Week+5+-+Feb+8

** Introduction to Smart board: **There was a brief introduction to smart board. I haven't used them but I feel they have changed the class room learning to more student oriented. The mathematics tools and diagrams help students in better understanding the concepts. I attended the Cyber bullying presentation on1st of February 2010. Various places where cyber bullying can happen include: 
 *  Discussion on Cyber-bullying: ** New mandate that came up on 1st Feb 2010.
 * Emails
 * Chat rooms
 * Instant messaging
 * SMS
 * websites (anonymous postings)
 * and the list is endless with growing awareness and use of technology...

The Canadian website on cyberbullying lists some very interesting facts ( [|Cyberbullying] ). Increasing percentage of students/adults have easy access to internet, cellphones, etc and SMS, MMS and instant messaging are quite common among students.According to this website about 60% of the Canadian students use chat rooms or instant messaging. At the presentation, we were given a handout that had list of acronyms used for online messaging/chats etc. Reading through them, I felt I was reading some other language. This list is growing and I personally feel, it's important as parents/guardians to be aware of these acronyms as it can be very helpful. Some of these acronyms are:

2L8 -Too late AFK -Away from keyboard ASL Age, sex, location? ASLP -Age, sex, location, picture? F2F -Face to face LTR -Long term relationship MMA -Meet me at ... MMAMP -Meet me at my place POS -Parent over shoulder TMI -Too much information

More acronyms can be found at the cyber-bullying website as well.


 * //Ontario's Anti-Bullying law//** came into effect on 1st Feb 2010. This requires all school staff to report serious student incidents (including bullying) to the principal. This report is in writing and could affect students by leading to their suspension or expulsion. Principals must contact the parents of victims.

Cyber bullying is a serious problem that negatively affects the school atmosphere. This is another form of violence that is increasing day by day. For the students who are victims, it can have severe consequences. The possible anonymity when it comes to bullying and the exponential rate at which the word can spread in the cyber space needs some drastic measures to control the damage it can inflict to students. M ** ovie-maker examples **: Some of the student works that we saw were exemplar. The creativity, focus and idea connection are important for the completion of this assignment. In my practicum, I had the opportunity to work in communications Technology course and it was interesting to see it from the perspective of a teacher. I give myself a 1 for my creativity and innovative ideas (even 1 is over estimated here). Even with my practicum experience where I saw students had to be reminded of class room rules and procedures again and again, it was not easy as teacher to keep them on the task. Sometimes, the group work added to the damage when students took every opportunity to be outside the classroom to click pictures or shoot videos but in the end the results weren't very encouraging. I believe using movie maker is a very strong tool in developing the skill set for students in the courses aimed to put them in the work force or even in the university or college courses. These days, having knowledge of any additional software can help in unexpected ways. In my teaching, I would use this at some point: may be in the lessons on optics or ecosystem and come up with some interesting story. I have seen videos by Bill Nye (The science guy) and almost every video is in the form of story where atoms, molecules, laws etc seem to come into life and students absolutely love these stories. Information presented to them in this format stays with them for long long time. So movie maker is a very useful tool for the teachers. **Digital Assessment and Evaluation tools:**  Assessment and evaluation has evolved a lot over years. I was reading somewhere that the knowledge has changed so much in past hundred years but the way we assess (standardized tests) are still in century old format. I found the article quite convincing as it makes sense that if we change evaluation, the corresponding change in the assessment (or testing) is also required. The current use of Level (1-4) as indicated by Ministry of Education has its own contradictions. I feel teachers who have been so used to number grade tend to follow the same format for the Levels. Exploring some of the teacher resources on various websites, I came across grade like 3-, 3, 3+, 4-, 4, 4+, 4++ etc. I still don't understand what 4++ actually means? I feel it's better to stick to the grades mentioned by the ministry instead of modifying them to something that takes the evaluation back to old format.

In our class, we also used **//MARKBOOK.//** Some of the important features in this software were email (when email is to be sent to all the parents. It can be difficult to manually add each email address.), Seating Plan (important when school year starts, as well as when there is a supply teacher coming in. It's also handy for the teacher to play around and adjust seating whenever appropriate in the class.). Marks of the students, different weightage, inserting comments as well as looking at the progress trend can be very useful.

I have used **//Rubistar//** during my practicum to create rubrics. I found it extremely convenient as it is sometimes not easy to come up with various sections and the different levels to mark. Rubistar has templates for different subject areas as well as for different kind of assignments like lab reports, Research articles etc.

University of Ottawa uses Turnitin to check for plagiarism.
 * Turnitin: ** This is the first time I became aware of this existing software that check for plagiarism. The convenience of peer evaluation and teacher marking online are important features. Because this software tells you what percentage of the student assignment was plagiarized, it can help justify the teacher comments which I feel is the most challenging task for the teacher.

Smart Board Tutorials ([|Smart board Tutorials] ) Cyber bullying ( __Cyber bullying__ ) Turnitin ([|Turnitin] ) Rubistar ([|Rubistar] )
 * Resources:**