At the NCCE "Teacher Librarian" Summit

Today I'm in Seattle enjoying the amazing Teacher-Librarian Summit at NCCE, which is our regional technology in education conference.  Richard Snyder is presenting on Digital Citizenship, which he defines as how we "access, use, and share information" and I'm spending some time reflecting on how I use social media in my library and also attempt to model good digital citizenship with my students.

Here is the conference WIKI

Anyone else at the Teacher-Librarian Summit blogging about the day?''

Great ideas from the presenters: 

I completely agree that you should definitely plan for your formal Web presence. And it is an excellent point to label your social media channel as an "unofficial channel" unless you are using an official channel and that you should be mindful about whether or not you actually plan on updating your social media channel.

How interesting to create a knowledge rating chart with words like "full text" and Boolean and have them rate their knowledge level (1 to 3) as well as the definition from their own words.  This is from Barbara Soltzenburg from Jackson High School.  Great idea for student self assessment!  Pre and post tests.

And now we are on to INFOGRAPHICS!  I want to find an easy way to have my students create easy infographics.  Will be looking at tools about this next. Here's one link that I'm experiencing: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/infographic-tools/  and Kathy Schrock's Infographics page. ''




This is an infographic that I tried to make on the fly using the tool called Infogr.am.  I was trying to see how easy it would be for a student to create an infographic on their Common Core writing prompt persuasive essays.

On to "Library of Congress" resources about Kathy Dorr -- "How do we help students be ethical users of resources when everything has been blocked?"  Always a great point to make.

Beth Clothier is doing a great job talking about Digital Navigators.  Great ideas and an excellent use of PowToons.

So what have I done in terms of connecting with students on social media in my TWEENER (5th-6th grade) school and teaching them about digital citizenship?

• Edmodo:  Last year I began an experiment hosting a book chat for interested readers on this sheltered social networking site.  We had teachers help identify students and did about 20 minutes of face-to-face instruction on Edmodo and then most other interactions online.  I had about a core of 20 students who stuck with me throughout the year and they didn't just talk about books but also about what they were doing on their weekends and after school.  They really loved it when they were able to "meet up" while talking, which I should have anticipated.  For my part, I created different "theme" weeks and created "assignments" that highlighted new books (heavy use of book trailers and author Web sites). There were survey questions that I put together to allow them to share their interests (Harry Potter vs. Percy Jackson?) and other discussion questions.  Through it all, when kids said the wrong thing, I tried to help them out both online ("I'm deleting your post when you called that other kid "weird," -- Do you agree?) and then I followed up with them face-to-face.   IT WAS WONDERFUL.  IT WAS EXHAUSTING.  I pulled back from it this year because I wasn't sure if I could sustain it for this whole year and also I had hoped that more teachers would have started using Edmodo by now so that this would just seem to be an additional channel that students had access to. 
• Common Sense Media's "Digital Passport." I have a "once every three weeks" class with a group of students and we have used this digital citizenship collection of lessons to shape the first half of our school year together.  The videos and game modules usually take about 15 minutes to run through and usually sparks some questions for students.  Since our class is only 30 minutes long, it seemed like the perfect amount of content. 

#DigiFoot12 -- Cyberbullying and Bill Belsey

Here I am back from a vacation where I got to sit on the side of a beautiful lake and also play a ton of Minecraft. Tomorrow, some of the technology people from my district will be meeting to talk about Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety to revisit our efforts on these two fronts in the last two years. 

So I am finally listening to an awesome Blackboard Collaborate session with Cyberbullying guru Bill Belsey.  A link to it can currently be found on the DigiFoot Wiki as a part of the 6 week MOOC course that ends tomorrow.  Bill Belsey is an educator who became concerned with the problem of bullying and.founded Bullying.org as a way of allowing students to share their experiences.  An off-shoot of this Web site is Cyberbullying.org.

Some of the things that I picked up from this very pragmatic 8th grade teacher are that most cyberbullying happens away from school but that schools and teachers wind up picking up many of the pieces after a cyberbullying incident has happened.  Kids often normalize this bullying by calling it just regular teen drama. 

He admits that the solution is not easy and that he feels that the key is to focus on prevention.  Helping kids realize that protecting themselves is their job.  He suggests reminding them not to share their passwords and private information and to use netiquette.

Another point that he made is that teachers can't plan for the technology because that will always be changing.

All good points.

This year I'm hoping to continue to refine our efforts to help students to be mindful of their own digital behavior.  I'm planning on talking about them about what they want their "online brand" to look like.  I'm hoping to use both popular company brands (like Nike and Coca-Cola) as well as famous people (like Justin Bieber) to draw some interesting connections about online reputations. 

I'm hoping to help students reflect on their digital footprint by creating some sort of infographic that shows where they've left a trail online.  I'm thinking of using a word cloud generator like Wordle or Tagxedo to help us do that. 

I'd love to help teachers give our intermediate students a chance to use social media in a more sheltered way.   This could be through using Moodle more effectively in the classroom or exploring the use of Edmoto. 

It's going to be a good year.

#DigiFoot12 -- Savvy Searching

I spend most of my time trying to convince students of the need to search smartly and evaluate, evaluate, evaluate ALL the time.  Despite the fact that I front load my student's school year with activities that use their evaluation skills to identify the "joke" Web site, I have to continually remind them as they are searching throughout the year.

I'll be honest, I'm not so sure how much using fake Web sites helps in the end but I also have my favorites that I like to share with kids for a fun activity for a 5th grade library bootcamp, if nothing else.

My absolute favorite is the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  Google It if you haven't about this amazing cephalopod!!!  It is highly endangered because of habitat loss around the Pacific Northwest.  Since my students live in the Pacific Northwest, we always have at least one kid who admits to seeing one in their back yard.

Using the Tree Octopus Web site with my kids as a joke at the beginning of school gives me the opportunity to establish a code word with kids.  For the rest of their time with me, when I'm looking at a Web site with them that I don't like... I'll ask them if they think that it looks like "tree octopus" information!!!

#DigiFoot12 -- Digital Citizenship

I'm trying to catch up on my #DigiFoot12 MOOC class.  We are starting week 5.  So I'm listening to Scott Monahan's Blackboard Collaborate recording from Week 3 of the #DigiFoot12 class.   Here's the direct link to the activities on the Wikispace.

Here are my two thoughts:

• I like the idea of having "sheltered spaces" where students can practice their digital citizenship skills, especially when students are young.  I work with 5th and 6th grade students.  I think that if teachers can help students use more open social media outlets in a group or anonymous way.  I liked the idea of having students use Twitter on a class account instead of every student needing their own Twitter account.
• I like the idea of creating Google Alerts to see in what ways your name is out there.  I started my own Google Alert to see how it works as a way of monitoring my own digital footprint. 
• Two places that I want to go back to and explore more is linoit.com and Kidblog.com 
• One person that I want to read more from is Danah Boyd.
• One book that I want to read is: 

  Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out Mizuko Ito