Contrast the issues of privacy and filtering when using the web in the classroom. What are the responsibilities of a teacher in each of these areas?

It is necessary and important for people to make rules for the web-using in education area which is also a way of protecting children. Many parents and educators concern that if we leave full freedom for children getting online, some inappropriate content will harm them because they do not have enough life experiences and cannot judge what wrong from right. However, parents and educators cannot totally forbid them using internet either because it could offer powerful help with children’s study. Considering this situation, many IT companies developed some kinds of software through which parents can filter inappropriate websites and just allow their children get on some “regular” web sites. In fact, regarding the use of internet, people do not only worry about what I talked above. Generally speaking, they are concerning three issues – acceptable use, privacy protecting, and content filtering (Teaching and learning with technology, Judy lever-Duffy and Jean B. McDonald, 2007, p303).
Acceptable use
Everything has two sides, internet brings us numerous useful information, however, at the same time it is also a way of delivering “bad” information, such as violence and pornography. Different people have different standards of this. In order to protect students, all the schools have their own AUP (acceptable use policy) about using internet. Normally, parents are asked to understand AUP clearly and teachers as well. Teachers have the responsibilities to make sure that the website they provide to their students are safe, that is, the content in the webs they provided is permitted by the AUP in the schools or school districts.
Privacy
Using internet in teaching is not only to get information or to search for information, sometimes teachers may want to create websites or blogs for their classes. The purpose of doing this is to offer a platform for students and teachers to communicate after schools. A teacher may want to post some students’ work as samples for the rest of the class or doing something like this. But students’ private information, such as images, names, address, and grades should not be included. And also permissions from their parents or guardians are needed. In fact, any information about the students that can be used to identify the students or may cause any harm to them or may affect any aspects of their lives are all not supposed to be released. Almost all the schools in the US have these kinds of policies to guild their educators how to protect students privacy not only online but also in the real world. In my opinions, educators should also tell their students to protect their classmates’ privacy.
Filtering
Internet is a virtual world which is parallel with our real world, so nobody can control the internet as well as nobody can control our real world, either. Thus, it is normal that inappropriate content is included in some website. As I said above that some parents have some control over their computers at home to avoid their children from getting on some inappropriate websites. The same thing at school, educators have the responsibility to make sure that the internet accesses on campuses are “safe”, that is students cannot access to some websites which do not fit them. Like some parents did at home, that filter software is needed on campuses. Although there are disagreements at this point because issues of freedom of speech are sometimes invoked when filtering software is used, I still agree that schools should try their best to keep children away from anything that could affect them in bad ways.

What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication? Name and describe the internet communication tools that fall into each cate

Asynchronous communication means that communication that can occur at different times that are convenient to the participants, so students’ schedules do not impede communications. This kind of communication includes email, mail list (listserv), and discussion. Let’s talk about email first. Electronic mail which is commonly called Email is becoming more and more popular to the internet users. It is offered by the ISP (internet service provider), the ISPs normally have servers and they set some space from their servers as email space. Internet users can access their servers through the internet, and they are allowed to register an account on their servers. These accounts are just like the mail boxes in real life. And each account comes with a pass word which is very similar to the key to a mailbox in real life. If an email user want to open his or her email box, he or she just need to access the sever and input the account name and pass word. As soon as the users get into their email accounts, they can read, delete, send, and/or even print emails. They can check their email as long as they can access the server in which their email accounts are. If the users do not have time to check their emails, the emails will stay in the server until they delete them. So this kind of communication is not synchronized. By the way, an email user can send one email to a group at one time, and also a group of people can subscribe to a certain email address and thereafter whenever they send email is going to everyone in the listserv (also called mail list). Email address is like youaccount@severname.net (or .com, or .org, etc).Second, discussion is another kind of asynchronous communication. Normally, the ISPs offer some space to the users to post some questions or information that allow other people to comment on or discuss about. Users can set the discussion anonymously or only open to a certain group of people. Or user can set the discussion to be private or public.
According to the book, the most popular email is Microsoft Outlook tools, however, I do not think so. The most popular email should be internet email that offered by some websites, such as yahoo, goggle, or others. And the most popular discussion types are BBS (bulletin board system), Facebook, ect. In fact, nowadays discussion can be both asynchronous and synchronous.

Synchronous communication means that communication that occurs at the same time, that is, the communicators should be online at the same time so that the communication can occur. This kind of communication includes chats and videoconferencing. Chats are offered by some ISPs and some internet sites that set aside a space in which two or more people can meet at a real time online. They can post what they want to say on the server which will be seen by everyone in that chatting group. This is like people talk together in the real life. Furthermore, ISPs provide chat rooms for people to have a private chat. And also there is another form of chat, called instant messaging (IM); this is a one-to-one chat that can be started whenever another user is online. The videoconferencing is very popular recently, which was from the idea that text, graphics can be delivered through internet, so can live voice and video images be as well. This kind of technology is becoming more advanced today. It is used very widely in business.

