10 Digital Citizenship Resources

As educators we are faced with the seemingly ever growing challenge of preparing our students with the skills required to be successful in tomorrow's world.  This is not always easy.  One area that is beginning to grow in the lexicon of 21st century education is the idea of digital citizenship.  What this is has been addressed in previous posts on this blog, however it is still pertinent to keep this on our radar screens.  

Laura Devany has put together a nice list of 10 different digital citizenship resources for teachers and schools to use.  Read the entire article here:

10 Digital Citizenship Resources

1. Common Sense Media offers a free K-12 digital citizenship curriculum designed to help students think about their behaviors and actions online.
2. Teachers can access YouTube’s digital citizenship resources to help educate students, ages 13-17, about responsible online behavior, protecting their identity, and more.
3. BrainPOP’s digital citizenship spotlight touches on issues including online safety, cyberbullying, plagiarism, information privacy, and more.
4. BrainPOP Jr. also offers a digital citizenship spotlight geared toward younger students.
5. This guide to “Staying Sane in Cyberspace” includes 45 digital citizenship resources compiled by TechChef4u.
6. A guide to online manners, arranged in an infographic, can help students learn more about how their online actions impact them now and in the future.
7. This resource provides valuable information on Creative Commons, online attribution, and usage rules.
8. While this is a paper resource, this poster about Facebook bullying could serve as a helpful and useful guide for students.
9. Embrace Civility in the Digital Age, formerly the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, offers a number of resources and tools to teach students how to be cyber-savvy.
10. NetSmartzKids, a program of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, offers digital citizenship and online safety resources.

What happened to computer science?

Why teach computer science in school?  Recent statistics show a decreasing trend in computer science across K-12 schools.  Introductory computer science has decreased 17% since 2005. With so much attention paid to 21^st century skills, why is computer programming largely ignored?

The answer is obvious.  Computer science isn’t tested.  Faced with strategic decisions concerning instruction time, it is hard to fault educators for focusing on Common Core curriculum.  At the same time, most teachers aren’t familiar with computer programming, and aren’t comfortable teaching it.  Although legitimate reasons exist for the decreasing trends in computer science, we still need to prepare our students with skill sets for the computing age. 

In an effort to address the growing gap of computer science in schools, Code.org is organizing an Hour of Code during Computer Science Education Week (Dec 9-15).  Their goal is to have over 10 million students across the United States participate in one hour of computer coding.  To help schools, they provided materials, lesson plans (for all ages and abilities) and prizes.  It would be great to see District 50 students participate in this event!  

Check out the following links to get all necessary details and to register your school/class today!

General Information about the Hour of Code event: http://csedweek.org/school

Register for the Hour of Code: http://csedweek.org/participate

Hour of Code- D50 Ed Tech Newsletter

Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE)

As educators we often see the term “life-long learners”.  In fact, when asked by others what my goal as a classroom teacher was, I most often answered by saying “creating life-long learners”.  But what exactly does this mean and how do we achieve it?

The truth is, the world is constantly changing and the demands our students will be held to are impossible to accurately project even five years out, let alone twenty.  So creating life-long learners for this unknown environment can be tricky.  However, one fundamental will always stay the same—independent learners must be given the power (and trust) to learn on their own.

As a teacher this made me nervous.  I liked being in control of my students’ learning. I liked structuring the delivery of content to maximize learning and coming up with fun applications for kids to demonstrate their new understandings.  I’m not going to lie—I liked being the “Sage on the Stage”.  However, as comforting (and fun) as this instructional modality was, did it truly prepare my students to become independent life-long learners?  Maybe.  But I have a sneaking suspicion I left a lot on the table.

Sugata Mitra, the winner of the 2013 TED Prize believes educators need to reexamine their instruction.  After witnessing young disadvantaged kids explore and master incredibly complex concepts with nothing more than a computer and Internet access, he began to wonder what education could look like if we (the teachers) were willing to let go and hand over the power of learning to our students.

Mitra coined the term Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs), which are student-driven, collaborative approaches to independent learning, which create unique ways to hand over exploration and learning to students.  In addition, SOLEs also provide the context to develop creativity and innovation in every learner.  According to SOLEs creator, Sugata Mitra:

“Profound changes to how children access vast information is yielding new forms of peer-to-peer and individual-guided learning…To prepare for the realities of the future workplace and the rapidly changing technological landscape, it is critical for educators to invite kids to get good at asking big questions that lead them on intellectual journeys to pursue answers, rather than only memorizing facts”

We have the power to do this today.  A class of 25 kids would need only 5 computers and a complex open-ended question…that’s it!  It seems every new article and education expert is talking about the 4 C’s (Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking).  Well, here is a way for kids of all ages, abilities and access to develop these 21^st century skills in their existing classrooms.  

