The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Web presence

Hi All, Below is a link to my "web presence. I am not sure if you will be able to open it as I created it through a Penn State blog, and it is restricted to those with a Penn State user ID (which you all should have since you are all students at Penn State). This blog organizes 7 "lessons" revolving around the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which PSU Brandywine has selected as a "one campus, one read" book. The committee has asked all professors to try to incorporate this book into their classes. The activities here ask the students to 1) complete a survey regarding their knowledge of and attitudes about cell research. 2) Read portions of the book and respond via a bog to prompts regarding the role of race, socio-economic status, religion, law and ethics 3) Complete a web using Mindmeister 4) Complete a timeline regarding the six categories listed above in item #2 5) Complete the survey again after reading the entire text.

https://protected.personal.psu.edu/s/a/sam26/blogs/lled10immortallifehenrietta_lacks

Acceptable Use Policy

All students, faculty, staff, employees at Penn State sign to indicate that they have read and agree to the university's acceptable use policy when they are issued their access accounts. Typically, for students this happens during orientation.

My approach this fall will differ somewhat from previous years. It will include three parts. First, I will remind them of this at the start of my class in the fall semester via the following statement which will be attached to my syllabus. Additionally, the statement on academic integrity is required on all syllabi at Penn State Brandywine. I read that and explain it to students on the first day of class. Finally, this year I will require that students complete the online module on academic integrity, plagiarism, and copyright materials provided through Penn State's I-Study site at http://istudy.psu.edu/FirstYearModules/CopyrightPlagiarism/Materials.html

A. In LLED 10 this semester you will be using the internet as a tool to access information, respond to it and thereby create new information. Therefore, it is important for all that you adhere to the acceptable use policies and procedures of Penn State University. These procedures can be found http://guru.psu.edu/policies/AD20.html. Additionally, we will adhere to the National Educational Technology Standards (https://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfmSection=NETS) for fostering appropriate use of information technology. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1) Users will "practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology" by

• complying with all federal, state, and local laws and university policies
• safeguarding the private information (including names, addresses, passwords) of all individuals
• restricting use of data, passwords and access to yourself
• using university accounts for university related activities only
• represent yourself truthfully in all communications

2) Users will "exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity" by

• completing all activities with enthusiasm, diligence, honesty and open-mindedness

3) Users will "demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning" by

• contributing to class and on-line activities
• seeking out and adding relevant information
• questioning and investigating information

4) Users will "exhibit leadership for digital citizenship" by

• adhering to all policies and procedures as defined by the university
• assisting others to also abide by these policies
• practicing, encouraging and fostering responsible use of all sources of information by oneself and others

The above implies and includes conducting yourself at all times according to the academic integrity policies of the university which can be found at

http://www.psu.edu/dept/oue/aappm/G-9.html.

B. "All students are expected to act with civility and personal integrity; respect other students’ dignity, rights and property; and help create and maintain an environment in which all can succeed through the fruits of their own efforts. An environment of academic integrity is requisite to respect for self and others and a civil community.

Academic integrity includes a commitment to not engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Such acts of dishonesty include cheating or copying, plagiarizing, submitting another person’s work as one’s own, using Internet sources without citation, fabricating field data or citations, “ghosting” (i.e. taking or having another take an exam), stealing examinations, tampering with the work of another, facilitating other students’ acts of academic dishonesty, etc.

Students charged with a breach of academic integrity will receive due process and, if the charge is found valid, academic sanctions may range, depending on the severity of the offense, from 0 (zero) for the assignment to F for the course." (from http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/judicial/codeofconduct/)

Any graded work for this course which is found to be copied, stolen, plagiarized, or otherwise represents a breach of the university’s academic integrity policy will receive 0 points.

Blog 4 addendum

Today's (Friday, June 4) Philadelphia Inquirer includes an article regarding whether schools can punish two students in two different schools in western PA for using "home computers and lewd vocabularies . . . ridiculing school principals on the Internet."

