Digital Citizenship in the PYP 2016

Digital Citizenship in the PYP Workshop: Wednesday 20th- Friday 22nd of January 2015 (24 hours PD)

For the last 3 days I have been involved in a workshop called Digital Citizenship in the PYP.

My workshop facilitator was Nathan Pope (@Chinaheadk12), he was great at catering for a diverse group of learners and was very open to sharing resources and his presentation with us. I learnt some new things about Digital Citizenship and many discussions reaffirmed some of my prior knowledge and allowed me to share content with the group.

So what is Digital Citizenship?

This image is a brainstorm chart of my group’s definition of Digital Citizenship.

It says: Being a digital citizen means having an awareness of how to be safe and responsible in the digital community. We also wanted to acknowledge a level of accountability for individuals.

A useful resource I have used with Year 6 students about Digital Citizenship: http://www.digitalcitizenship.nsw.edu.au/

My previous post (2 days ago) was a response to one of our workshop readings, which stimulated great discussion within our group about the use of technology in the classroom. This post is an overview of the course and the highlights for myself as a learner.

Some of my highlights included:

  • Some old and new Learning Engagement strategies, I particularly loved the Nearpod poll, (http://nearpod.com/) this allowed you to see results being generated from the class live. Nearpod is a tool for delivering content that I would like to trial with my students. You can set it to class mode and run through it as a group or set it to individual mode where students can work through content and tasks at their own pace. Something worth exploring for sure.

 Learning Engagements

  • Web 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0 and learning what these were and the difference between each. I had never heard of this before but it was something I enjoyed learning about. Here is a brainstorm image from the workshop explaining this. In short Web 1.0 is readable content we can view but not edit, Web 2.0 is writeable content we can collaborate with others on and Web 3.o is executable, artificial intelligence, computers communicating with computers to share content relative to our interests. Pretty amazing stuff. Please also view the video link for a more detailed explanation below.
  • Web1.0,2.0 & 3.0
  • After learning about Web 2.0 we were asked to choose a piece of technology that we use to collaborate and identify the opportunities and threats about it. I chose Seesaw as I will be using Seesaw with my class again this year as part of our digital portfolios and starting blogs in junior primary. Here is what I came up with:
  • Seesaw
  • Google a Day Challenge: http://www.agoogleaday.com/ I’m interested in using this with middle to upper primary students to assist them with searching tips using Google. There are some skills that need to be specifically taught and refining searches is one of them.
  • Are we disconnecting by being digitally connected? I stumbled across this video whilst searching for something else but thought it was just too good not to share. It’s about the issues we have today about being connected by technology but disconnecting socially in real life. I think everybody should take the next 20 minutes and just watch this Ted Talk by Sherry Turkle, especially those addicted to their phones!
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  • We also explored Digital Footprints, Cyber Safety/ bullying, Grooming and Creative Commons and copyright issues (plagiarism). I have a bit of a background knowledge on these topics already but would like to add the videos I thought were quite good in relation to these topics.
  • Digital Footprint:
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  • Creative Commons:
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  • Cyber Safety resource for students. I’ve used this with Junior Primary up to Year 6’s: http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/cyberquoll/
  • Digital Citizenship Rubric: We discussed the importance of intellectual property and plagiarism. We defined plagiarism:Plagiarism is the use and copy of unacknowledged works. Works can include pieces of art, music, theatre performances, graphic designs, photography, film, published/ written works online, website content, programmes, graphs and digital representations. 
    • We then discussed ways in which we could educate students about plagiarism and how to check if their work was cited properly. This rubric can be used or adapted to suit your students, I think it’s quite good. Digital Citizen Rubric
  • Finally Policy Documents: We had the opportunity to look at policy documents from other people’s schools in the group. The big take away point was that staff, students and parents should be involved in creating the policy documents. Too often it is the responsibility of a senior/ leadership staff member to create policy documents and then they share it, ask people to read it and then it’s done. Some people will take the time to read the policies but I dare say that more people will not find the time to engage with them… So, getting people involved in the policy drafting process and then handing the ideas over to leadership or senior staff to finalise is probably a better way to go about it.
  • Resources: Here is a link to the course website that Nathan Pope shared with each of us. It has many great articles, videos, resource links and examples of policy documents. I hope you find them as useful as I do: https://sites.google.com/site/jadedigitalcitizensite/home

Final thought, we are all Digital Citizens, it is our responsibility to be great role models for our students and share our knowledge and understanding about what it means to be a good citizen, on and offline.

