Digital Citizenship Poster

Reflection
The topic of digital etiquette, and specifically respectful online behavior, is very important for students today. In recent years there have been many instances of young people bullying one another or posting inappropriate content on the internet that led to serious consequences in their "real" lives. Due to the nature of the internet, it is easy for students to believe that they can say and do whatever they want on the internet without having to deal with consequences. However, this is not true. Students need to learn that their online behavior can have serious consequences for other people, their reputations, and their personal relationships. They need to learn to treat people on the internet in the same way they treat them in person.

How can I continue developing my repertoire of effective technology and digital tools and strategies for integrating them into my instructional practice?

 In my research of ISTE standard 5, I focused on educational tools that could help me learn more about digital tools and strategies for using them in education. I am not currently working in a school yet, so I wanted to find some resources that I can use at home to continue the learning that has started in this course. One resource I found which offers free and/or inexpensive classes on teaching with technology is Coursera, a website that offers online university courses. I found several courses on Coursera on general courses on teaching with technology, which may not be helpful to me because of this course, and also on specific digital tools. I think these specific courses could help me dig deeper into topics that I have learned about in this course. For example, they offer a five week course on digital storytelling, which could be beneficial for me because instead of making a digital storytelling project for this class I created a WebQuest. I am interested in creating a digital storytelling project after this course is over, so I can go through the process with the structure of a course.

Even though I mainly focused on one aspect of the ISTE standard, I also learned about various ways of connecting with other teachers through technology during the Vialogues discussion and through an article posted by one of my classmates. I am not a big fan of Twitter or social media in general, but after learning about how it can be used to connect with other teachers I think it could be a helpful tool for me as I begin my career. The article posted by my classmate offered several other suggestions on how to connect with other teachers using social media. For example, Edutopia has a group that connects new teachers. When I briefly glanced over this group, I found various discussions, videos, and articles that focus on issues faced by new teachers that could be very helpful. 

References:

Coursera. Retrieved from https://www.coursera.org/browse/social-sciences?languages=en#education

Dabbs, L. (2012, August 7). 5 tips for new teachers to become connected educators. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teachers-becoming-connected-educators-lisa-dabbs

EDU 6942 Course Reflection

In late August and September I had the privilege of observing an 8^th grade language arts classroom in a middle school in Seattle. One part of this observation that made a major impact on me was how my mentor teacher worked to create a foundation of effective classroom management during the first days of the school year. On the first day of school, my mentor teacher took a strict stance with students and showed no tolerance for misbehavior. However, in one class on the first day, I witnessed two students misbehaving and being confrontational toward this teacher when she called on them to change their behavior. The teacher became flustered and removed them from the classroom and they both ended up switching classes. This interaction was very stressful for the teacher, but she started the next day’s class by apologizing for the previous day and telling students that they would start fresh that day. After this first day, I witnessed very little misbehavior because she had set the tone on the first day. For me personally, this was beneficial because I was able to witness one of my worst fears going into teaching. I am glad that I saw an administration that supported the teacher and see a teacher apologize to students and deliberately change course in how the class would go. I do not know if being especially harsh on the first day of school is the right way for me, but I have learned the importance of setting standards of behavior early on, sticking to them, and changing course when something goes wrong. One thing I would change from my mentor teacher’s method is explicitly teaching specific rules and expectations. This teacher implied that students should already know how they are supposed to act in her class because they are in 8^th grade, but I read in the article “Creating environments of success and resilience” and agree that it is important to explicitly state behavior expectations, model those expectations and give examples, provide rationale for those expectations, and regularly review those expectations with students over the first several weeks of school (Bondy, Ross, Gallingane, & Hambacher, 2007, p.338).

Another beneficial part of my observation was getting to witness my mentor teacher opening up to students so they could get to know her. She gave students a brief presentation about where she grew up, some stories of when she was in school, and also that her son was starting at the school that year. This gave students insight into her life not only as a teacher, but also as a student and mother. After the first day I felt that I had a good idea of her personality and background without learning “too much.” Opening up is a crucial part of creating effective teacher-student relationships (Bondy, et al, 2007), but when I was growing up I rarely experienced teachers who appropriately shared their personal lives with students; typically I either knew nothing about their lives outside of school or I knew too much because they spent class time going on unrelated tangents. Since my natural inclination is to keep my professional and private lives separate, it was beneficial to watch a teacher share an appropriate amount of personal information with students and observe the impact this had on building teacher-student relationships. I think that planning my introduction to students would be a good idea for me because I can consider the personal information I feel comfortable sharing with students. I will have the opportunity to practice this introduction during my internship and then make changes before I start teaching next fall.

