Professional Issues
(1) Evaluating Internet Resources
Most of what is posted on the Internet has never been subjected to the rigors of peer review common with many traditional publications. Students must learn to evaluate the reliability of information of the websites they visit.
- Provide links to three websites (see examples) that provide information about a single topic related to your curriculum.
- Compare the reliability of the sites using appropriate evaluation criteria.
(2) Record Keeping
Teachers have a professional responsibility to monitor, record and communicate student progress. Many schools and districts have adopted networked grading systems, and some publish grades on secure websites.
- Use a your school's grade book program to develop a report for a real or hypothetical class of ten or more students who are assessed on five or more assignments. If you do not have access to such a program, you may use a free web-based grade book. You may import an artificial list of students by copying and pasting from this list of scientists.
- Provide screen captures including:
- grade book (summary of performance for entire class)
- detailed report card (progress report) for an individual student.
(3) Plagiarism
The ease of information access can accelerate the learning process, but it can also be counter-productive by facilitating plagiarism. Discuss the importance of intellectual honesty with your students and illustrate how you can easily identify work plagiarized from sites on the Internet.
- Using an advanced search engine, find text from one of your students or from a website related to your field that appears to be plagiarized. Copy and paste the text and the URLs of both pieces in question.
- Use an online plagiarism detection service such as tunitin.com (Professor Herr, course: sed514; number 3235999; password: sed514) . If you can not find any plagiarized student work, use an article related to your field from Wikipedia.
(4) Assessment
Teachers must regularly assess student progress. Many textbook publishers make test construction easier by providing test generators, software which allows the teacher to quickly compose tests and keys from question databases. Test generators allow the teacher to input questions, and often provide databases of questions the teacher can select from.
- Generate a test with at least 7 questions using an online test/quiz generator. Make sure you include sound, photos, and video in some of your questions. Provide a link to the quiz as well as a screen capture of the score someone received after taking the quiz.
(5) Professional Growth
Teachers should model "life-long learning" by attending workshops, reading journals, and participating in professional organizations.
- Describe a professional conference (related to your field)
you may benefit from attending. Describe the purpose and scope of
the professional
organization sponsoring
the conference and provide a synopsis of the conference and one or
more selected workshops or presentations you would like to attend.
Include a link to the professional organization and to the specific
conference.
(6) Employment
Most schools and districts advertise job openings on the Internet. Teachers should use such resources not only to find employment for themselves, but also to attract others to their schools and thus build strong departments.
- Find a job announcement for a teaching position for which you are qualified. Include a screen capture of the advertisement. Describe the school and community using information found on the Internet. Cite your resources.
- Put your resume online, either using LinkedIn or one of the professional job sites. You can copy the template found at the bottom of this page.