Thanks for reading, please post a comment.

Jade

No Computers to Be Found! No Screens at All! They’re Not Allowed in the Classroom!!!

Digital Citizenship in the PYP: Day 1 of 3

Workshop facilitator: Nathan Pope: @Chinaheadk12

Homework for this evening is to read this article:

At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait – The New York Times (1)

Waldorf School frowns upon the use of computers and screens within classroom environments and discourages home use.

I had to go back and check the dates of this article and was amazed that this was only written in 2011… if you read the article you would understand my confusion.

The article goes on to explain that children do not need computers in education, instead this school is “focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans”.

My experience is polar opposite to this mindset.

Other points to note in summary of this article:

  • The debate comes down to subjectivity, parental choice and a difference of opinion over a single word: engagement.
  • Advocates for equipping schools with technology say computers can hold students’ attention and, in fact, that young people who have been weaned on electronic devices will not tune in without them.
  • “Teaching is a human experience,” he said. “Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy and critical thinking.”
  • And where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need computer time to compete in the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills?

My thoughts on these points:

  • The word engagement is key. Student engagement should not be centred around the use of technology. I believe hands on, visual and human based interactions in learning are of the upmost importance. Technology should be used to enhance the learning experience, using the tech is not the learning experience. We are not teaching technology for the sake of the tools, we are using technology to support the learning process. If we are just using the technology for the sake of learning about a new tool we need to seriously rethink our approaches to teaching and learning.
  • The whole notion of working with children who have been raised with a dependence on electronic devices to maintain attention and engagement is frankly a scary thought! I believe that balance with devices is important and children require boundaries with the amount of screen time they have day to day. It seems that it has become socially acceptable/ tolerated for people to look at their devices at ‘inappropriate’ times, adults are just as guilty of this offence as children. What happened to the good old days of eye contact and having a lunch with a friend, or listening in a staff meeting, a friendly interaction at the grocery store with the checkout attendant, without the interruption of a mobile phone notification? I’m thinking that people need to be taught digital manners as well as digital citizenship! Working in Junior Primary I’m constantly reminding and supporting children with eye contact, body language cues, reading people’s reactions, emotions and expressions. Look up and engage with others around you! There is no need to use a device to engage a student, sometimes the tech does that but it is not the reason we use it.
  • Human interactions are of vital importance. We are more capable of connecting and collaborating with people from all around the world than ever before. We can learn from others, critically reflect on content that we are sharing and question how we could solve problems. Critical thinking and problem solving is a big part of digital interactions. We can do this in person, face to face and we can also do this digitally. Some children are better at communicating online than in person, I personally find that I’m a better communicator whilst online too! Not that I don’t enjoy speaking with people, it’s simply that I’m capable of clearly communicating my points of view after reflection and consideration whilst typing on my blog rather than in real time conversation. I’m a slow processor and appreciate time to think things over before expressing my opinion.
  • Lastly, just how easy is it to pick up computer and digital technology skills? If you isolate a student from using a computer and then introduce it to them at a later stage in their development they won’t simply pick it up and know what to do with it. We learnt about the phrase ‘Digital Natives’ during our workshop today, please visit the podcast and article: http://podcast.concordiashanghai.org/blog/2014/11/17/tech-talk-roundtable-72-digital-natives-use-digital-spears/
  • Students are not born with tech knowledge and they need to be taught how to navigate through a digital world. So much of what they will need in their lives revolves around being a digital citizen and learning the skills required to collaborate, create and critically analyse things that are online.

Another great video to watch after todays session to get this point across:

Enjoyed the reading and looking forward to sharing this post for further discussion in tomorrow’s workshop.

Thanks for reading

Jade