Digital Citizenship and Internet SafetyTo keep students safe on the internet, teachers should review the school’s computer/internet use policy and review it with students. A copy of the computer/internet use policy should also be sent to parent and both students and parents should sign the rules to affirm their acknowledgement and understanding of the school’s computer/internet use policy. As Muthler suggests, in Online Safety: A Teachers Guide to Dealing with Cyber Bullying, Sexting and Student Privacy, teachers should also engage in a robust dialog with students regarding the internet including topics of netiquette, cyberbullying, sexting, and accessing inappropriate content. Ensuring that students know what the rules are but how to respond if these rules are broken is another skill that teachers can help students develop. When my students use inappropriate language when communicating with each other, I correct students and I also use it as a teachable moment for the student to understand why what s/he typed was not appropriate based on our school rules. Students also need to know that they have someone, a teacher, parent, or school staff, to turn to if they fall victim to someone violating the school policy on computer/internet. A website that teachers can use to learn more about strategies to keep students safe of the internet is or ISTE Digital Citizenship. It contains information on how digital citizenship parallels with characteristics of a good citizen. It also has information on helping students manage their smartphones and more, digital citizenship week and more. Another web-based resource teachers can use is Close Reading and the Internet. Students are going to use the internet and inevitably they are going to come across search results that include information they are unsure about. This resource is a Webinar for Close Reading on the internet. Teachers will learn how to teach students to become savvy users of online information. This webinar will be held on November 29th. Common Sense Education will also record and share the webinar for future use by educators, if they cannot attend but RSVP for the event. A website resource that teachers can use with students to teach and reinforce internet safely or digital citizenship is https://www.brainpop.com/digitalcitizenship/. Although many school systems subscribe to BrainPop all school systems do not. In order to view over a dozen BrainPop videos under Digital Citizenship a teacher can sign up for free access to the digital citizenship resources on BrainPop. The Online Safety video specifically covers six topics: that include the following rules 1. Online life is real life 2. Keep your identity a secret 3. Be extra careful with strangers 4. Tell somebody. 5. Protect your passwords and 6. Be nice. Global Collaboration Projects I explored Flat Connections and Journey North Global Collaboration Projects. Flat Connections provides opportunities, for a fee, for students of varying ages from Kindergarten to age 18, to connect with classrooms around the globe to share and learn about the culture of other students. Students can use suggested Web 2.0 tools such as Edmodo or Padlet to share information. However, they could also use other Web 2.0 tools. For example, I can easily see how a student could use a Flip Grid video or blog to share cultural information as well. The standards of the Flat Connections- Friends for Sustainability Project connects with Georgia Standards of Excellence on the Environment as well as ISTE Digital Citizenship standards. Protecting student privacy and moderating the shared information would be the challenges in participating in a CGP. Making sure that parents are fully aware in all aspect of the project and ensuring that all information shared and received by students is moderated would help overcome the challenges. Journey North provides opportunities for students to become actively involved in documenting migration patterns in their environment. Students use communication, map and technological skills to document migration patterns. For Example, in Monarch Butterflies, students can photograph or film and document the location of Monarch butterflies as they travel on their migration and they can view and analyze the data other students and project coordinators submit. Students answer questions, participate in activities and analyze maps for each “news update” created by Journey North. Students could use a variety Web 2.0 tools from flip grids to Google Tour Builder while participating in this activity. The challenge to participating in this GCP is finding a bio-migration that includes the teacher’s location in order to make the project more engaging for students. Teachers could collaborate with the Journey North creators to ensure that the best migration was selected for the students. It is also possible that some teachers would need to have fund-raising activities to take their students to locations where they could experience the migration. Both these Global Collaboration Projects include environmental based standards and include language arts, math, science and social studies standards. Teachers in multiple content areas could elevate the projects by collaboration.
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E. DrakeVirtual School Educator, ITEC Ed.S. Candidate Archives
May 2019
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