Internet safety for our kids

Students need 21^st century skills to be successful citizens.   The student outcomes outlined by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills include:

• ICT Literacy
• Life & Career Skills

These two areas in particular speak to why the use of Web 2.0 tools is important for schools and students.  Students need the applications of Web 2.0 in order to extend their learning beyond not only the classroom but also the teacher.  They need opportunities to seek out learning that is important to them.  The millenials need guidance in leveraging the collective intelligence of groups.  They are learning from each other and from others in the world and we as their teachers need to get on that bandwagon and be part of who they are learning with in a virtual as well as face-to-face way.  We are no longer the sage on the stage; we truly must be a guide on the side.  Where teachers become learners and learners become teachers. (David Warlick) 

As is typical much of what I read concerned higher education.  Some colleges and universities are late coming to the Web 2.0 table but more and more are recognizing the importance.  My take on this is colleges and universities, unlike public K-12 education, need to attract students.  It is a business; if students are looking for this type of engagement using Web 2.0 tools they will seek schools that offer this.   As more and more students become accustomed to using these tools more and more higher ed. institutions will need to jump on this bandwagon in order to compete. ( John Thompson )

I believe key to the success of school 2.0 is twofold, one is student buy in as a way of formally learning through the school environment and two is the faculty buy in.  I believe the latter will require much more work.  Faculty are not digital natives, this stuff at varying levels is hard for us.  We will need to create professional learning communities for our faculty to move them forward and it will take time, time, time and support.  If we model this type of learning for our faculty, to learn using these type of tools we can hope there is a transference of these skills to their own teaching.  21^st century professional development includes “among communities of practitioners, using face-to-face, virtual and blended communications”. (21st Century PD)  When David Warlick says in More on School 2.0 (David Warlick), “But most everyone now knows what a blog is, wikis hold no mystery, we’ve gotten over wikipedia, and podcasting is no longer the ‘next big thing’”.  I wonder what school he is referring to, certainly not mine.  We, in our district, feel we are so far ahead of the curve as compared with other districts in our area, yet we have a very LOOONNNNGGGG way to go to bring people up to speed with the concept of Web 2.0.  Yet, in my opinion, with a new state standard where students must stay in school until 18, we need to engage our students in the learning process, we need to prepare them for 21^st century skills, we need to help our faculty think about teaching differently. 

My role in this is to inform faculty, even snippets so they can digest this information.   I want to include as many of our faculty as possible in taking these courses we have through VHS to go through this type of learning process.   I am the cheerleader for this; it will also be my role to vision this out with the other administrators in the district so they are able to see the value of this type of professional development. 

Other articles referenced:

Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students

Top 25 Web 2.0 Apps to Improve a Student’s or Professor’s Productivity

It’s time for radical innovations in schooling

After reading quite a few of the articles on this topic, I am still having a dilemma about YouTube.  We block this type of website in our district and I had difficulty with one teacher emailing the rest of the teachers in the district about how to get around the issue by giving directions on how to do it at home, burn it to a cd/dvd and then bring it to school to show.  What message is that sending to the students? 

When I went to the hackszine website it just brought this issue glaring back in my face.  If teachers use sites like this, is it demonstrating responsible use or is it sending the old 60’s slogan “Question Authority”? 

I think above all we must set an example for our students as far as modeling good netizen behavior.  If we, as educators, feel there is an appropriate educational use for sites such as YouTube then we need to model how we can go about changing administrators’ opinions on this subject.  That too is a lesson for students. 

Now having said all of this I have seen, first hand some appropriate uses for sites such as YouTube.  The article YouTube in the Classroom-Using YouTube Videos in the ESL Classroom brought the point to a very personal level.  Everything the article mentions I have seen used for a second language except not in English but in German.  My daughter has been studying in Germany this summer and her teacher showed a YouTube video called We’re Germans which uses both English and German and helped the students understand German and the modern culture.  The students (college aged) really connected with it and it helped them in their studies. 

Tapping Into the Wild gave some great appropriate uses of using video as a tool for instruction.  Then if you post to a site like YouTube there are lots of critics out there and even if you post internally it gives students the opportunity to create something they are learning about in a visual way.

Overall, my biggest concerns are copyright issues and appropriateness of the material for the age groups. 

After reading several articles about social networking sites, I think Steve Burt’s statement: “The question is do we trust what we’ve taught our students enough to let them use them? I hope so.  If not, that says much more about us as educators than our students as users.” says a great deal.  Many educators are nowhere ready to incorporate social networking into their classes.  There needs to be much more education of the educators about social networking before we are able to allow students to participate at school.  Having said this we need to move forward and do it now by educating each other or ourselves.  Students are using this medium and they need to learn how to use it safely.  As Burt also mentions, “Schools and IT folks will forever be trying to ban sites using all types of different filters, but I think it is pretty safe to say this is a lost cause.” Three cheers on that statement.  This is what contributed to the decision in our district to block the category blogs because of the nightmare keeping up with new sites. I think in The Guardian article Dr. Joanne Bryce’s comment; “By banning such sties there is danger that schools miss an opportunity of educating young people about the importance of being responsible online.” is the reason I have been against filtering/blocking.  We end up protecting the students but only in the school environment not in the real world.  We do not provide the students with the tools to travel responsibly in cyberworld.The key is trickle down by educating faculty and they in turn can educate students.  Maybe we need a DARE type of program for surfing the web.

Debbie

After reading the articles “Content Delivery in the ‘Blogsphere’” from THE JOURNAL and “Instructional Blogging” as well as visiting blogs this week I think we need to be clear what our expectation is for blogging with our students.  We need to get across to our students that you are publishing to the world and your writing is a reflection of you and the educational institution.  Some of the blogs I went to the students were writing like they were IMing, that really bothered me for an educational blog.  At the same blog students were blogging because they had to, they stated that and their lack of enthusiasm showed.    I do think set up correctly that blogs can help students become critical thinkers.  Students are reading and synthesizing what their classmates are saying and if blogging rules are set up properly, they are responding in a thoughtful way to their classmates. From an instructional point, I like the idea of guided instruction for using the blogs at least at the beginning.  This is a model I am familiar with having used Responsive Classroom when I was a teacher. THE JOURNAL article mentions blogs help to “democratize the Internet, addressing some of the concerns under girding the digital divide.”  I am not sure that is the case, as not all students have access at home that to me is a bit of a hurdle.  I know in the past
Tracy has said kids will find ways to get online and I think there is some truth to that, but there are kids, who are not socially aware or involved who don’t have access.  That is a bit of a hurdle that can possibly be overcome if we keep our buildings open longer after school and perhaps allow for a late bus on certain days.  Being rural is not easy sometimes.  I am finding Web 2.0 and all the aspects that go along with it are going to be a big learning curve for me.  I am not used to the dynamic nature of this part of technology and I wonder how other educators find the time to develop some of these very intensive, active blogs.  I am glad I am doing this in the summer because I think I would feel very overwhelmed during the school year when all the students and teachers are around.  Debbie

Hello all, this is an area where we can learn from one another about teaching our young people to be safe using the web.  So many kids are an open book on the web, they do not fully understand the consequences of this openess.  Many adults have no idea what kids are doing on the web, where they are going, who they are sharing with.  Hopefully this forum will allow us to keep informed about social networking, privacy, bullying and anything else that deals with keeping our kids safe on the net.