References:

Bondy, E., Ross, D. D., Gallingane, C., & Hambacher, E. (2007). Creating environments of success and resilience: Culturally responsive classroom management and more. Urban Education, 42, 326-348. 

How can I model and teach being an ethical and responsible digital citizen?

I found many different types of resources to help me answer my trigger question for ISTE 4, so I focused on modelling responsible social media use in the classroom.  In my search I found opinion pieces on what teachers should teach students about using social media, resources detailing how teachers should model using social media responsibly, and free lessons and tools teachers can use in the classroom to teach students about social media and other topics in digital citizenship.

First I found the article “Modeling constructive online behavior,” in which the author discusses how he models responsible social media use for his students by sharing his private social media accounts with them. While I would not feel comfortable sharing this much of my private life with students, I do think it is important for students to see positive models of social media use. I also think students benefit from seeing examples of irresponsible social media use and the consequences that can come from it. There are many recent examples of young people and adults facing serious consequences because of their actions on social media that could be used in lessons about appropriate behavior on social media.

One of my classmates shared the article “Should teachers be using social media in the classroom?” in which two teachers share disparate opinions on the issue. The first teacher utilizes Facebook, Twitter, and student blogs in their classroom while the other refuses to use social media at all because they believe it makes young people more self-centered. Though I disagree with the practices of both of these teachers regarding social media use in the classroom, reading their arguments helped me clarify my own views on the subject and I feel that I fall somewhere in between their positions.

The final resource I looked at was Common Sense Education, which offers free lessons, games, and advice for teaching students about digital citizenship. This resource has the potential to be very useful; it offers resources for all grade levels and covers several topics of digital citizenship, including safety, privacy, cyberbullying, and digital footprint. 

Social media has become a major influence in students’ lives, and digital citizenship is becoming increasingly important. It is my job as a language arts teacher to teach students how to communicate in various formats, and now social media needs to be one of those formats.

References

Common Sense Education. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship

Cutler, D. (2015, October 22). Modelling constructive online behavior. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/modeling-constructive-online-behavior-david-cutler

Leicht, G., & Goble, D. (2014, October 1). Should teachers be using social media in the classroom? Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/social-media-valuable-tool-teachers

How can I use digital tools to collaborate and communicate with families in order to support student success?

Throughout the MIT program, I have learned how important it is to collaborate with families. As a future secondary teacher, this can be quite an undertaking because of how many students I will have. For this module, I wanted to research ways that I can utilize technology to make collaborating with families easier. The resources I will actually be able to use will be impacted by my school district; however, since I am not working in a school yet my main goal is to become familiar with some of the available programs so I have background knowledge of the types of programs that could be helpful.

To answer my trigger question I read the article “6 Tech Tools That Boost Teacher-Parent Communication”. This article mentioned several types of programs that could help involve parents in students’ day-to-day learning in different ways:

·       Remind, a program which lets teachers quickly communicate with students and parents using text messages

·       Seesaw, a digital portfolio tool that lets students share their classwork with their families online

·       Thinkwave, an online gradebook that lets families stay up to date with their children’s progress

·       EduBlog and Weebly, which let teachers set up classroom blogs and websites to help families know what their children are learning and provide general information about the class and available resources

·       Twitter can be a fast way to update students and parents with classroom announcements and assignments

I also researched Schoology, a program that I have observed at several Seattle Public Schools. Parents can set up a Schoology account that is linked to their child’s account in order to see what their children are doing in class and monitor their children’s grades and communicate with teachers one-on-one and as a group discussion with other parents. One of my classmates mentioned looking up Skyward, which they use in their district. Like many of the other programs I have encountered, Skyward allows parents to view their children’s grades and test results and promotes teacher-parent communication with a social media-like platform. My classmate also mentioned SWIFT, which lets teachers create classroom websites including various features such as a class calendar, announcements, discussion board, and a list of resources.

I was also reminded to think about the reality that many parents may not have access to technology or have language barrier that would get in the way of their taking advantage of these programs. Whenever I use one of these technologies to give parents access to certain information, such as a class calendar or list of resources, I need to make sure that all parents have access to this information. One way that I can ensure that I am reaching all parents is to survey them at the beginning of the school year about their preferred means of communication. If some parents prefer to have information sent home with their children in a paper format, then I will make sure to have that available. Technology is a great way of making collaboration easier for teachers and parents, but we are not ready for it to fully replace other means of communicating.

During my search I have found many different resources that I can potentially use to communicate with families and keep them involved in what their children are doing in my classroom. I do not know what resources my school will have available for me to use to communicate with parents, but I have a better idea of what many of these programs can offer.

