Group items tagged

Dizzywood, a virtual world and online game for children ages 8-12, today announced that it has been selected by the YMCA of San Francisco to enhance the youth program's technology curriculum. The YMCA is using Dizzywood's virtual environment to reinforce its program emphasis on activities that promote values such as caring, honesty, respect and responsibility. Children also learn about important issues relating to virtual worlds, such as digital citizenship and online safety, as well as complete storytelling and team-building exercises that emphasize creativity, writing and reading skills, and working together to achieve goals. The YMCA program is similar to the elementary school program that Dizzywood recently completed with the Reed Union School District (Marin County, CA). The highly interactive workshop, which ran from April through June, used virtual activities to reinforce the school's character pillars, which include caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, responsibility and trustworthiness, among other core values.

School counselors are not the only people in the school who are responsible for the safety of students, but they may be the primary contact person for parents and students seeking information or help. Providing leadership for students, faculty, administrators, and parents in addressing the topic of cyberbullying may be an important step in ensuring students' safety.

When it comes to watching over their tech-obsessed teenagers, parents are learning the dangers of too much information. Having the ability to monitor and knowing how to is important. But sometimes the threat of intervention [Don' t give me reason to...] is better than actual intervention.

Job characteristics and strengths at work at Google -
\n\n... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.
\n\n... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.
\n\n... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.
\n\n... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.\n\n... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

video for educators and students on the importance of online safety

Very important document!! The NASSP Position Statement is the cornerstone for all of our work in cybersafety education at CTAP4. Click on "expand" to see their recommendations.

NASSP recommendations for school leaders 1. Familiarize themselves about all aspects of computer technology, including the mechanics of the Internet, blogs, social networking Web sites, and the liability issues associated with the use of these technologies 2.Form a technology team that comprises staff members, parents and students to act in an advisory capacity to the larger school community 3.Educate staff members and students on using technology within the boundaries of the law 4.Guide teachers and students on how the Internet can serve as effective educational tools 5.Formulate clear guidelines to protect students and teachers against cyber bullying and other criminal activities 6.Conduct orientation sessions for parents regarding student use of the Internet 7.Reinforce these guidelines with parents and encourage vigilance of Internet use at home, including the elimination of derogatory statements against other students or staff.

Case study on New jersey facebook picture "blackmail" case written by a teenager on the Digiteen project.

Considering the posting of photos and what should be shared is something all teenagers should consider. This is a blog post from a teenager on the digiteen project about the difficulty lawmakers have in prosecuting "digital blackmail" cases. Certainly harm was done, but legislation has not been passed protecting photographs posted on one's Facebook page and shared with friends. This is hard for students to understand but is an important case study to read about. Certainly having teenagers research and report their findings is a great way to help them understand the implications of what they are doing.

Teacher's idea on how to make bullying awareness important and exciting for third-and fourth-grade students by having them create comic strips using Comic Life, one of the new programs available for Macs. With the aid of ready-made templates, word bubbles, pictures, etc., users easily create a comic strip.

Scientists are blogging and communicating now, with an article in Time Magazine talking about how these scientific bloggers are changing the face of science. Having Access and being able to communicate digitally are becoming part of everyone's required knowledge base.

This website is a conglomeration of scientists who are blogging and writing.l They respond to research journals and bring forth "hot topics." In science. Time magazine has written an article about this site and how they are changing the face of science. Blogs are becoming integrated into all aspects of the world and knowing the method of writing effectively there is important.

Learning how to safely use e-commerce websites is important, but also, people need to be aware to protect their credit card numbers and identities as can be seen in this horrific case study. When websites are not safe about their use of credit card numbers, it can have horrible impacts such as this man losing his $250,000 a year job and becoming estranged from his family, when they thought he bought child pornography.

[NYT Magazine, 5/25/08]. Examination of why people "overshare" their personal information on the internet through the eyes of a 20-something woman who compulsively blogs. This is a fruitful article to seed a discussion of how teens express themselves digitally and the importance of privacy and self-regulation. It could also be paired nicely with the Youth Privacy site ( previously bookmarked by another group member) for discussion in a digital citizenship class.

Most parents accept the importance of digital media but wonder about the impact on students social skills, according to findings from a Common Sense Media poll.

John Palfrey & Urs Gasser [Berkman Center] identify 9 myths about Digital Natives and offer succinct interpretations based on research and observations of youth. Educators involved in digital citizenship efforts may find a shift in thinking is necessary in how we educate students about issues related to online safety, copyright, privacy etc....where their confusions are and what they do/don't understand. It's also important to understand the significance of social groups and online communities on our youth and how they motivate development of friendship-driven and interest-driven content.

Amid all the initiatives in which Internet companies are supposed to make friends with each other-such as Facebook's Platform and Google's rival OpenSocial initiative-the announcement today by MySpace may well be the most useful to ordinary people and thus the most important: Users will be able to share their MySpace profile with other sites. MySpace has a good list of initial sites that will use some version of this feature: Yahoo, eBay, PhotoBucket, and yes Twitter.

Educators are closely watching a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing web site-a lawsuit that could have important implications for the future of Web 2.0 applications, observers say.

This 10th grade student has written an exceptional post-project reflection. I hope you'll take time to read it. Here is an excerpt:\n\n"There is no doubt that this technology is dangerous. It is apparent that few people, not adults, not teenagers, truly understand how collaboration, conduct, and manners affect the internet. This project has to teach others that as well. It is necessary to know how to handle yourself on the internet. That's why Horizon Project is so important. We have to educate tomorrow's leaders how to use new technology without abusing it. The highlight of this project is the education we are giving every single person who has been a part of the Horizon Project."

An excellent post about how doing global collaborative projects can educate students on the safety they need. This is from a 10th grader.

A blog post from a ninth grader researching cyber security. He did a very nice job (with the exception of a typo or two.)

Seeing my students blog like this one on cybersecurity makes me realize that effective online communication and writing is important. I'm proud of my student bloggers and glad that we've made time to blog this year!

[May 2008] AASA article gives examples of school organizations that are desperately and inappropriately blocking the future and Scott McLeod pleads, "Please don't block the future." Please don't relegate your students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to second-class status in the new economy because you left it to them and their families to figure out on their own what it means to be digital, global citizens. Ask AASA and its state affiliates to provide more technology leadership-related professional development opportunities. And let us know how we can help.

Alex Hayes, Janet Hawtin and other members of the TALO list are mobilizing a "Learning in the 21st Century" f2f round table and discussion on Safety and Privacy online. It will hopefully involve not only educators but also parents, students, IT staff, management and other members of the community. It is extremely important that people listen and become aware of the different perspectives.

This documents students using Google Lively to teach other students about digital citizenship

For our project, we chose to create a virtual room, called Digiteen World, on Google Lively. Our main objective of this project is to get people more aware about Digital Citizenship. We will be allowing kids from our school to get on Lively, and react in the virtual world. We have created nine superheroes. Each superhero has a lesson to teach abut the nine aspects of Digital Citizenship. By teaching the lessons in a virtual room, the kids get to have a great time and still learn very important lessons. The goal of this project is to educate people on how to act online. In allowing kids to be a part of this project, we hope that they will learn how to be good digital citizens.