iWeb-based portfolio

• Apple iWeb and Ball State iWeb
  Apple iWeb is the web creation tool in Apple iLife applications. Ball State iWeb is the web space hosting your digital portfolio or other sites you create.
  
• Why Apple iWeb for digital portfolio?
  A WYSIWYG web design application, Apple iWeb offers a variety of templates and powerful built-in features that allow users to easily create professional-look websites.
  
• Get started with your portfolio construction
  
  • Get VPN, Fetch, and your Ball State iWeb account ready
    
  • Planning your website
    
  • Open iWeb, create a site folder (File>New Site and then choose a template)
  • Rename the site to "Home" (Ctrl click on "Site" and choose "Rename")
  • Rename the page under "Home" to "Index"
  • File>New Page if you need to add more web pages
  • Create another site and call it "INTASC_Principles," create an Index page and 10 principle pages. Copy and paste the text of the principles to each page and change the title accordingly.
  • Create a site called Artifacts, and add several pages for your artifacts.
  • You may start adding your rationale/reflection to INTASC and artifacts pages, and connecting artifacts to the INTASC principles.
    
  • Make navigation bars and/or hyperlinks that allow you to navigate from one page to another
  • When it's done, File>Publish to a Folder, make sure you save it to a right folder (usually a "Sites" folder under the "little house" icon on the sidebar of the Finder window)
    
  • Open VPN, Fetch, and publish your site to your Ball State iWeb server by drag and drop all the files in your "Sites" folder into Fetch window (before you do this, make sure you don't have anything important that has already in your Ball State iWeb space. You don't want to overwrite it.)
    
  • Your BSU iweb URL will be:
    http://yourusername.iweb.bsu.edu
    The default page it opens on the Internet will be the Index page, or whichever page located on the top of the sidebar of your iWeb design window.
    
• Here are two screen casts created by Dr. Clausen
  
  • Publish iWeb site to a folder
  • Essential iWeb files to back up
• FAQ
  Click here for some frequently asked questions
  Click here for some troubleshooting skills
  

Tech support for EDSEC150 class

1. Apple laptop in education
   
   • Ubiquitous computing
   • Requirement for Teacher Education students
     
   • Apple education
     
2. Ball State IT environment
   
   • Content Management System: from Vignette to Sitecore
     
   • Course Management System: Blackboard
   • Assessment System: rGrade, Gradebook
   • Security: VPN, AntiVirus
     
   • Web Publishing: iWeb, FrontPage, Netscape, Fetch
   • Online Storage: iLocker, iWeb
   • Social networking: iConnect
   • Student Information Management System (Main Frame)
     
3. What you should know about your Mac laptop
   
   • Mac101
   • Mac Learning Center
     
   • iLife Suite: iWeb, iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand
     
4. Where shall I go for help/training
   
   • iCare Corner (TC lobby)
   • Portfolio Lab (TC 709)
   • iStudio (TC 406) (see my work schedule here)
   • Online training: ElementK, TechClips, Other
     
5. Q & A
   

BSU Teacher Education IT Environment

Ball State Teachers College requires all teacher educator students to use Apple laptops. Here is the rationale (retrieved from Teachers College website)

1. Why Laptops in Teacher Education?

• Access to computing in all contexts of the academic experience. Teacher education majors are a mobile group. They need access to computing in their courses, at home, and in the field experiences, which includes their student teaching.
• Control of one's own computing destiny. A laptop is one's personal information infrastructure. All their course work, from documents to very large video files, can be taken wherever they need it. Students will be in charge of their own infrastructure and will grow in technology competence because of it.
• Customized uses in teacher education coursework. Various courses in the teacher education program require unique uses of computers. Laptops give faculty and students the freedom to experiment with computing and to explore how it affects teaching and learning without the confines of a stationary lab.
• For further exploration. Many teacher education programs around the country are requiring laptops in teacher education. Through the BSU PT3 project, we have already been experimenting with laptop use in teacher education courses. It is also a trend in K-12 schools for which there are many benefits.

2. Why a Requirement for Laptops?

• Digital portfolios. All teacher education majors are now required to produce a digital, Web-based portfolio to represent their competence with teaching and learning. To better facilitate this in university instruction, faculty need to be assured that all of their students have the best tools to complete the portfolio work in university classrooms and at home.
• All students on equal footing. Our goal is to saturate the teacher education program with advanced computing and to make sure that all students have the same opportunities. This recommendation assures faculty that no student is left out.
• Support and infrastructure. With a large number of laptop-owning students, we can leverage the size of the BSU teacher education program to specialized support services and better information systems design. Computer vendors can design specialized support services knowing they have a fixed number of purchases per year. BSU can negotiate better deals on the purchase price when working with one vendor. We are also tuning our information infrastructure to take advantage of the anticipated critical mass of students who bring to class a state-of-the-art computer.
• Promote technology competency in the teaching profession. With each teacher education major owning a laptop, Ball State University makes clear it believes that computers are an indispensable tool for teachers. The sooner teachers take ownership of this idea—physical and professional—the sooner they can influence how children learn with computers.

