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And we’re back!!
Excited to be starting course two and already very interested in the topic of thinking about my own and my student’s online presence. Firstly the reading and thinking I have done this week has made me reflect on how I speak to children about using the internet. I think a lot if teachers (including myself) and parents have the tendency to focus on the negatives and the do not’s when trying to teach children about how to be safe online. This article from Education Leadership speaks about how students felt about digital footprints from what they learned in elementary school and I don’t want my students to have the same feeling when they move to secondary school next year and presumably begin to engage more in social networking online. I think it is important to explain to children about the power of a positive digital footprint and that instead of thinking about what you say on the internet being a trail that follows you, think of it as a trail that can guide people to the best aspects of your character/personality/work. Although my students are a little young to think about them being “Googled” by a prospective employer, I think it is important that they understand this message before the really begin to use the internet (beyond school or parental supervision) and put themselves out there.
I have been looking at being good global citizens in my life skills class of late so I will definitely be including some lessons on how to manage their digital footprint and being good online citizens. This article from Lisa Nielson has given me some good starting points to discuss with my students as well as including this excellent video which I will be using to ask students how does their sentence about themselves relate to their online activity.
Click here to view the embedded video.
I have been using Edmodo in my class for the last few years but have really pushed my children to engage with it more this year. You can already see which children are creating a positive digital footprint for themselves by commenting, posting and creating resources and games for other students. I am hoping that by teaching a few lesson about digital footprints and mentioning it frequently over the course of the year it will encourage this children to keep marching positively online and encourage the more reluctant ones to leave their first tentative positive footprints.
Creating positive footprints
Finally when looking at the ideas for the final project I feel I will look at my school’s reasonable use policy and edit it. I think the language in a school’s policy on using the internet is very important and should encourage to children to engage with the medium rather than focusing on the fear factor. I like the idea from this article of instead of an AUP why not have an EUP (empowered usage policy) . I also like the simplicity of of Kristi Lonheim’s AUP.
Make Good Choices
I will be keeping this in my mind as I work through course 2 so any ideas on school policy’s or good examples would be appreciated.
Looking at my goals for course 1 I still have not got the school to unblock twitter but am working on it. I didn’t use Kaizena but introduced my children to Spiral instead which worked well so I will look at that as a goal accomplished, I think with my RSS feeder and twitter I wasn’t specific enough in my goal so I haven’t been thinking about it. I have certainty used twitter and my RSS feeder a lot more but I still need to work on it so they will remain part of my goals for course 2.
Goals for course 2:
Write 1 tweet every day (education related or not)
Read 1 blogpost from my RSS feeder when I get to school in the morning.
Use Google Docs in the classroom for collaboration
Cheers,
Paul