ISTE & EdSurge are curating a list of free products offered by companies and organizations to support learning during extended school closures. Search the directory to explore what products will best support your needs.

Making virtual learning or distance learning work for all students is challenging. You can have all the best tools in place, but without equitable access at home for all your students -- and adequate prep and training for yourself -- it's tough to replicate a traditional, in-person learning experience. This list assumes you've got those problems worked out and are focusing now on how to set up an effective virtual learning environment -- either adapting your existing curriculum, or designing a brand-new one from the ground up.

As the effects of the coronavirus sweep through the United States and across the world, many teachers and schools are making the shift to virtual learning. But even if students are comfortable with technology, learning online requires its own norms and procedures, many of which will be new to students who are used to learning in a face-to-face classroom.

When school campuses around the world closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the video-conferencing tool Zoom became a household name practically overnight. Launched in 2013 to connect remote office workers, Zoom is now one of the go-to platforms for online learning. Zoom's simple setup, ability to accommodate 100 participants at once, and low cost make it a popular option for distance learning programs. But Zoom has faced some significant privacy and security challenges, which leave schools and teachers wondering whether it's the right tool for teaching and learning. If you're considering using Zoom with your students, read on to learn more about its key features and how to use the tool as safely as possible.

James, C., Weinstein, E., & Mendoza, K. (2019). This report points to a collection of core insights about young people and digital life from the emerging EDD research and also includes insights from academic research on media and children,focusing particularly on challenges that U.S. tweens and teens face in their digital lives. This research lays the foundation for Common Sense Education's updated Digital Citizenship Curriculum. We describe the curriculum's unique approach, grounded in Project Zero's research,which focuses on pedagogical strategies that support both student skills and dispositions. The following sections outline the six key topics covered in the curriculum and address the importance of a whole-community approach among educators, students, and parents in creating a thriving culture of digital citizenship.

Abstract: In the July/August 2011 edition of TechTrends, a group of AECT members and academic professionals explored the state of digital citizenship for students in K-12 through an article entitled: Digital Citizenship in K-12: It Takes a Village. Identified was a significant need for digital citizenship awareness by parents, educators, and students through a series of interviews, exploration of resources, reports, and surveys. In this current article, the purpose is to provide an updated perspective of the state of digital citizenship in the K-12 academic and professional environments as gathered from re-administering the 2010 survey and interviewing experts quoted in the 2010 article. Results showed the need for teaching digital citizenship at an earlier age, improved digital citizenship awareness by both educators and administrators, and a continued focus on the misuse and abuse of technology.

Critical Studies in Education: Vol 60, No 1 In this article, we attempt to define and explore a concept of 'radical digital citizenship' and its implications for digital education. We argue that the 'digital' and its attendant technologies are constituted by on-going materialist struggles for equality and justice in the Global South and North which are erased in the dominant literature and debates in digital education. We assert the need for politically informed understandings of the digital, technology and citizenship and for a 'radical digital citizenship' in which critical social relations with technology are made visible and emancipatory technological practices for social justice are developed.

Abstract: Children and young people are spending more time online. Face-to-face interactions with friends are being supplemented with digital communication. Australian children are particularly prolific users of the internet (Green et al, 2011). This online activity creates digital footprints. Digital footprint refers to the information and data that people generate, through purposive action or passive recording, when they go online (Thatcher, 2014). Digital footprints now play a role in people's employment and educational opportunities (Black and Johnson, 2010). In this context not having a digital footprint can be as serious as having a badly managed one. One way to address this is for schools to explicitly teach students how to develop positive digital footprints that will help, rather than hinder, them in the future.

Inclusive, Informed, Engaged, Balanced, Alert - attributes of a global digital citizen. Hashtag #digcitcommit

Found in Communication Research and Practice: Vol 6, No 1 Abstract: Around the world policymakers are exploring the kinds of skills and competencies that teenagers need to have to contribute to society as digital citizens. Based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child framework, and informed by critical analysis of discourses around digital citizenship, this paper explores the competencies already demonstrated by many adolescents and addresses the priorities identified by policymakers. It compares the top-down adult policymakers' blueprints for digital citizenship with the performances of citizenship by many young people, who mobilise digital resources to communicate with powerful others as a means of progressing their aims. Drawing upon examples of small-scale teenage activism, and linking these to some of the big questions of the age: climate change, gender equity and social justice, the paper moves beyond discussions of tech-addiction and online passivity to investigate adolescents' strategic engagement in digital spaces to achieve a more equitable future.

New book by George Veletsianos - free chapters available for download

As digital devices become more common in classrooms, teachers and students are discovering that what worked in the analog world may not be as effective in the digital one. New skills, tools and approaches are benefiting all.

Interesting model and approach to digital literacy by Dave Cormier.

There are a number of labels to describe the young people currently studying at school, college and university. They include the digital natives, the net generation, the Google generation or the millenials. All of these terms are being used to highlight the significance and importance of new technologies within the lives of young people (Gibbons, 2007). For some, new technologies have been such a defining feature in the lives of younger generations that they predict a fundamental change in the way young people communicate, socialise, create and learn. They argue that this shift has profound implications for education (e.g. Prensky, 2001a; Gibbons, 2007; Rainie, 2006 and Underwood, 2007). Typically, supporters of this concept view the differences between those who are or who are not digital natives as primarily about when a person was born. This paper will critique and show new evidence against this conception of the digital native as based purely on generational differences. The paper will separate the 'doing' from the 'being', that is it will propose a number of digital activities (doing) that indicate digital nativeness and then examine which types of people (being) are most likely to demonstrate these characteristics. The paper will show that breadth of use, experience, self-efficacy and education are just as, if not more, important than age in explaining how people become digital natives.

Presentation by Ellen J. Helsper - Oxford Internet Institute Monday, 17 November 2008International Conference on Digital Literacy Brunel University

In a very influential essay that appeared about 15 years ago ("Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" [pdf]), Mark Prensky coined the term 'digital natives', asserting that "students today are all "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet" and that, as a result, "today's students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors". In contrast, "[t]hose of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants." While Prensky's views on this topic have evolved over the years and become more nuanced (those interested in his particular views may wish to visit his web site), this original definition and delineation of what it means to be a digital native and a digital immigrant remains quite potent for many people.

New digital citizenship lessons from Common Sense Education

Updates from digital citizenship guru Mike Ribble. He then added the following details to the S3 framework elements: ■ Safe (Protect Yourself / Protect Others) ■ Savvy (Educate Yourself / Educate Others) ■ Social (Respect Yourself / Respect Others)

"Since the 1990's educators have leveraged the power of the Internet to forge online global collaborative learning. More recently global competency and intercultural understanding in conjunction with cross-border collaboration and digital fluency have emerged as 'future ready' key capabilities. However, learning environments struggle to embed authentic real world learning and build capacity for global connection and collaboration. Julie shares new perspectives on developing a Global Collaborator Mindset and implementing Online Global Collaborative Learning (OGCL) as a pedagogical approach. "