Filer

I am Adam Filer and I am a high school math teacher in the Wilson School District. This is my third year teaching. I teach trigonometry and I am currently developing a new course that is replacing one that I taught during my first two years of teaching. I am very inexperienced with technology. This is my first year using a SMART board and I struggle with it every day. Other than the SMART board, i use TI graphing calculators frequently and Geomoeter's Sketchad occasionally.

The following link is a link to my personal web page at my school. It has links for all of the classes that I teach.

[|My Website]

Social Sites

I went to Facebook and myspace and it was an interesting experience. It was the first time I was on either site and I had a lot of difficulty navigating the sites. I am not sure how I could use this effectively in my classroom.

Blogging I have never been a big proponent of using technology in the classroom, except for a graphing calculator. However, I can see the uses for it. A lot of the blogs had space for student reaction and opinion on vrious topics. Others, wrote daily summaries of their own about the topics that were covered in class and what they were thinking. If I were to use blogging in my courses, I would pose questions or topics to students where they could discuss math topics with their peers and work on project together. It ould be interesting to see how well they could express their mathematical ideas and the concepts that we are learning. I could make each student write a detailed explanation of their solution method for a particular problem.

Netiquette


 * 1) Do you agree with all of the items covered in this Bill of Rights? Why or why not? I don't have a problem with any of the items that I read in this Bill of Rights. It seemed like a fairly good overview of the general policies that are expected of us when using the Internet.
 * 2) What do you disagree with? I didn't see anything that I disagree with in this document.
 * 3) Do you plan to abide by these guidelines? Why or why not? I plan on using my good judgment, just as I have been for the last 10+ years of using the Internet. I have never known that this document existed and I can assure you that I have never read it before today. Therefore, I will continue to use the Internet just like I have been.
 * 4) Do you think they leave out anything important? Why or why not? Yes. i believe that they should include what kind of penalties could be incurred if an individual violates any of the rules and policies set forth by this document.
 * 5) What's not covered that should be? I think that the possible penalties for misuse of the Internet should be covered in this document.

Viruses

The three latest viruses according to Symantec are: 1.) Trojan.FakeAVigen2 2.) Backdoor.Tidservigen 3.) W32.SillyFDC.BDB

I believe that the second one, Backdoor.Tidservigen, is going to be the most destructive virus because it is a trojan, a virus, and a worm all in one. I would imagine that this could do a lot of damage to your computer. This virus can be concealed from some antivirus software.

E-mail Hoax

I get spam emails that are suposedly from a bank that I have an account with that ask me to verify all of my account information with them. I have to give them my name, address, SSN, and account number for them to verify their records.

I read the Budweiser e-mail scam on Snopes and found it interesting. Budweiser and Pepsi pulled all of its products from a store in some small town in CA so that they went out of business. The 2 workers were rejoicing over our 9/11 tragedy, which sent this chain of events in motion.

Internet Ethics

I looked at scenario 2 for this discussion. In this scenario, a student sends out a mass email about a BYOB party at his house. He is subsequently called into the principal's office. He felt it was unfair because his email is his own business. Since the computers are school property, what is done on the computers is monitored by the school. Therefore, if a student does something inappropriate, the school district has the right to observe what any person within the district does on a school computer. Additionally, the only email that students have access to in the school is their school district email account. Therefore it is monitored by the school district through the email filter.

Since the student was not using the computer for educational purposes, his/her computer privileges would either be suspended or revoked. Additionally, the administrator would have to contact the parents to inform them of the situation and the resulting consequences at school.

Google Earth

I could see myself using Google Earth to have students solve some angle of elevation problems with thrigonometry. Another possibility would be to do some rate problems with the students about where they would be on a trip and the average speed that hey would need to go to reach a particular destination. I could have the students calculate the area of our campus or other campuses.

Watch my Jing movie!!!!

My Jing movie is about how students can log into Study Island, which is the PSSA preparation program for math.

media type="file" key="Jing_movie.swf" width="360" height="270"

Listen to my podcast!!!!!

My podcast in an introduction for my trigonometry class. I have one period of this class and it is a mixture of Juniors and Seniors.

media type="file" key="ED 526 Podcast.wav" width="300" height="50"

You Tube Video!!!!

This is one of my all-time favorite videos on You Tube. It is called "The Evolution of Dance" and it is a comedian doing a variety of dances from all the decades.

media type="youtube" key="dMH0bHeiRNg" height="344" width="425"

This is my video!!!!

This video is a compilation of pictures from college and my graduation from Penn State.

media type="file" key="Graduation.wmv" width="300" height="300"


 * Video-conferencing**

Tonight I learned about the Twice an Polycom, which provides an opportunity for teachers to connect with other teachers across the world to achieve the goal of furthering the education of our students. This technology provides teachers with an extraordinary oppprtunity to collaborate with other teachers with whom we would never connect. I thought it was really neat how teachers could post collaborations or join collaborations depending upon what is out there. My criticism for this would be that it seems like the software and the program has the same capabilities as Skype does. Therefore, my question would be, "Why should I pay to use this site, when I could use Skype for free?" It would seem logical that teachers would post their collaborations on Twice and then do them on Skype because it would save them and/or their district a lot of money. The following websites offer some examples of video-conferencing lessons for teachers.

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 * Web Quest**

By clicking on the link below, you can download my Web Quest for my Algebra 3 / Functions class.



By clicking on the llink below, you can access my website to download my Web Quest. Once on my website, click on the "Web Quest" link on the left side of the screen to access the documents.

[|My Website]