Week10

1.) What should the University of Education do to the girl who keyed Natalie's car and stole her

clothes? 

First of all, the university should call the police and urge the girl return Natalie’s belongs and repair her car. The girl should also formally apologize to Natalie about her misbehaviors. More importantly, university should take the chance to teach all students the danger of cyber-bullying by holding a forum where students and teachers can exchange their experiences and thoughts on the potential harm done by the irresponsible verbal attacks and how to protect ourselves from slander.

2.) Should Juicy Campus be held responsible for what happened to Natalie’s belongings?

Juicy Campus should not be held responsible for the thievery because the website is merely a tool or media, and the one who really should be held responsible for this matter is people who were spreading out the words and instigated others to do the thievery.

3.) When does social networking become cyber-bullying?

First, people will not realize the serious consequences caused by irresponsible verbal attacks unless they are taught on the damage of cyber-bullying. Also if people can conceal their true identity by using an alias online, believe or not, they will be much more vicious because they believe whatever happened they will not be held responsible. Last but not least, if people just take whatever stories told by the others as truth without any discretion, it hurts to the victim as much as those who spread the words.

4.) Could Natalie’s situations have been prevented?

This incident could be prevented if Natalie were taught on the damage of cyber-bullying and how to protect herself in such situation before using the social networking. Also, had she be more cautious and know what type of information she can disclose online, it will did less harm to her. Last but not least, if the Juicy Website required people to register with their true identity, whoever starts off the slander will think twice before his actions.

Week 8

My first reaction to this article is that the problem is caused primarily due to lack of communication among department of education, community, and schools. Although they share the same purpose- to help students to be ahead of trend for using online-based instructions and tests, the money spent on the previous projects failed to reach their expectations due to lack of organized planning and understanding the relationship between good instructions and technology. It seems to me that office believes that new technology equals to good instruction, despite the new does not necessarily mean an revolutionary change in its functioning but merely a more fast version of the old one yet will cost multiple times than the previous ones. In sum, number and figures cannot be translated as the effectiveness of instruction, and they need to be more careful when purposing for new technologies.

If I were the superintendent, I would redistribute the fund by first reevaluating the effectiveness of currently ongoing projects and cut off those overrated in performance yet costly, and spend more money on those promising ones which can address more immediate needs of schools for better teaching. Then I would try to reduce the gaps among different schools on technology spending. Although the capital fund cannot be used for salaries, I would use the money to build up a training program for teachers in which they are taught on how to effectively use those new tools so that the purpose of developing new technologies can be fulfilled. I would also evaluate if the current technologies can sufficiently serve its instructional goals because wasting money on a fast version of the old one which is perfectly doing its job is anti-productive. Last but not least, I would opt for technologies which have more developmental potentials. In another word, the technology should be able to be ungraded in the future to complete its functions as well as improving performances without overhauling the entire system, so that the money spent in the past won’t be wasted by throwing them away into the trash can.

Week 5

The first criticism with regard to using PPT is that it is not an especially high resolution method of data transmission compared with other transmitting visual evidence. Often times, as author suggested, people can read 300-1000 printed words in a minute whereas one slide of PPT can only contain far lesser number of words which results in poverty of content. I think it is true that PPT cannot convey number of words as much as in a paper, but it does not necessarily mean that it is content-free. If the presenter knows how to use PPT to supplement his speech rather than presenting it as isolated information, it might provide better comprehensibility to the audience. Besides, depending on how abstractive the topic could be, information contained in one slide might take more than 8 second to read.

Due to its distinctively cognitive style, the second criticism is that the PPT imposes on the audience and seeks to set up a dominance relationship between speaker and audience. From my point of view, blame on the style of PPT being relentlessly sequential-structured which is only good at advocacy but not analysis is overstated. Because whether or not the presentation is debatable completely depends on the goal of presenter. If the ultimate goal of presenters is to convince the audience, presentation will be aggressive, and PPT just one of the various tools to achieve that.