to do our best to educate them about the importance and benefits of creating an on-line presence and navigating the Internet. Risks and benefits need to be put in realistic perspective and fears may need to be dispelled. We want them on side. It may mean compromise.

There are options regarding moderation and range of audience. We need to find a shade of gray that works for all. Different settings may be needed for different students for any variety of reasons.

Here is another option. Perhaps students and parents that prefer unmoderated blogs could be allowed to create their blogs in another acceptable setting. This may allay fears about student mayhem on the school’s website, yet allow those preferring more freedom another choice.

Decisions regarding moderation depends on many factors. With a wide array of options it is not a matter of black or white.

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Security Matrix: WordPressMU

August 16, 2008 in Blogging, Policies, Technology, wordpress | 3 comments

In my previous post about Web publishing security, I proposed the following security matrix:

While this is an oversimplification of the options, I think it gives a framework for making decisions on what web publishing software to deploy, when to deploy it as well as how. As an illustration of how this framework can be used and the potential complexity, we will examine the popular multiple blog platform WordPress MU. Another reason is that we have deployed WPMU in the past and there has been some debate about how it should be used if it should be used at all.

Out of the box, WPMU has two options for access to content: Open to the world and open, but blocking search engines and archivers. It has four options for moderation: Unmoderated, Posts only moderated, comments only moderated, and both posts and comments moderated. With WPMU, then, our matrix looks like this:

As one can see, there are already eight potential options in terms of access to publishing and content. While all the content can be accessed by anyone in the world through both choices, blocking search engines and archivers would significantly reduce access unless one has a link, or goes to the site directly.

WPMU has a plugin that I discussed in an earlier post called More Security Options. This plugin offers three more content access options: Community members (all users with accounts on the WPMU installation), Blog (People who are at least subscribers of an individual blog), and Administrators (only the administrators of an individual blog). The security matrix with this plugin appears:

There are now 20 options in terms of publishing and content access! Arguable, there are even more. For example one could choose to allow unmoderated comments, but restrict comments to logged in members of a blog. Clearly there is enough flexibility in WPMU to accommodate a wide range of Web Publishing Policies.

It is up to school tech committees to consider the ramifications of all of these options in terms of security, audience, and ownership and weigh the pros and cons of each before committing to a particular configuration. Teachers can then decide within the constraints of the school web publishing policy which option best suits their class. Publishing student content to the web is not simply as choice of yes or no. There are several shades of gray. These are not the only considerations and options for deploying this software. For further discussion, refer to my other posts about WPMU for more information on managing and securing the software.

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Posh admin controls appropriate for K12 use

August 11, 2008 in Social Networking, Technology, open source | No comments

Out of the box, the open source portal Posh has administrative controls that make it appropriate for use in a K-12 school setting. An administrator can set the portal so that one must be logged in to view content. In addition, it may be set up so that any feeds must be moderated. By default, visitors cannot register an account. An administrator must create any accounts.

To force a log in to view content, and administrator needs to go to the configuration tab, then select “General Settings.” Simply check the option Portaneo starts with: login screen as indicated below:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Also of note on this page is the ability to use pseudonyms as opposed to email addresses. This is handy for teachers with students without email addresses.

By default, users can subscribe to any feed that they want. This may not be acceptable for a school setting. This is also easily changed. Again click the Configuration tab when logged in as an admin, then select “Personalize the users’ interface menus.” Simply uncheck “Users can add RSS feeds in their pages” and all feeds that students want to add must be submitted a widget and as such subject to administrative approval.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

As you can see, Posh is simple to secure for use in the K12 school setting. On another note, Posh 2.0 is due to be released this month. I look forward to further refinements to the user interface as well as new features. This tool is definitely appropriate for school use.

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Web 2.0 Student Safety

August 10, 2008 in Policies, Technology | No comments

I’ve been wracking my brains trying to formulate a comprehensive web policy for my PK-12 school. There are boiler-plates out there, but most don’t get into the subtlety and nuance of various new technologies. In my previous post It’s got to play in Peoria, I discussed some rationale for integrating Web 2.0 into our instruction. I also outlined some strategies for enhancing student safety: moderation and keeping access to published material limited.

The options I mention can be best displayed on this grid:

Moderated and unmoderated refer to control over publication of content. In a moderated environment, a student may submit something for publication that must be approved by an adult in terms of policy, appropriateness, and content, before it is actually published. Unmoderated means that the student can publish without approval.