If you aren't familiar with Mitra's work, I encourage you to watch his TED Talk  and also download the SOLE Toolkit to see how it you can implement SOLEs in your classroom.  If you want to learn more you can also check out the following articles:

Self Organized Learning

Give them a Laptop and a Group of Students will Teach Themselves

What if Students Learn Faster without Teachers?

3 Tips for Using Blogs in the Classroom

Came across a great blog post discussing using blogs in the classroom.  As we continue to think about educating the iGeneration, we must also continue to think about how we are connecting with our students both in and out of the classroom.  As stated in previous posts on this blog, creating a classroom blogspot is a great way to start!  Read about all three tips in detail here: Three Tips for Structuring Classroom Blogging Projects

From Bill Ferriter:

Tip 1 - Create ONE Topic-Focused Classroom Blog

Tip 2 - Develop Lists of Other Student Blogs for Your Kids to Read During SSR Time

Tip 3 - Recruit Commenters to Push Against Student Thinking

If you do create a blog for your classroom, share it here with the larger group!  The more we collaborate the better our education product becomes.

Cyberbullying Awareness Week (Oct 21-25)

Not sure if you read the news story this week about two Florida teens (aged 12 and 14) being arrested on bullying charges after another teen committed suicide (Read story). Did you know that 50% of US teens have experienced cyber-bullying?  Almost the same number of kids has admitted to bullying others online.  The facts tell a story that is a reality for our students—cyber-bullying is real!  Whether we are aware of it or not, cyberbullying is a prominent feature of growing up today.  Since October is Bullying Prevention Awareness month, this week’s D50 Ed Tech Newsletter tackles cyber-bullying and provides educator’s resources to prevent bullying at their school.  This week's Newsletter includes: A fact sheet about cyberbullying, Parent Q&A sheets, Commonsense Media cyberbully lesson plans (all grade levels), and classroom posters for teachers. Let’s work together to make D50 a safe learning environment for all of our students!

D50 Ed Tech Newsletter (Cyberbullying)

How big is the Twitterverse anyways?

Without a doubt Twitter has become something we cannot ignore.  If you are like me, you probably hoped that this Twitter thing would flare up and eventually go away.  It seems like just yesterday I finally got a handle on Facebook and now everyone is talking about Twitter.  Agh!  Keeping up with all this new technology can be frustrating—I know.  However, we owe it to our school communities to reach out and meet them where they exist.  For many of our parents, especially those under the age of 30, this reality is the Twitter-verse.  So let's start Tweeting!

This week's newsletter is a brief introduction to Twitter.  In the spirit of true Education Technology, the newsletter has hyperlinks to a variety of Youtube tutorials, so it is best viewed electronically.  These videos cover the very basics of setting up a Twitter handle, just what a hashtag is anyways and what they do, some ideas for classroom implementation, and finally how to use Twitter to build a Personal Learning Network (PLN).  If you're not familiar with Twitter, I encourage you to spend 30 minutes learning about it.  Who knows, you might even take the plunge and become a Tweeting Twitterer!  

D50 Ed Tech Newsletter- Tweet Tweet!

Digital Citizenship Week: October 21-25, 2013

Common Sense Media is celebrating Digital Citizenship Week at the end of the month.  Check out their awesome website for resources on how to empower students, engage families, and opportunities to participate as we work to educate our students on how to be respectable Digital Citizens. Taken from: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/digitalcitizenshipweek?utm_source=2013_10_Newsletter_1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly "Every day, your students are tested with each post, search chat, text message, file download and profile update. Do they connect with like minds or spill too much information? Do they behave creatively or borrow ideas recklessly? Do they respect relationships or inadvertently damage reputations? Join us for Digital Citizenship Week and engage students, teachers and families in your community in thinking critically, behaving safely, and participating responsibly online...Digital Citizenship Week is a great time to jumpstart, renew, or double-down on your school's commitment to engaging students in learning important digital citizenship skills. So explore these activities and pick the ones right for your school and community."