Technology in Today's Classroom: February 2013

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Fire Station Trip-Digital Storytelling

Here is the digital story I created using Animoto. The story is about a class trip I took with my students last year to the fire station down the street from our school.
Fire Station Trip

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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Module 6-Blog Review

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After looking at the 50 blogs Kim gave us the link to. I chose a really interesting blog to write about.

Jessica Carlton is the author of The Polka-dotted Teacher.. A blog for cute and authentic learning ideas, resources, and designs for your classroom (her words not mine). She founded the blog in February 2012. Jessica is a fourth grade teacher. She shares ideas and resources that she uses in her classroom. She gives links to other teachers' blogs and does giveaways. At this time she has 300 followers on Facebook. She is addicted to clip art and there are a ton of links and tags in the the margins. She shares ideas to enhance your curriculum as well as professional development ideas for teachers. She is really into arts and crafts and likes to spruce up her classroom to make it inviting and fun for her students.
She gets a lot of ideas from Pinterest. I looked through the archives and found several posts about technology. One website that she blogged about was Pixton for Schools. This is a really cool tech tool to use with students. It is a subscription site that helps you make comic strips for you to use with your students. I liked this site and plan on checking it out and experimenting with it in the near future. She made a comic strip for math problems. What an awesome way to engage students! A comic strip is much more inviting than a word problem written out for students to answer on paper.
I will definitely follow this blog because she shares really good ideas for every subject. She also includes the links for her ideas and the Printables she uses. She recommends other blogs for different age levels which I found handy. She teaches fourth grade so I'm not able to utilize all of her cool ideas but I can follow other bloggers that teach lower level grades due to her recommendations. Another handy thing she does is something called a Linky Party. She got this from another blogger named Kelly Dolling and puts her resources and recommendations in it. I found a lot of great resources, ideas and products in it.
I honestly don't know how these teachers find the time to blog. I am, however, grateful because I have found so many great resources, products and ideas to use with my class and to use in the future should I get the opportunity to work with older students.
This assignment has opened up a whole new world of places for me to find tips and ideas. Pinterest is amazing. I have signed up and started pinning ideas that I like to my board. I found some great things there. I love how teachers collaborate and share through blogging. I plan on adding this blog and others that I discovered in this assignment to my Reader. Amazing things can be found on blogs!!!!!

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Module 4-Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship

To teach or not to teach. That is the question.

Schools are integrating technology in the classroom. There are standards for teachers , students and administrators about technology. If we are going to expect the students to use technology, we must teach them to be responsible while using it. There are 9 facets to digital citizenship. Children start using the Internet at a young age. My students who are in kindergarten go to websites to play games that reinforce basic reading, writing and math skills in my class. I set up the games for them to use. They don't surf the web, but even small children need to follow some basic rules, to make sure that they become responsible citizens when using technology. There are many sites and movies that young children can watch to give them tips about being safe on the Internet.

Movie

Cell Phones

As children grow so does their involvement with technology. I really only thought about Internet rules, but cell phones are being used by children as well. Cell phones are very sophisticated now and allow children to connect through texts and through social networking sites. They are basically handheld computers. We as educators should consider cell phone use when we address the topic of digital citizenship. The same rules apply.

I also found a great movie on YouTube for upper elementary students.

Movie

Bullying

Older elementary students will begin to use the Internet to do research, assignments and to join social networks. This is when cyber bullying can become a problem. If a child is being bullied at school face to face a teacher can become involved and help them. Online bullying can be faceless. Often a child will not know who started the bullying or how to stop it. Talking about cyber bullying at school and giving kids tips on how to deal with a cyber bully is a good way to help. I'm not sure that all parents know or understand the threat of cyber bullying. There are many tips for parents as well. An informational night on digital citizenship and cyber bullying may be a good way to get some parents involved. They can be also be directed to websites that will give them tips on dealing with cyber bullying.

Ownership

When we have students complete assignments that require the use of technology it is important to stress that they must give credit for photos, music and information that they use. A good digital citizen shouldn't steal someone's work or take credit for something they didn't do. They probably don't think that it hurts anyone because the original owner doesn't know that they are using it. Jammie Thomas Rasset used music without permission and was prosecuted for it. Share articles and information about the ramifications for stealing others work. Teachers should model this for their students when they use technology.

You Can't Take it Back

It is also important to teach students about sharing personal information, photos and videos.

Students who share images and give out information are jeopardizing their future. Once it is out there you can't take it back. Your Digital Dossier begins even before you are born. Parents, employers, teachers administrators and law enforcement can see what you post. Children should be educated about the hazards of posting unflattering images and information.

I will say that I feel more comfortable about the digital world now that I know more about the ways we can teach our students to be responsible.

I am however, probably the only person on the planet that doesn't have a Facebook account. I just feel that my personal information shouldn't be shared with students, parents, administrators and potential employers. I am not a bad person and I don't have any scandalous secrets. I would just like to keep my personal life separate from my job. This article on modeling digital citizenship was good but I don't think the teacher should have had an account to begin with. I understand the student created a fake account so it had nothing to do with his real account. I just feel that you are opening up a can of worms by interacting on social networks.

I thought a lot about how to help students become good digital citizens. Many of the topics I reviewed I hadn't given much thought to prior to this assignment. I believe now that the rules of social etiquette offline cross over to the digital world. Treat others the way you would like to be treated holds true for both offline and online interaction.

This tutorial helps to break it down:

http://www.digitalcitizenship.nsw.edu.au/

Voki for grades K-2

Digital Citizenship

Young students are just starting out on the internet this Voki will give them some basic rules to follow.

References/URL addresses:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dumMk6da-U

http://www.voki.com/create.php

http://www.netsmartzkids.org/

http://coalcrackerclassroom.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/digital-citizenship-in-schools-inverted/

Voki for grades 3-5.