Artifact Analyst

Artifact Analyst

I reached out to my friend and mentor Phil Scravino. He was my boss at Montecito Union before he decided to leave to work at Simi Valley School District. He responded to my email, and attached one of his draft articles for CEPTA journal (California Educational Technology Professionals Association). He is on the board of directors for this organization.

            Before I dive into the artifact let me explain what he does and what CEPTA is. His job title is CTO (Chief Technology Officer) his job is to work closely with Super Intendant, Principals as well as other admin staff for his school district.

K-12 education has changed a lot since any of our days in school. Technology is a big part of learning. It is incorporated into almost every subject taught. His job is to make decisions district wide about technology policies—devices used, Internet infrastructure, classroom tech, lastly how the teacher uses it to teach. 

           

            CETPA is an state wide organization, which gives a chance for school districts technical employees to meet and learn what others are doing throughout the state. They have an annual conference, and a journal. I attended the conference in November last year. There were over 1000 people at the conference.

            Let me dive into the artifact he send me, it is a 15 page document going over an Engineering Review. This review is of Content filters—This is a device that will filter what students and staff are able to search, while on campus. As the Internet has evolved one can access a lot of great information, however one can also access a lot of damaging information. Schools are required to limit student’s capability to access hurtful information—Porn, Guns, ect…

           

            From the intro forward he insures the reader that the point of this article is to provide raw data collected. Not to give an opinion about which company is best.

They studied 4 different vendors, by creating a rubric and also giving each vendor 3 likes and 3 dislikes. Three different people are testing the vendors—professional IT, Teachers, Students.

“The Rubric is designed to not favor any particular vendor or product design but rather the needs of the costumers.”

With everything I have said lets look at the intended audience. This is an EDTech journal, which is send out to technology employees that work at school districts. The audience is quiet a small group. They are also a skilled group; he does not address the definition or function of a content filter. He expects his audience to already know that information. He does give some background info, but a layperson would have a hard time understanding this article.

The genre I believe a recherché analysis. The paper is about explaining and experiment held, and informing the readers about the pros and cons of each company. Some conventions of this genre include, unbiased opinion, clear experiment, grading scale, professional tone and language, neutral stance.

He used ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. He uses ethos by dropping names of school districts involved, the testers and their titles, the number of students involved. This all builds credibility for the experiment.

He uses pathos to emphases the importance of a content filter. Once a child sees something inappropriate nothing can be done to take that image away form them. The goal is to block it before it happens.

This is a recherché paper so much of the rhetoric user is Logos. Logically what is the best way for these systems to work with out too little or too much filtering.

He uses kairos mainly talking about the time we live in. This article would not make sense 15 years ago. The evolution of the Internet, and the benefit it can make in schools caused the need for content filtering.