Moderation has impact other than security, it affects the ownership that the creator has over the content.

When content is moderated, the user must wait for someone else has viewed and approved what they have done. This can delay the display of the materials resulting in less user satisfaction and reduces spontaneity. Students feel less ownership and empowerment.

Public and private represent an oversimplification of access to the content. At one end of the spectrum what is published is available to the world at large, including search engines and archives. On the other end, whatever is published can only be viewed by the creator.

The choices have consequences beyond security. They also impact the creator’s sense of audience.

Audience is an important motivation to create. It also makes the creator more mindful of quality. A volunteer working after school with a student told me how he wanted to show off his blog and how much more motivated he was to do a writing assignment because of it. Another very poor writer found her voice and the skills fell into place. Others just wrote more. A wider audience also increases opportunity for collaboration.  Private access, while safer, limits the audience and conteracts the benefits.

If access is further controlled by putting the data on an intranet rather than the Internet it is even safer. It may, depending upon how it is configured limits the students’ access to the content to the school setting making it unavailable from home and other places outside school.

These are a few parameters in web publishing policy that one might consider for student web publishing, as well as their consequences. Again, as we will see in future posts, these matrices represent gross over simplifications and that these dichotomies are more realistically represented with shades of gray.

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It’s got to play in Peoria

July 22, 2008 in Policies, Technology | 3 comments

If you are reading this, you are probably already aware of and excited by the possibilities of Web 2.0 in education. You are probably already sold. But what about the people in our K-12 community: other teachers, administrators, parents, tech committees, and school boards? Mention social networking on the Internet, and they think of is the latest scandalous material that any one of out local teens has posted on MySpace. Blogs are places where people post outrageous materials followed by flame wars in the comments.

Web 2.0 enthusiasts in K-12 settings are often faced with a tough sell. Community members are rightfully concerned about safety and security. Like it or not, we must address these fears and understand that what we do must be in accordance to what is acceptable in the community–like it or not.

First, we need to let them know why this important and valuable. Whether they like it or not, Web 2.0 will be, if it isn’t already part of the children’s lives. My fifth grade student told me that her older sister set up a MySpace page for her. I know her sister, and I’ve heard about her antics on MySpace: very inappropriate, if not dangerous materials and cyberbullying. I guarantee that my fifth grader was not told about safety, privacy, and what is appropriate to post online.

That’s our job. When I was in school, we actually had lessons on safety and etiquette on the telephone. We talk about fire and bicycle safety as a matter of state mandate. It is more dangerous to ignore and avoid Web 2.0 than it is to teach about it and apply it in a safe educational manner.

Furthermore, higher education and many employers expect a certain level of expertise among our students. A few months ago, a recent graduate told me her professor told them to make a webpage as part of the course. When the students protested that they didn’t know how, he told them to find out. More courses are on-line or have on-line components. Students need to know how to blog, collaborate on a wiki, and participate on a discussion forum. It goes without saying that any technological knowledge opens doors to employment opportunities.

One approach I have used to help reassure stakeholders regarding student safety is the use of moderation. In our school website and student blogs, nothing appears on the wide open Internet until it is approved and published by a responsible adult. The litmus test for any web application used to publish to the Internet at large is that it must have a moderation mechanism allowing somebody to act as a gatekeeper. What is allowed to be published must meet the standards of the school community. I’ll talk about that more in a future blog post.

Another approach is a “walled garden” in which access to any materials is password protected. Students may publish freely within this closed community, but are held to account by adults overseeing the site. Students must know the rules and expectations. Adults need to be vigilant, intervene, and remediate when something unacceptable is posted. Students might do something wrong, but education and discussion will minimize such occurrences. One advantage to using a web application for this is that there is greater accountability. You can tell who posted what and when, rather than a “he said, she said” scenario common to physical schools.

For greatest safety, one can combine the moderation with a walled community. Nothing is posted without approval, and that which is posted is has an audience limited to the class or some other appropriate limited audience.

These measures often require you to host and configure software in your own district. Odds are you will not find free hosted solutions that meet these requirements (not to mention the privacy concerns of handing student information off to third parties).

These restrictions may fly in the face of the wide open nature of new Internet, but compromise is sometimes necessary if it is going to play in your school community.

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