All these kinds of communication are used in education nowadays. For example, email is a very important tool for teachers now. Normally, students in one class will have an email list and they can discuss questions or share information. Teacher can also use email list to inform students assignments or reminder them to submit assignments. And also teachers can answer questions through email after class if necessary. Discuss board is also a good board to discuss questions and chat room offers more opportunities to have some private communication. Students can even find a study partner outside of the class, the school, or even outside of the country. I do not think videoconferencing is used a lot in classrooms in nowadays, however, it will be more powerful in the future in education area.

What are authoring system? How are they used for teaching and learning?

After reading Chapter 5 last week, we all know the advantages of using administrative software as a tool to make you more productive as a teacher. We did improve the effectiveness with the help of all these kinds of software. In fact, there are also other kinds of software which can help educators, as well as students, in teaching and learning process. Academic softwares, such as authoring systems, Desktop Publishing, Graphics Software, are some good examples. As we explored before that learning styles are different from individual to individual, so educator should vary their teaching methods to meet all the learning styles for different individuals. It is necessary for the educators to create their own instructional multimedia lessons to accomadate the students in their classes. Authoring systems can help teachers to realize this.
We often talk about some kinds of software, such as Hypercard, Hyperstudio, Powerpoint, they are all called authoring systems. Especially, the powerpoint software is becoming more and more welcome to the users for its easy use and powerful effectiveness. Generally speaking, authoring systems include programs that create computer–based customized multimedia lessons and those that create lessons for presentation online. Authoring systems range from easy-to-use software to robust but more complex software that can create commercial–looking programs. A series of jumps or links are created for giving the students choices to move through the learning experiences in their own unique ways. All the software is supposed to help both teachers and students organize and present lessons, projects, or reports to the class.
Authoring systems were designed to create in-class presentation. With the development of WWW in education area, most companies modified their software to emerge with the HTML, which is a popular language used widely in developing website. So educators can also use authoring systems to design their own lessons and display them online. In this way, students can approach the lecture through the internet at home. It is very easy for teachers to transfer their lessons into HTML format, for most of the situations the users just need to click a button and computers will take care of the rest. The internet browsers can translate the HTML data into computer display. Furthermore, internet authoring software shares many kinds of tools and features of hypermedia authoring software.
As I mentioned above in this article, it is very easy to learn how to use software to support both teaching and learning. Many teachers and students can even figure out how to use the authoring systems by themselves. Authoring systems are used very widely in recent days. Especially, they can help the educators to customize academic lessons to meet different needs form all kinds of learners.

What are the characteristics of today’s students? In what way do they differ from traditional students? What new strategies should educators apply?

With the development of science and technology, life is changing very quickly. In fact, not only did the life change, but also human being itself. Because it is true that “each generation is defined by its life experiences, giving rise to different attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities” (Boomers and Gen-Xers Millennials, by Diana Oblinger, 2003). We are living in a changing world and different things happen in different times, so different generations have different experiences. For example, the “Depression generation” experienced Word War Two and The Cold War. “Baby Boomers” grew up with the space race, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and Watergate. “Generation X” saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of AIDS and the Web (Boomers and Gen-Xers Millennials, by Diana Oblinger, 2003). All the things happening around today’s students are totally different from the other generations. As it stated that “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.” (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001). They have their own characters! That is, today’s new students are different from the traditional students.
Then what are the differences and what are their characters?
Today’s students have not only just changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001). In fact, there is a singularity event which changes things very fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. That is the arrival and rapid dissemination of the digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001). The current students from PK to college are the first generations that grow with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Computer games, email, the Internet, Cell Phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001). So if we look at the today’s educators and administrators in school, it is not surprising to find that they are far behind the students. These people who are teaching the students today are called Digital Immigrants. So there is the problem: Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001). In fact, I think there are also dozens of other problems which are similar with this or totally different with this problem that listed above.
So we can solve the problem - Reconsidering both methodology and content.
First, today’s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. But this does not mean changing the meaning of what is important, or of good thinking skills. It does mean going faster, less step-by-step, more in paraless, with more random access, among other things (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001). Students are always in the center of any styles of education and find the best and different ways to fit different students are the educators’ duty.
Second, to the traditional content, such as reading and writing which are called legacy content, is still important, but it is from a different era. Some of it will still be important, but some of it will be less so, as did Latin and Greek. How about the content-future content? This future content includes digital and technological knowledge, it is increasing to today’s class. Educators need to think about how to teach both traditional and future content. (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, by Marc Prensky, 2001).
What is the result?
If the educators really want to reach today’s students, they will have to change themselves first to succeed in the long run.