3. Why Apple Macintosh Computers?

• Lower cost. With its built-in Firewire ports, iSight camera, and integrated wireless card, the MacBook is $300-$1000 less expensive than similarly equipped laptops from other vendors.
• Tuned for digital media. Digital media is revolutionizing how teachers represent learning and how they design their teaching. The features that the MacBook and MacBook Pro possess are exactly what future teachers need to be exploring: digital video (via iMovie and iDVD), digital imaging (via iPhoto), and advanced Web publishing (via OS X and WebDAV servers on the BSU campus).
• Form factor. The size and structure of the MacBook and MacBook Pro are designed for the physical rigors of university life. These laptops are small enough to fit on a lecture desk yet they possess a bright, easy-to read display. They have all the connections most commonly used (networking, peripheral ports, microphone, speakers, camera, etc.) built in, so no cards or additional devices are needed.
• Wireless connectivity. Apple was the first computer manufacturer to integrate wireless (802.11b/g/n) networking into their product line. Without any configuration needed, students can access the Internet from anywhere on Ball State's wireless campus.
• Apple's strengths in teacher education and K-12 schools. Apple's history in education dates back to the early 1980s, when they sponsored the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) Project, which was a 10-year study of teacher practice with computers. ACOT is still considered the most important, long-term study of teaching and learning with computers. Apple "gets" teacher education and K-12 computing. Their solutions are designed for professionals in these areas.
• Internet and industry standards. With the newest Macintosh operating system, OS X, Apple has leveraged the industry-standard Unix operating system to its easy-to-use Macintosh user interface. The result is an incredibly powerful and open-source platform with which software developers can freely design new applications. Also, OS X will run the tens of thousands of educational applications that already exist in K-12 schools.

For more information about Apple's philosophy on laptops in teacher education, see:
www.apple.com/education

For more information about Apple's philosophy on laptops in education, see:
www.apple.com/education/products/macbook/

For more information about Apple's initiatives on technology in teacher education, see:
www.apple.com/education/hed/coe/

ICTs: Considerations of current practice (1)

Smolin, L., & Lawless, K. (2007). Technologies in schools: Stimulating a dialogue. In L. Smolin, K. Lawless, & N. Burbules (Eds.). (2007). Information and communication technologies: Considerations of current practice for teachers and teacher educators (pp. 1-10). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

The volume will examine the gap between the promise of technology and its current reality in schools. It is written for classroom teachers and teacher educators, because it is through these two groups in particular that this gap can be closed. Authors identify the issues, the problematics, and the considerations that teachers and teacher educators should consider as they plan and implement uses of ICT with their students in mind, and address the integration of technology in school curriculums, as well as afterschool programs, instructional technology, professional development, information literacy, and the philosophical and pedogogical concerns associated with technology.

Tech in schools: Stimulating a dialogue (p. 1)

While new ICTs have afforded new opportunities to improve efficiency, exponentially increase access to info, and expand the notion of global citizenship, they have also caused many researchers and educators to rethink what it means to be literate in this post-typographic world (Leu & Kinzer, 2000).

Early pressure for integrating tech in schools came from contexts external to the school-most notably from the business sector (Scott, Cole, & Engel, 1992)...But because business and school contexts are quite distinct, technology became added to the school curriculum rather than integrated within it.

Although tech was being used within classrooms, it was still employed as a separate productivity tool, often replicating older forms of info transfer...However, tech can be more than a tool. It can also be a medium for reshaping the way in which we access info, communicate with one another, and learn in school.

Tech-based reform is esp. challenging because it is a multifaceted endeavor:

• Multiple professional communities: different professionals representing different discourse communities (Computer scientists, researchers, school administrators, teachers)
• Multiple theoretical perspectives
  a. Sociocultural: learning as a social practice through which the learner plays a central role (Vygotsky, 1978; Wells, 1999; Wenger, 1999)
  b. Curriculum studies: what is important for students to understand and be able to do (Bruner, 2004; Wraga, 2002) as well as the role tech should play in 21st-century learning
  c. Teacher education: importance of preparing teachers to implement technology (Pellegrino, Goldman, Berthenthal, & Lawless, in this volume, p. 52)
• Multiple strategies
  Technology is often poorly integrated with other classroom activities (Gewertz, 2007). Rather than using technology to transform classroom pedagogies and engae students in a knowledge-based world, it if often used to merely replicate the traditional curriculum (Cuban et al., 2001) - A gap between the promise of ICT and its current reality in classrooms. We are neither harnessing the power of technology nor appropriately leveraging it to meet the needs of 21st-century students.
  Dialog across multiple groups, perspectives, and domains is key to successful reform efforts in the future.

4 themes toward using ICT for transformative purposes

• Tech in and out of school: students use tech more outside school than in (Gewertz, 2007 & Mark Prensky, in Gewertz)
• Policy making: influence on how tech is used in schools (Haertel, Means, & Penuel, in this volume)
• Diversity (digital divide): The varied tech experiences of teachers and students (Jones' chapter); Students' cultural diversity
• Teacher development
  

References

• Bruner, J. (2004). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
• Coiro, J. Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D. J. (in press). Handbook of research on new literacies. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Cuban, L., Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. (2001). High access and low use of technologies in high school classrooms: Explaining an apparent paradox. American Educational Research Journal, 38 (4), 813-834.
• Gewertz, C. (2007, March 29). Outside interests: Young people typically plug in to new technology far more often on their own time than in school. Education Week, Technology Counts 2007. Retrieved October 6, 2007, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/29/30tcstudent.h26.html
• Leu, D. J., Jr., & Kinzer, C. K. (2000). The convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication. Reading Research Quarterly, 35 (1), 132-141.
• Scott, T., Cole, M., & Engel, M. (1992). Computers and education: A cultural constructivist perspective. Review of Research in Education, 10, 191-251.
• Vygotsgy, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Toward a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Wraga, W. (2002). Recovering curriculum practice: Continuing the conversations. Educational Researcher, 31 (6), 17-19.