Prohaska+FInal+Reflection



Please feel free to download the original Word document:

Stephanie Prohaska EDET 650: Internship in Educational Technology Final Reflection Paper December 6, 2010

My internship was conducted at Nolensville Elementary School to create a website on Internet safety. The project stemmed from a need found at the end of the school year to help parents find resources to support their children’s Internet usage at home. After conducting my needs and subject analysis, by surveying parents and teachers, I found that many parents were concerned about the increased usage in the home and the insurance that they were staying safe in the online environment. They did not know what research or resources were available for them online, most often for free.

During my analysis phase, I did extensive research on Internet safety and the role it needs to play for parents, students and teachers. By reading and evaluating current research for my annotated bibliography, I was able to help determine what would need to be included in the website and how I would format the site. An interesting research artifact that I found along the process was entitled //A better safety net: It’s time to get smart about online safety,// by A. Collier. The author explains that currently, teaching of Internet safety is a “one-size-fits-all” model and new research needs to be conducted so that students are not seen as the “victims,” but active participants in learning things that are relevant to what they are actually doing on the Internet. I used this research to help me as I was trying to sort between the plethora of information on the web that could be useful for parents and students in terms of online safety. I needed to ensure that the resources I decided to use for the website would teach and inform students in a fun and interesting way, along with helping parents see that children need to be taught Internet safety in a relevant manner. The information needs to show students that there are inappropriate things online and bad people sometimes, but first and foremost, if they know how to protect themselves, they will be seen less as a victim and more as a pro-active agent in their safety.

Another challenge along with trying to ensure that the resources I picked were relevant, I needed to figure out how to determine what other resources would be important to pick. This was a challenge because there is so much information on the Internet for parents and students. I learned that in order to do this, I needed to come up with a checklist of what I was looking for in certain sites. I even found a site that would give out free manipulatives to teachers and parents that can be used in the classroom or at home. One site, NetSmartz, even included a CD that could be used to play games and interactively teach about Internet safety. After I determined the resources I wanted to use, an important step to my process of creating the site for the design phase was to create a storyboard. I found that this really helped me to get the foundation for the site designed before I started using Dreamweaver. I also then could see the layout of the site and what was not actually needed on the site. This was a very helpful tool and I would do it again on another design process.

Another success I had along the way that originated from a challenge was the use of my own domain name. Originally, I was going to design the sites and then have the web master for our school, another teacher, upload them to the server. However, since I used a CSS for accessibility, as we learned in Technology for Diverse Populations with Dr. Wissick. However, due to difficultly uploading, and the need for my own domain name eventually anyway, I thought that the Internship would be a great time to develop the skills to upload and develop my own site. Therefore I researched about the different types of sites, based upon cost, user friendliness, and amount of space available. I discovered ipage, a very user friendly and cost efficient site. I then was able to upload my site on my own name and then easily send the link out to parents, teachers and students. I also was then able to easily disseminate my evaluation process through a link to a survey on the site. By being able to continually control the uploading to my site, I can instantly update it without having to create new versions and send them to the Webmaster.

In the Management of Technology Resources class with Dr. Senn, the group project I completed with my group was about creating a Moodle course for K-5 elementary teachers to learn the new Internet safety standards that teachers are required to teach in South Carolina Elementary schools. This project was similar to my internship in the fact that it was about teaching Internet safety, however, this was from the perspective of teachers and my internship was for parents and students. However, teachers can use the safe search engines page that I added to my site. It was interesting to see the difference in mindset I now have thinking that parents can also be an important influence in the online safety education of students. Before, I was a big proponent of ensuring that Internet safety is taught in schools. That was feasible in South Carolina, where computer class is still a related art in Elementary school. Here in Tennessee, computer class is not a related art and the only way students get interactions on the computer and Internet is if the classroom teacher takes them to the computer lab to use them. This is interesting because, due to strict academic standards, Internet safety and computer usage cannot be taught as much. Now, I really believe that if parents want to keep their students safe online in the home environment, they have to be pro-active and teach about Internet safety at home.

My interactions with my mentor and my colleagues were a big success of this project. I feel that the opportunity to get their feedback along the way about what was useful and not useful about the site was very positive. It also helped me to bridge relationships with them since this is my first year at the school. I also feel like I was able to help my principal with a task that he would otherwise had to do on his own. Another positive interaction I had in relationship to this project was at the Tennessee Educational Technology Conference in Nashville, TN. Troy and I presented on reaching the needs of diverse learners through technology using universal design for learning and Web 2.0 tools, and being at the conference gave me the opportunity to discuss Internet safety with teachers and technology professionals from my area. Because the standards about what Internet safety information needs to be taught in the classroom is different in Tennessee than in South Carolina and Pennsylvania where I have taught previously, it was very important to me to find out the current information in order to help teachers in the classroom. Through my job as an inclusion teacher, I am in the general education classrooms often and can help teachers when it comes to teaching about the Internet and online safety. A major part of my research was going through the iSafe curriculum and determining what parents could use at home and what individuals had to pay for. One of the stipulations from my principal’s school board contact was that it could not cost any money for parents to use.

One thing I would do differently next time is to determine at the beginning what CSS design I was going to use. I switched half way through because I thought that my first design was not as “professional.” I wanted a professional, yet interesting, site that parents would feel was a credible source. Because I decided late in the project to host my own site, I could have had the site “live” for a longer period of time as well, and possibly gotten some more feedback from parents and colleagues about the information.

I am very glad that I completed the project on Internet safety for my internship and believe it is a useful asset to our school. The web site is definitely something that I will continue to add to in the future, especially as more resources become available to teach Internet safety and help parents and students stay safe online. This is an important topic and one that needs to be discussed in the classroom and at home!