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_region/20100604_U_S__appeals_court_considering_teens__Web_cases.html#ixzz0ptakleHz
The issue here is whether the schools can suspend the students for this behavior. It is not an issue of wrongdoing on the part of the two students. Again, we see students posting things on social networking sites believing that the information is private. This reinforces what we've been discussing all along regarding the need to educate students about what they are really doing when they post on these sites.

Blog #4

An "Internet Safety and Security" in my class would depend on which class I am teaching.

If I am developing this for my freshmen college reading improvement students it would align with the ISTE NETS Standards for Students:

1. Acceptable use - including citation (style formats), plagiarism, academic integrity

2. Using technology (blogs, collaborative mapping, authentic projects) to promote responsible learning, collaboration, diversity

3. Personalizing learning and developing lifelong inquiry

4. Appropriate, responsible, academic behavior

These students would be involved in using the internet for sources of information to extend the learning. For example, if in a psychology class they are studying behaviorism, their assignments in my class would have them searching for cites that explained behaviorism. Additionally, they might collaborate with classmates in the same psychology course to develop mind maps (using Mindmeister or similar tools) of information on behaviorism to prepare for a test or presentation. Additionally, as part of this class, I would require that students attend the campus' how-to workshops on research, citation, plagiarism, etc. Finally, I hope to develop in these students the understanding that learning is active, that they must be involved to learn.

On the other hand, if I were developing this for my junior and senior elementary education majors, I would attempt to align with the ISTE NETS standards for teachers.

1. Modeling of appropriate use

2. Incorporation of the use of technology for all students with emphasis on the possibilities for diverse methods of accessing information and presenting information

3. Emphasis on professional cyber behavior

4. Celebrating the diversity of all by having students interact with students in other places

Since my students in these classes are assigned to an elementary classroom for the entire junior year and the first half of the senior year (They student teach during the second half of the senior tear and are in the elementary schools everyday), I would develop projects in my class whereby they would be creating learning experiences for the children in the schools where they are doing their field work. Additionally, as of the class entering as freshmen this fall, all elementary education majors will have their own MAC notebook computers. We are in the process now of developing course work to integrate these into all of the junior and senior courses. In preparation for this I have started and will continue to ask my students to use the internet to develop lessons that they will teach. For example, they each developed a webquest based on something that was part of the curriculum in their field placement classroom. One student developed a webquest revolving around Cinderella stories that included culture from the clothing (glass slipper, golden sandal, beaded moccasin) that the characters wore, the prince (chief, pharaoh), etc. She also incorporated "google earth" so students could see places featured in each Cinderella story (France, China, Appalachia, Egypt, etc). Using this she developed both geography and math activities. Another project they had was to develop an "author study" in our children's literature class. Many of them found on-line activities revolving around the works of a particular author. They also developed their own activities using cites like National Geographic Kids, Discovery Kids, Time for Kids, and the authors' cites.

In this way, I hope to develop in my students the idea that they are the creators of knowledge as well as consumers of knowledge.

Blog #3 Using

For the final project, I think I will develop a web-based learning experience around study skills, since I will be teaching a study skills and critical reading course to first semester college freshmen. Most of the students in the class have had some learning difficulties and they find studying tedious and unproductive. The challenge is to get them to use strategies that will lead to success in their courses. I believe this technology can add greatly to the internalizing of the strategies.

Unfortunately, most of the sites I've found so far could easily be done with paper and pencil.
This Quest Graden site http://questgarden.com/23/08/8/060419215421/process.htm links students to both word documents and other sites. For example, for note taking it links students to the Cornell U site which describes the Cornell Notetaking strategy, but for listening skills it merely takes students to a word document which describes listening skills. Another site, teacher web http://teacherweb.com/OH/Springfield-ClarkJVS/StudySkillsWebQuest/wqr3.aspx, also has a lot of study strategies on it. Unfortunately, the pages are boring (lots of text and not much else) and many of the links are things that one could do with paper and pencil. Finally, I found Mrs. Raimondi's webquest
http://teacherweb.com/NJ/MidlandSchool1/StudySkillsWebQuest/h3.aspx which asks students to create a poster to remind others to use a study skill for a particular strategy which they found useful. Again the site is a lot of text and not much else, but at least the final task requires students to evaluate and create.

