Gorlewski+Final+Report


 * Final Reflection **

A.C. Flora has the highest number of homebound students compared to all the other schools in the Richland County School District One. While most courses can be taught with a homebound teacher, sending reading and writing assignments using the course textbook, there are some courses that are difficult to teach using the current homebound system. Homebound students enrolled in visual arts courses, for example, seem to struggle with the content, concepts, and techniques because they do not get the same instruction as the students in the classroom. The visual arts courses rarely use textbooks and are primarily performance and project based. The homebound teacher usually lacks the knowledge needed to teach the homebound students the techniques and concepts that are needed to successfully complete the assigned projects.

Year after year, I have had so many homebound students that have failed, not because of a lack of ability, but rather the system fails to give them what they need to succeed. There always seemed to be a lack of communication between the homebound student, the homebound teacher and me. Because of this, what needed to be provided to the student was not, and the student would eventually stop trying to complete their visual art course work. While I may not have the capability of changing this failing system, I felt I could impact the way the visual arts content is delivered to these homebound students. I decided I could create a tool that would cut out the middle man and increase communication between me and my homebound students. Courses are taught online, which made me believe that I could develop a website that could act as an online or hybrid course. The website could have all the resources they need in order to be successful in their visual arts course. They could also have a way of directly communicating with me, instead of sending a message with their homebound teacher. I believe that having instant access to the proper tools, such as examples and demonstrations, along with instant communication with their instructor will truly increase the achievement of my homebound students in visual arts courses.

While I intend to create websites for all the courses in the Visual Arts program at A.C. Flora, I decided to start with one course that would reach the greatest amount of my students, which is Ceramics. I currently have 77 ceramic students, two being homebound at this current time. However, I will have usually between 5-10 ceramic students that will be put on homebound during the course of the year, ranging anywhere from two weeks or several months.

I decided to use Dreamweaver to create the website instead of using a wiki. I felt I had more freedom with Dreamweaver, and I also wanted more experience with building a ‘traditional’ website. I also wanted more experience with the FTP process as well. Because it was going to be such a large site, with many images and videos, I decided to purchase my own domain name (floraceramics.com) and server space at GoDaddy.com. This was very exciting, however there were some bumps along the way. I was taught in EDET 703 to name my files a particular way, using capitals at the beginning of each word, such as GorlewskiPicture. This created a problem since my server space was on a Linux server, which is case sensitive. Therefore, when I went to my site, I could not see my files. The GoDaddy help desk was able to help me solve my problems with the index page, and I now know not to save my files this way. Unfortunately, half of my HTML files have been saved this way. Since they can be viewed, I decided to keep them they way they are and just learn from the experience.

After purchasing my own domain and uploading my data to the server, I decided to check the site at my school. This is when I discovered that the site was blocked. I put in a ticket to have it unblocked. Much to my dismay, the IT department will not unblock the site. Their reasoning is that the district pays for eChalk for all the teachers to use, and therefore that is what they want us to use. They do not want us to create our own websites. This was a major disappointment, and I still am frustrated about the blocking. The district changes what it offers the teachers on a yearly basis. One year we will have eChalk, the next year we will have Sharpschool. It is frustrating to put all your information up and not have it the next year. Many teachers are using wikis because of this very problem. I think for the future sites, I will use wikispaces instead. There is no way of knowing if wikispaces will be blocked in the future. Since teachers need to know what a wiki is for the state technology assessment, I am guessing that wikis are less likely to be blocked. Although my site is blocked at my school, my homebound students are still able to view it, which was the first intended audience. Therefore, I kept on working and building my site.

In order to teach my homebound students the ceramics techniques and processes, I thought it was necessary to video tape demonstrations of every technique and process. Therefore, I spent hours demonstrating and recording video tape. I produced all the videos and I felt like I had accomplished a great deal. After viewing all the videos, which took about as long as it did to film them, I knew my job wasn’t even close to being complete. Some of the videos were nearly 45 minutes long, which even I had a hard time sitting through. Not only that but they were such large files, it took them hours to upload to the server. After reading an article by Gainsburg and discussing my issue with Dr. Smyth, I decided my videos needed some format changes. In an article about using amateur video to help pre-service teachers to learn student-centered teaching, Gainsburg edited video footage to 15 minute segments (Gainsburg, 2009). Keeping the segments short helps to keep the learners focused. Also, since the video segments can only be so long, only the most important elements can be included. Gainsburg (2009) found that “using these video segments were invaluable” (p. 171) and was much more beneficial than commercial videos. Therefore, although there are many professional videos available on the web demonstrating the same processes, perhaps by shortening my videos and making them more intimate, they may be more beneficial to my students. In order to shorten the videos, I took stills of the videos and put them in a video using MovieMaker. Some techniques do not have a video illustrating the process, but a tutorial page which gives stills of the steps and written instructions for each step.

