Five Steps to an Accessible Classroom Website

Lisa Amundson's article offers a quick list of suggestions aimed at making websites run by teachers for their classrooms more accessible. By accessible Amundson means for a wide array of potential visitors, from the hearing impaired, to disabled, to blind, or even color blind. Methods to create such a webpage are outlined in a five step process. First, a webpage should be organized with headers and broken down like an outline. In addition, the colors on the page should be easily discernible in gray scale. Second, the page should be navigable without a mouse by pressing tab to roll through headlines and links on the page. Third, images should have text explanations to describe what the images are to someone who cannot see the images either because of a vision impairment or due to problems with the writing of the image. Fourth, page creators should make sure their links are clearly labeled, so that the text of the link that someone clicks on reflects the content that will follow. Fifth and finally, web validators should be used to detect any accessibility problems. As a final check, Amundson suggests going to the newly created page with sound turned off, images turned off, and with a gray scale color scheme selected. If the webpage is still navigable even when the window is resized, then it is probably ready for use by students and parents alike.

Amundson wrote this article to inform teachers of the many things to consider when creating a class webpage. Some of her suggestions came as a surprise to me, like avoiding the colors red and green which are difficult for colorblind people to discern. I found some of her suggestions overly tedious though. Maybe that was the way I saw it because I do not have experience with webpage design. So I might have a hard time figuring out how to implement her suggestions without additional assistance. I mean I would not want to spend hours pouring over a webpage to make an altercation that may not even benefit any of my constituents. I personally would want to first find out which impairments need addressing and then make a page accordingly to avoid wasting time. My feeling might change if she offered an additional article that presented easy ways to implement her five steps or once I had enough experience with webpage creation to quickly figure in these five steps myself.

Journal Article #2

Doug Johnson wrote the article "By Computing in the Clouds" to educate K-12 teachers and administrators about the benefits of cloud computing. The biggest benefit of the cloud, cost reduction of computing for the classroom, could revolutionize school life for students and teachers alike. In addition to reducing the cost of bringing technology to the classroom, Johnson suggests cloud use could increase the effiency of schools. In making the argument for his case, Johnson informs his readers that he completed all of the work for his article on the cloud. By using the article and other examples of cloud use to cover nearly every situation a student would need a computer for, Johnson makes a case that schools could raise the standard of modern learning while, decreasing their budget over time. Because cloud computing puts the burden of running an endless number of software programs for nearly any situation on outside servers rather than the specific computer accessing that software, computers do not need to be as powerful. That is, cheaper computers with slower processors and less memory, could be as effective as their more expensive counterparts. This would enable students to use either inexpensive netbooks, as Johnson advocates, or extremely inexpensive home computers. Johnson seems to favor the portability of netbooks that he explains sell for as little as 250 dollars but I do not think he should ignore the possibility of cheap, bare bones desktop computers, which I have personally assembled spending under 100 dollars. Whatever the case though I think Johnson forgets to mention one major cost, the cost of Internet. Blanketing a school with Wi-Fi is not cheap. Furthermore, is Johnson suggesting students will be able to access all their content at home? If so add in a monthly charge for parents to maintain a connection for their little learners. Sure Johnson explains some work could be saved to run when offline but I doubt the inexpensive netbook would not be able to save many memory intensive projects. That puts a damper on Johnson's theory that asking a parent to buy a netbook would be too much more to ask for than buying a graphing calculator. Plus, I doubt any current "cloudware" can accomplish the tasks of a graphing calculator so it is not like the netbook cost will negate the cost of a graphing calculator, it will exist in addition to that cost.
On a more optimistic side, Johnson's idea of integrating netbooks would allow teachers to easily satisfy all five Nets standards. Also as time goes on, the cost of capable netbooks will only decline and the number of cloud-based software programs will only increase. Therefore, I think Johnson's conclusion that a combination of cloud computing and inexpensive student computers will transform education is not too far off, but it will take time.

Blog at your own risk.

The two opinions on blogging presented in the article "By Point/Counterpoint is Blogging Worth the Risk?" each have some merit. On the side of James Maxlow, the author admits there is a risk present in blogging or any social media activity done online. That risk however, is determined to be less than rewards that can be achieved by blogging for personal or professional reasons. While, Maxlow attempts to say a company would have a hard time firing an employee for "personal communication,"if that communication is posted on a blog then it is no longer personal. The nature of a blog gives many people access to the author's thoughts rather than just a select individual as in a written letter, email, or phone call. So although Maxwell makes the point that companies should not terminate or punish their employees for such "personal communication" it might be proactive as an employee to prevent the company from ever having a chance to look into your personal life.

I think Lisa Nielson makes a more compelling argument in her description of how starting a blog created issues that spiraled out of control. Nielson suggests that most bloggers in the world of education start out with a righteous intent but are bombarded by criticism for taking a new approach to teaching. A majority of teachers, like many people are afraid of change, even when that change has the potential to offer a big benefit. Then what are bloggers like Nielson and Maxwell to do about their blogging situations? They both felt blogging was helpful activity but they both admitted it carried severe risk. They both seemed dedicated to carrying on despite the risk. However, I find that it just would not be worth the headache at this day and time.

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This is my first post.