It seems that the critical pieces here are the task and the evaluation pieces. I'd like to develop my study skills website so that the end product is one in which students see a real benefit. I want this to be an activity that they find useful rather than just more busy work. I am thinking of having them create a guide for incoming freshmen.

Suggestions are welcome!

Evaluating the web

In searching Penn State's iStudy tutorials I came across one about using the world wide web with this link to Widener University's library - http://www.widener.edu/libraries/wolfgram/evaluate . It has a real nice audio/visual tutorial with examples, including a comparison of two sites about Dr. Martin Luther King - the one discussed in the November book as well as one from The King Center. It also compares sites about smoking and illustrates the differences between them regarding authority, accuracy, currency and objectivity. While it would not be useful for very young children, it could certainly be used to demonstrate with teens.

Blog 2 for EDTEC 448 Teacher as Integrator

I have frequently taught a developmental reading class to college freshmen who need to improve their critical reading and study skills. I really like the REAL strategy (November, 2008) because it is easy to remember as students are at their computers (or in the library) doing research for a paper or project. I plan to use it along with some of the suggestions in the "WebQuest About Evaluating Web Sites" (http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/evalwebstu.html) This site is really specific and gives concrete examples on topics at a variety of levels and subject areas.

One thing that surprised me as I read this week's readings is that this isn't very different from what we have always taught students to do. It's just that we are teaching it much earlier because our students have access to so much material now. In the past, students in elementary, middle and high schools were limited by the material that was available to them in the school libraries. Now, students at all levels have access to materials of all kinds from all over the world. The parallels between REAL (November, 2008) and the old-fashioned way of doing research with paper materials is remarkable. For example, when doing research with hard materials we are admonished to use only scholarly or peer reviewed journals, i.e. we need to make sure the material we are reading comes from a reputable source rather than material prepared to persuade or to entertain. When using web materials we do the same thing by "reading the URL (November, 2008)." Secondly, with books and magazines, journals, and newspapers, we often tell students to look at the abstracts, summaries, table of contents, etc to determine if the source we have includes information on our topic. With internet-based materials, November (2008) suggests we "examine the content." Thirdly, with print materials, we are cautioned to check the credentials and qualifications of the author, editor and publisher. Likewise, with materials retrieved from the web, we should "ask about the author and owner (November, 2008)." Finally, with books and articles we are often directed to pay attention to the references (works cited, bibliography,etc.) to verify that the book or article we are using is based on substantial and reputable sources. Similarly, November (2008) tells us to "look at the links" when we are gathering information from web sites.

Bibliography

November, A. (2008). Web Literacy for Educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Valenza, J. (2001). A Web Quest About Evaluating Web Sites. Retrieved May 13, 2010 from Springfield Township High School Virtual Library site: http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/evalwebstu.html

Response 1

I believe the internet has the potential to change the world as much (if not more) than electricity. While I have heard many bemoan the pitfalls of internet use, I recognize its potential for good. I liken it to the invention of the printing press and books.

Up until the mid 1400s when the printing press was invented, few people had access to the information contained in books. Few could read and write because they had no need to do so; life was parochial. Most people never traveled more than the distance they could walk in one day from the place where they were born. Information about the world beyond that was unnecessary. Because books were so rare (It takes a long time to handwrite a manuscript) they were highly valued as were those who could read and write. Education and literacy was limited to those few who would need to learn to read and write. That all changed with the invention of the printing press. Books became more readily available; hence reading and writing became more widespread. As people had access to the world beyond their villages (primarily through trade), the need to read and write increased and these tools became commonplace.

I have a picture in my head of a parent in the middle ages saying something like, "There are dangerous ideas in those books. My child might read something inappropriate if he learns to read. I grew up without books and paper and pencils; why does my kid need to have these?"

In a similar vein, I recently saw the video "Are You Ansgarr?" If you have not seen it here is the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos

Like books, paper and pencils, the internet is a tool that children can and should learn to use. Teachers need to become as proficient in the use of the internet as they are with reading and writing.