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Week 8: February 25
 
 

This Week's
Hot Topic

Peer-to-Peer Networks, Ethics, and Equity

One of the hot topics this week has to do with an old idea with new application - Peer-to-Peer networks (P2P). 

P2Ps have been around for as long as 2 computers have been able to be hooked together to share files and programs (a long time).  However, new developments in this arena have brought it to the forefront again and boy is it hot!  P2P networks such as Napster have been making news for years.  There are a variety of P2P designs that are coming on to the market as competition for Napster as well as for corporate solutions for collaborations. 

As with most technology, ethical and equity issues arise when a new tool is created that can be used for good as well as evil (kind of strong but hopefully you get my drift).  Ethical and equity issues arise all the time when new tools are created.  In the world of science and technology, ethical issues have never been hotter.  Issues such as cloning, artificial intelligence, and others arise as science and technology advance and the possibilities of such capabilities become realized.  In the field of Instructional Technology, ethical and equity issues have been around in the form of copyright issues for a long time.  With the advent of the Internet and other tools, these issues have never been more complex.

This week we are going to take a look at P2Ps and the ethical issues that surround them and then take a broader view of several ethical and equity issues that are hot right now.

 

 
 
  1-Alarm Drill

Peer-to-Peer Networks (P2P)

Know much about P2P?  What is it?  How does it work?  What is it good for? If not, I bet you have at least heard of Napster, famous for music swapping and its law suit with the RIAA.  If you have at least heard of Napster or kind of know what it did then you have some idea of what one P2P design is like? There are many types of applications that consider themselves to be P2P.  Some would consider the web sites that house discussions that you post to a P2P network where everyone freely shares information.  Other applications include Kazaa and Groove to name a few.  To learn more

read the following chapters in your text:

  • Chapter 35
  • Chapter 36
  • Chapter 37
  • Chapter 38

and check out the following links:

Drill

Learn what you can about P2P networks (using the links above or doing your own search) and then consider some of the copyright and ethical issues that seem to crop up (and are noted in many of the above sites) in relation to this type of network in its current form. 

Post to the listserv a paragraph that discusses 3 things you learned about P2P and your views about these tools in relation to copyright or other ethical issues. Identify what role if any P2P networks might play in your home, work, or school setting.

 
 
  2-Alarm Drill

Ethical and Equity Issues in Instructional Technology

There are a plethora of ethical and equity issues within the field if Instructional Technology that have implications for educators and  IT professionals as well as just about anybody that surfs the Net and posts a web page of their own.

Within the arena of ethical issues are:

  1. The use of computing machinery, software, and the Internet to willfully commit unethical acts. [Examples include computer theft, fraud, sabotage, intellectual property violations (copyright), records manipulation, and so on.]
  2. Applications of computing machinery, software, and the Internet that may have unethical consequences. (Examples include children gaining access to sexually explicit materials on the Internet, employee monitoring in the workplace, and inaccurate financial data and records.)
  3. Ethical concerns that are epiphenomenal to the diffusion of computing technology. (Examples include the lack of equitable access to computers, erosions of privacy and individual control over personal information, the growing centralization of power and authority by information-intense institutions.)
    [Taken from: http://www.ncisse.org/]

The last item above interweaves ethical issues with equity issues.  Equity issues may include unequal access or opportunity to computers and other technology by anyone.  Some of the most frequently mentioned groups in relation to unequal access include :

  • females
  • those in rural or inner city areas
  • disadvantaged, low socioeconomic
  • minorities
  • people with disabilities

Below I have listed a variety of web sites that provide further reading on these and many other ethical and equity issues.  While you may be familiar with copyright you may be surprised at some of the things you will read.  You can be sued for even putting a link on your web page to another web site! Some equity issues (often termed the Digital Divide) may be familiar to you such as the longstanding gap between males and females and technology-related careers, but others you may not have thought of yet.  As you will embark on creating your own web site in a few weeks, it might behoove you to see how to make sure your web site is Bobby compliant.  Bobby what, you say? Check out the links below to find out more.