One of the biggest missing elements in the current homebound system is communication. Because of this, I decided to incorporate a wiki into the tool. I decided to create a communication wiki, where students and the instructor can communicate back and forth with ease. Wiki is a web 2.0 tool that can be used by everyone, as they are fairly easy to navigate and also free. As Matthew and Felvegi (2009) state, “Research, discussions, and reflections start in the classroom can continue online” (p.1) using the wiki tool, which makes it an excellent tool for my homebound students. Students can post comments, questions, and discussions online where other students and the instructor can also add comments, as well as give feedback and advice. I do believe that the communication wiki has great potential and I hope to implement it more in the near future. I am currently having issues with my homebound students feeling comfortable using the wiki. The two students I have currently are very nervous about joining the wiki, let alone contributing to it. I am currently still trying to figure out how to break this barrier.

In order to break the technology barrier with my homebound students, I decided to research studies on improving student attitudes and confidence towards technology. Donnell studied the relationship between faculty attitudes and student attitudes towards technology. Based on this study, it can be concluded that “the more faculty members like computers, the more students like computers” (Donnell, 2009, p. 15). Teachers that model confidence and appropriate use of technology will impact how the students perceive technology. According to Greener (20), “what teachers say and do in their face to face classes has always had a major impact on not only what is learned, but how it is learned” (p. 1). Based on this, I wish there was a way I could have modeled how to use a wiki prior to my students being put on homebound. I do have Jing videos available for the students to learn how to use a wiki, but this has not been successful thus far. My next step might be making it a mandatory assignment to sign up and post a comment on the communication wiki. However, I am nervous about doing this for a couple reasons. They are sick and already under a lot of stress. I don’t want to make a wiki assignment that will further stress them out. Also, forcing technology use, especially when there is no one around to help, can cause an even stronger dislike for technology. I don’t want to increase the anxiety level. For now, I plan on asking the homebound teacher to mention it on occasion, just to keep encouraging, instead of forcing.

My next task to conquer was the images portion of my site, which was a rather large task. I originally decided to use images that were my own, some student work, as well as images from the internet. Once I had enough images, I edited them and embedded them. I was proud and felt I had accomplished something. There was this lingering question that I had in the back of my mind the entire time I was working on this portion of the site. Am I abiding by the copyright policy? I decided it was time to do more research on copyright. I found several articles about copyright, one by Hobbs, Jaszi, and Aufderheide which was not helpful at all. It only outlined the misconceptions, but did not clarify what was acceptable and what was not. The article by Vaughn, Webster, Case, Givler, and Adler was just as confusing as the law itself. The best article or source I found was whatiscopyright.org. This site was able to answer all my questions. It also opened up a whole new set of problems. As soon as I put a copyright symbol and date on my site, I am claiming that all the work and images are mine. This was not the case. I decided I had to take down all the images I retrieved from the internet. This left a lot of empty holes in my site that needed to be filled, but I felt better having holes that risking a lawsuit. After deleting all the images, I decided I needed to generate more images for the site. Therefore, I found more student images and took more of my own work as well. The image portion of the site will probably never be complete. I will constantly be adding and changing the images as I make more work as well as my students.

While I felt better about deleting the images that were not mine, I still was not sure what to do about the student images. I had two choices: label them with the student’s name or label them with ‘Student example’. I felt like leaving out the name of the student might be another copyright violation, yet putting up the student’s name without permission might be violating the FERPA law. My understanding of FERPA was minimal, so I decided it was time to research again. According to Eggert, directory information, such as the student’s name, can not be posted in a public domain unless given permission prior (2005). While this is fine for my current students, it causes some difficulty with my prior students. To avoid any FERPA violations, I decided to label the student work with a general ‘student example’ label. If a student sees his/her artwork on my site and would like me to label it with his/her name, I would gladly change it.

As I added the copyright symbol and date to my site, I felt I needed a disclaimer statement and perhaps a copyright statement as well. However, I had no idea what a disclaimer or copyright statement should say. I went to various websites and looked at their disclaimer and copyright statements, but it was all written in legal jargon. This is perhaps where I may have cut some corners. I googled “disclaimer statement” and it led me to Websitetips.com. This site includes sample disclaimer and copyright statements that can be saved and personalized. I decided to copy and personalize the statements, with some hesitation of course. I felt weird (and still do) about copying a statement about copyright. I did cite my source and gave credit to author at the bottom of both statement pages, which makes me feel a little better.

Looking at the website as it is finished, I feel that I accomplished what I intended to. I created a site that is not only a useful educational tool and resource, but it is also aesthetically pleasing. Both of these traits are very important to me as an art teacher. Tasks that I thought were going to be challenging, such as creating and embedding online quizzes, were actually very simple. I was amazed at how easy the FTP process is, once everything is set up correctly anyway. I also gained the experience I felt I needed with Dreamweaver. Using the split screen works wonders, and I am amazed at how knowing a little bit about HTML code can really help when things aren’t doing what you want them to do. It made me grateful for the HTML assignment from EDET 703.

As I begin to think about the future, I know there will be some changes I will make. I will definitely use some other format, such as wiki. I would like to research other tools that could possibly be used as well, such as Ning, Moodle, and Elluminate. Ning and other tools were used by North Carolina State University in their first distance education visual arts studio course. This course also utilized Voicethread so the students could leave voice commentary, instead of just written commentary. The fact that a university was able to successfully implement a visual arts studio course completely online makes me believe I can reach my homebound students. Just as I did for this internship, I intend to keep researching and building the website until it reaches its fullest potential, or until all my homebound students have earned A’s, whichever comes first.