Group items tagged

"This is a collection of resources that can be used by educators or students regarding the issue of digital citizenship. Note: the questions used here are targeted primarily at high school students, but many of these questions apply to anyone new to the topic. Definitions: "Digital citizenship isn't just about recognising and dealing with online hazards. It's about building safe spaces and communities, understanding how to manage personal information, and about being internet savvy - using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same." (Digizen) "A fully literate citizen is at once critically self-reflexive and critically reflexive of his/her collective and position within it." (Spooner, 2007)"

"How is Twitter interesting for a teacher or educational personnel in general? How to use Twitter for teaching? Why Teachers need Twitter? These are some of the questions that you will be able to answer after viewing the following 18 YouTube videos on How Educators can use Twitter in Classroom! "

"Full on transformation can only be fueled by a deep understanding of how significantly out of step the school experience has become with the real world. If we're honest, we know we've always been lacking in that regard. But there's little question that the gap between school learning and life learning has become wider and more acute as the Web and mobile technologies continue to evolve as learning opportunities."

"In today's world of near-ubiquitous connectivity, in which ordinary people have almost instantaneous access to unlimited stores of information and the ability to interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime, what does it mean to be an effective citizen? What skills and knowledge do our students need to participate fully in a world transformed by technology? What role should our schools play in developing effective digital citizens? "

Turn students into question marks!

Over the past couple of years, I've been trying to collect every good piece of writing and advice about verifying social media content and other types of information that flow across networks. This form of verification involves some new tools and techniques, and requires a basic understanding of the way networks operate and how people use them. It also requires many of the so-called old school values and techniques that have been around for a while: being skeptical, asking questions, tracking down high quality sources, exercising restraint, collaborating and communicating with team members. Post also contains a great Slideshare.

"I set out to answer these questions through a study of attitudes, which compared digitally literate students' to digitally-challenged teachers and visa versa. In this study being undertaken at Swinburne University and sponsored by the Wesley College Institute for Innovation in Education, 321 students in years 9 and 10 and 100 educators were surveyed about their attitudes to digital literacy and the use of digital technologies. The schools were co-educational independent schools with laptop programs and significant differences were observed in student and educator attitudes towards each other's digital literacy. The hypothesis, "that there is a disconnect between the digitally capable students and digitally challenged educators in schools with laptop programs, limiting effective use of digital technology in the classroom" was supported in the findings. This has repercussions for educating "net generation" students and implications for the implementation of the National Secondary Computer Fund and National Broadband Network. The disconnect was revealed in terms of attitudes towards technology in the classroom, teaching pedagogy, internet use, adoption of cutting-edge technologies and limitations placed on school laptops and networks. In this study 57 statements were provided to research participants, who were then grouped into four groups: digitally capable students, digitally challenged students, digitally capable educators and digitally challenged educators."

An answer to the question, "In the 21st century, what does a school librarian do?" I found this very interesting to read but overwhelming too. The school librarian is expected to be able to do so much, however I feel if we take one or two aspects at a time and slowly developed these, our confidence and interest to pursue others increases.  I am going to give this article to my colleagues to read and reflect upon at my next TL meeting.  I look forward to hearing their responses.

HERE'S a scene in my house: My almost 9-year-old is on the internet doing something or other, and I am not standing over her shoulder or otherwise monitoring her. Is this negligent? Am I throwing her to the wolves? I have no idea how to approach these thorny questions, so I have lunch with the academic and Microsoft researcher, danah boyd (she spells her name in lowercase letters for complicated philosophical and aesthetic reasons), who has studied this cluster of issues in an original and challenging way.

"That was the question I asked my students this fall and the answer I got surprised me. Students increasingly aren't going to the premium information services we've set up for them through our school library. They might not even be inclined to go elsewhere on the Web. Instead they often turn to Apps for their information. From The Elements to NASA, from National Geographic to the National Science Foundation there is a wealth of credible content in the App Store, but if students are using this information in an academic setting how do we help them correctly document and cite these sources? "This is a case of technology being ahead of the Modern Language Association," said my colleague Stephen Freeborn, longtime English teacher, but together with our school librarian we found a work-around hack that gets the job done."

I like this - a clever short video reminding us of essential digital citizenship concepts and practices. Raises a question about image citation - one of my Flat Classroom images was used - final citation screen (if that is what it is) is unreadable. Hmmmm

"Here are some questions for you to think about: * What is digital citizenship? * What are the rights and responsibilities of a digital citizen in today's world? By exploring new online tools and using them to publish online in this tutorial, you will get to experience many new ways to be creative. You will also have the freedom to interact with friends in new ways and possibly even with people from around the country or the world. With that freedom, comes the responsibility to practice good etiquette as a digital citizen."

"Every day, you see how cyberbullying hurts students, disrupts classrooms, and impacts your school's culture. So how should you handle it? What are the right things to do and say? What can you do today that will help your students avoid this pitfall of our digital world? We created this free toolkit to help you take on those questions and take an effective stand against cyberbullying. So start here. Use it now. Rely on it to start your year off right. "

"Essential Question: What are the norms of appropriate, responsible, ethical behavior with regards to technology use?"

"Facebook takes safety very seriously and strives to create an environment where everyone can connect and share comfortably. Find answers to a variety of safety questions here."

This is part 2 of the Q&A on Games and Learning with James Paul Gee.

Here is the follow up article with James Paul Gee (sorry I put the wrong name in the previous note).

"Thanks to the continuing wave of school district communicators and administrators seeking ways to reach their communities, a common question gets asked: How do you set up a Facebook page for a school district? "

Global perspective: Schools Japan are redoubling their efforts to teach students rules and ethics for their use of the Internet. Until recently, this kind of education mainly focused on preventing minors from accessing harmful websites. Nowadays, however, education experts agree on the importance of instilling a sense of online ethics early on, to prevent young people from engaging in behavior such as inappropriate use of documents, academic papers and other sources, as well as the questionable posting of photos to the Internet.

Can formal education remain relevant in the long term? That's one of six critical challenges facing schools identified in a new report examining the impact of technology on education.

"The recent furore about the Facebook Messenger app has unearthed an interesting question: how far are we willing to allow our privacy to be pushed for our social connections? In the case of the Facebook Messenger app, the answer appears to be: "Not as far as Facebook thinks.""