Computer Ethics in General

Copyright

Equity Issues

Digital Divide

Access for People with Disabilities

Drill

Pick 2 of the issues above to focus on and read more about them through links provided on the sites above or through your own search on that issue.  In the threaded discussion, post a paragraph or two about EACH issue.  For EACH issue,

  • summarize what you have learned about this issue,

  • including any statistics or facts that you found that were relevant or interesting,

  • describing at least one grant, project, web site, program, etc. that is working towards addressing the issue

  • and providing your own personal reflection of how this issue may or may not relate to you

  • include any relevant urls you used in your post

You may post each issue separately or post once and include both issues.  When you post, type the issue you are discussing in your subject line.

 

 
 
  3-Alarm Drill

Fire Marshal Badge: Creating a PowerPoint Lesson

Everyone in this class is probably already somewhat familiar with PowerPoint whether you realize it or not! You may have been in a face to face class where PowerPoint was used to deliver a lecture, or you may have seen it used at a professional conference to deliver a presentation. Many people use presentation programs like PowerPoint in business and industry, the military, in higher education, in community colleges, and some in K-12. Most PowerPoint utilization seems to be for adult training sessions and community college and university college teaching. Creating a PowerPoint presentation is very simple! The difficulty, and reason why I think more don't use PowerPoint is because they think they must have an expensive projection system!

In our on-campus courses, we use projection systems that connect directly to our laptop computers. In some of our classrooms, we have instructor bunkers that have a secure computer connected to a projection system  mounted on the ceiling. All we do is use the remote to establish the connection from the computer to the projection system. We take it for granted! When we do presentations or go to conferences, we have a portable projection system and laptop that we take to conduct our presentations. For us it is always accessible! For most, however, the luxury of having a projection system mounted to the ceiling or having a portable with a laptop doesn't exist!  In that case, there are three simple recommendations:

1. Use PowerPoint with small groups of students gathered around a large monitor. For early elementary this works fine! Students are comfortable with gathering around or sitting on the floor while the teacher guides the instruction.

2. Create PowerPoint presentations like we have done where you tape what you want and students sit at computer workstations to view. If you are working on a network or on single workstations, you would select the Record Narration feature and audio tape what you wanted students to hear and see!

In some online courses I teach, I use the record narration feature within PowerPoint to record the sound, Real Presenter to translate it to the web, and then play it through Real Player. Actually, not too difficult! Real Presenter costs about $40, Real Player is downloadable, and PowerPoint is around $30 (on State Contract)! 

3. Purchase an inexpensive computer to TV connection device that will connect your computer directly to a TV monitor.  The device translates the binary code (the 0101010) that are digital on your computer and converts it to analog that  is readable by your TV set. The cost for these devices is usually less than $200. In many K-12 schools that I visit I see this option used most frequently.  Most schools have TVs already which makes this an affordable option.

A useful thing about PowerPoint for instructors is that you are able to make your slides and then print them out in a variety of formats to give handouts and note pages to students.  Another thing you can do is create slide notes for yourself to use when you present - you can type in your notes to yourself about what you will say on each slide.  You can also place your PowerPoint presentation on the web for others to download or view.  An example of a PowerPoint presentation on the web is linked below:

If you will notice, this simply provides the slides but not really the content of the presentation.  The content is usually what the presenter provides from his/her slide notes during the live presentation.  Or, the presenter can narrate the slides, convert them into RealPresenter format, and then have others download and listen to it.

I imagine that most of you have PowerPoint either in your Microsoft Office Suite at home or work.  If not you will need to work from a computer either at school (all UWF labs have PowerPoint) or elsewhere that has PowerPoint on the machine.

If you have not used PowerPoint before there are a plethora of online tutorials that can get you started.  The first thing you will need to do is to figure out what version of PowerPoint you have.  The changes made from version to version are not too significant but it could be frustrating if you view a tutorial for a different version than the one you have. You are most likely to have PowerPoint 2000, or PowerPoint 2003 or 2007.  If you want to see the upgrade to 2007, you can see reviews on the microsoft web site.

You can determine the version you have by opening the program from your Start menu.  Once opened, go to the "Help" menu and select "About PowerPoint."  The window that pops up will tell you what version you have.