References:

Knutson, J. (2016, August 23). 6 Tech Tools That Boost Teacher-Parent Communication. [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/blog/6-tech-tools-that-boost-teacher-parent-communication

Puget Sound Educational Service District. SWIFT. Retrieved from https://www.psesd.org/technology-services/swift-simplified-web-interface-for-teachers/

Schoology. Retrieved from www.schoology.com

Skyward. Retrieved from https://www.skyward.com 

How can I utilize technology to assess students’ progress and help them assess their own progress as readers and writers?

Throughout this module I have tried to answer the question, “how can I utilize technology to assess students’ progress and help them assess their own progress as readers and writers?” I mainly focused on finding tools that could help my students and me assess their writing progress, and found several that addressed my question in the article “New Wave in Writing.” After sharing this article with my classmates, I learned that several of my peers are also interested in finding tools to help students monitor their progress as writers. Of the resources listed in the article, the ones that offered immediate feedback to students and progress reports to teachers are Write to Learn by Pearson, Revision Assistant by Turnitin, and PEG Writing:

·       Write to Learn scores students’ writing using a variety of rubrics, including a college and career readiness, ELL, and six traits of high quality writing (ideas, organization, conventions, sentence fluency, word choice, and voice).

·       Revision Assistant offers specific feedback on students’ analysis, focus, language, and evidence in their writing.

·       PEG Writing provides students with feedback and scores for textual evidence, content accuracy, and the six traits of high quality writing.

On the surface, all of these tools appear to offer very similar services, and I need to do more research to determine which one is best.

One of my peers shared an online resource that I can use to help students engage in and improve their writing—Storybird. This free tool motivates students to create digital stories—picture books, chapter books, and poetry—using artwork as inspiration and allows classmates to give feedback on one another’s stories. This could be an engaging alternative to the standard academic paper format for summative assessments, which according to Professor Davidson Of Duke University, “is a real disincentive to creative but untrained writers.”

When I looked for a tool for assessing students’ reading progress, I went back to one of the resources that I discovered during the first module—Biblionasium, which is similar to Goodreads, but is specifically designed for kids. While further exploring this site, I discovered a feature that provides teachers with reports of students’ reading for a given time period. On this report page, teachers and students can see: the books students report they have finished, how much time and the number of pages they report they have read, the reading level of each book they have read, and the Lexile range of each book they have read. If students are entering this information consistently and accurately, this information could be very useful in monitoring how much students are reading and the level of books they are reading.

References:

Biblionasium. Retrieved from www.biblionasium.com

Fink, J. (2016). New WAVE in writing. District Administration, 52(8), 49-51.

PEG Writing. Retrieved from www.pegwriting.com

Revision Assistant. Retrieved from ww.turnitin.com/en_us/what-we-offer/revision-assistant

Richtel, M. (2012, January 20). Blogs vs. term papers. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/muscling-in-on-the-term-paper-tradition.html

Write to Learn. Retrieved from www.writetolearn.net

How can I use technology to inspire and encourage middle school students to read?

In trying to answer my trigger question about how to encourage middle schoolers to read, I found that letting students use ereaders to read their books. According to the SAMR model that I learned about in this week’s lecture, utilizing ereaders augments, or “substitutes with functional improvements”, the reading experience (Wicks, 2017). Ereaders make it possible for students to quickly look up words in the dictionary, make notes in the text, privately read books that they might otherwise be embarrassed of reading in front of their peers, and use the voice-to-text feature, which can be especially helpful for ELL students (Miranda, 2012). These ereader features can make reading an easier task for struggling readers. Several of peers also pointed out that textbooks frequently have even more online resources for students that can help them engage with the text, and that students can also have the choice to read books on their smartphones.

However, after finding the ereader option I am not fully satisfied that it answers my question. In other courses I have learned that students are frequently motivated by personal choice, social interaction, and competition—along with utilizing ereaders, I need another option that can employ these elements. I want a program where students can search for and save books they might like, recommend books to one another, review books, and track their reading. I found two options for this: Goodreads and Biblionasium, which is similar to Goodreads but is designed specifically for children. I have used Goodreads myself and I like the idea of giving students a tool that adult readers use, but I need to explore the options further in order to pick the resources that fulfill my needs and are still appropriate for students.

References:

Biblionasium. Retrieved from www.biblionasium.com

Goodreads. Retrieved from www.goodreads.com 

Miranda, T, Johnson, K. A., & Rossi-Williams, D. (2012). E-Readers: Powering Up for Engagement. Educational Leadership, vol. 69. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/jun12/vol69/num09/E-Readers@_Powering_Up_for_Engagement.aspx

Wicks, D. Module 1 Hangout Recording (screencast). (2017). Retrieved from https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/40646