Once you know your version then you can use one or more of the tutorials listed below to learn more about your version.  Many of these tutorials cover the same topics so I am not asking you to go through all of them.  Pick one that has a format you like and go with it.  If the tutorials seem too boring to you, then I suggest you simply open up PowerPoint and begin fiddling around with it.  There is always the Help menu that can answer questions, etc.  If you have the CDs that came with your PowerPoint or Office Suite program then it likely has a tutorial on it for you to use also.  If all else fails, do a search on the Web for "PowerPoint tutorials" and you will have a very long list to choose from.

Possible tutorials to use:

If you already know PowerPoint then you may want to challenge yourself by looking at the tutorials this person has posted for adding more interactivity to PowerPoint using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) with multipages, text tips, and quizzes.  She has her 10th and 11th graders working on these so I bet you can do it too!

Drill

This drill will be ongoing for the next 2 weeks. This week you need to learn the basics of PowerPoint, choose a topic, and begin working on your slides as outlined below.  Next week you will continue your work with the final product being posted to the web.

For this drill, you will choose a topic from those listed below (or suggest one to me via email for approval) and create a set of PowerPoint presentation slides to use as if you were giving a face-to-face lesson/lecture on this topic to a group of your peers as part of a staff development session.  You should be reading in one of your texts about staff development related to technology and should know the critical role that staff development. In this assignment you are going to combine developing technology skills with application of a basic good principle for leadership in technology - developing staff.

The lesson should be designed to only last about 15-20 minutes so you need to only provide a concentrated amount of information.  The topics below are related to our hot topics for this week or past weeks or ones we will be discussing (if you are ambitious and want to look ahead to some hot topics).  There are many different angles you can come from on any one of these topics - you choose.  For example, if the topic I choose is privacy, I might decide to focus my presentation on encryption techniques only.  Or, if I choose networks as my topic, I might only choose to discuss LANs. Once you look at the requirements below you will see that I have limited the number of slides to make sure you focus on a small portion of information. Given the 2-alarm drill this week, my suggestion would be to combine one of the issues you discuss in that threaded discussion and make a PowerPoint presentation on it (only a suggestion).

The topics include:

  • asynchronous communication tools
  • synchronous communications tools
  • strategies for online learning
  • networks
  • home networks
  • protecting your privacy
  • viruses
  • firewalls
  • file formats and extensions
  • distance learning
  • knowledge management
  • reusable learning objects
  • peer-to-peer networks
  • copyright and the Internet
  • issues of equity in instructional technology (you can pick one and focus on it)
  • ethical issues and computing (you can pick one and focus on it)
  • you may suggest others

Once you choose a topic, create a PowerPoint presentation with a background design and with the following slides:

  • Slide 1: Title slide - provide topic and your name
  • Slide 2: Objective slide - state the purpose of this presentation (tell them what they are going to learn)
  • Slide 3: Review Prior Knowledge/Gain Attention Slide - Provide any background the learner should have before learning about the topic or gain their attention by showing relevance of topic
  • Slides 4-6: Present new information slides -  provide outline of things you will cover
  • Slide 7: Practice/Feedback slide: Ask questions or give a scenario related to the topic for discussion and feedback
  • Slide 8: Conclusion - summarize what they have learned in this presentation and how it may be useful to them

Remember that as you create this presentation you are only creating the slides as an outline (bullets) for your presentation.  Do NOT put all the information you would say in a presentation on the slide.  If you do, you will simply be reading the slides during your presentation (don't you hate when people do that - as if you could not read them yourself :-)

Your goal should be to complete the above items during this week.  If you want to move ahead to items for next week, you should complete the following:

  • Add graphics, animations, sound, video, as appropriate
  • Add speaker notes to the note pages for each slide to use when you are giving this presentation - these should be what the presenter (you) will say to the audience when you are on that particular slide.
  • Create a folder on your C: drive called "powerpointweb" and then save your presentation with the slide notes as a web page to that folder. (more instructions will be given next week if you do not know how to do this)

 
 
   
 
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Now let's take a look at the Chief's
Inspection List for this week!
 
   
 
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  Copyright 2003 by L. K. Curda. All rights reserved. Updated on January 7, 2009