Yarmouth K – 12 Digital Citizenship

After working with the continuum, teachers, and students, it is clear that we live in amazing times!

What I did:

• I was able to get in to more classrooms this year and co-teach with teachers
• Teachers were very receptive to using new tools, particularly blogs and wikis. Some even expressed the issue of taking a risk and having that risk pay off because the level of engagement was so high.

What needs improvement

• The entire building needs to think about technology is impacting our daily lives, from teaching practice to day to day operations. I would like to see more people become involved in the daily management.
• We need to use this blog to comment on each other’s work.
• We need to get Katharine Heinz-Knowles in next year,

Mandy took part in my spring technology class where we learned about blogging and making wikis. She has been looking for a way to improve the junior common assessment, Women’s studies. This project involves community members who have read the same book to come in and discuss the book with students.

Mandy wanted the students to be more collaborative and share their thoughts about the books they were reading. I went in to her classroom to help her students create blogs, one for each book. They then used them to share reflections and make comments about the reading. Each blog is linked off of Mandy’s blog so that she can easily check them.

Mandy also wanted a way for the students to outline their notes so they could be prepared for the discussion. She created a wiki that the students could edit. On the day of the discussion, students recorded their book talk and we will work on posting those this summer. Mandy took a risk, but it was well worth it! The project was a grand success!

2. Articles in Educational Journals

Will Richardson, “The New Face of Learning”

Education Networks of America, “Networked for Learning: Enabling 21st Century Success”

Each month I read articles online as well as four journals that I receive. As appropriate I send materials on to teachers and staff members. I use RSS feeds to create http://www.pageflakes.com home page that has updates from several sources so I always have them on my Firefox home page.

Much has happened at Frank Harrison Middle School this year in the technology department. Both members of the Technology Department were new. Getting our new Instructional Technology Integrator, Mike Arsenault, and Technology Educational Technician, Jessica Smith, up to date with all the aspects of technology use at HMS took some time.

The school year started with a brand new set of MLTI laptops that were delivered to HMS. Each of these machines had to be set up with our custom image and inventoried for each user. All 7th and 8th student and teacher received a new laptop from the MLTI program. The laptops were rolled out to the students at the beginning of the school year. Jessica Smith has followed up with repairs throughout the year ensuring that the laptops are all operational.

HMS also welcomed a new librarian, Merry Kahn, this school year. Merry brought an energy and desire to make changes to our current library set up and technology. She decided to add multiple updates to our online card catalog system. The HMS Technology Department assisted in the installation and upgrades of the Alexandria card catalog system.

This year the Yarmouth School Department piloted NWEA Testing in grades 4-9. The NWEA testing is done completely on a computer and creates a custom assessment for each student based on their responses to each question. Mike Arsenault headed the installation of the testing system and assisted other district technology staff in implementing the testing. A select group of 4th graders and all students in grades 5 through 9 were tested in the fall and spring using the Mathematics and Reading tests.

Many teachers at HMS are beginning to use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. Much of the excitement of these tools has been a direct result of these teachers attending various district technology courses. Mike Arsenault worked with many of these teachers and their students as the participants of these courses completed their projects. Teachers and students are using Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts more and more at HMS through the support of the Technology Department.

The 2006-2007 school year is the first year that HMS has mainly provided student grading through the PowerSchool Parent Portal for the entire school year. This process has worked well. Each parent received a letter from Bruce Brann detailing the information on the portal as well as their login information. Students at HMS are currently using the portal to select their courses for the upcoming school year.

This year HMS has continued to host groups from around the world who are interested in successful 1:1 computing programs. We have entertained groups from Australia, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, Apple Computer, New York, California, and Vermont. HMS is continually viewed as a leader in 1:1 computing. View NY Times article on school laptop programs.

What will we do to examine our question?
1. Develop a sequential progression of instruction that we will use with students in grades 2-12 to address appropriate use of the Internet.

We started this progression and we will be working on it. This year students in 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade completed selected activities from the “NETSMARTZKIDS” website. Netsmartz Maine was selected by the Attorney General, the Education Commissioner and the Safety Commissioner for use by Maine teachers, students and families. Classes viewed online videos about Internet safety guidelines and created their own posters about the “Netsmartz Rules” and safety in the “Web World”. A hallway display contains the Netsmartz posters (4 Rules of Internet Safety & Guidelines for Kids Online) and the originalwork by students. Next year we plan to have the students create the posters in a program that is designed for Internet display so they can be viewed online. Sharing online will encourage individuality and allow students to see each others work. A large percentage of students in grades 2, 3 & 4 use the Internet at home. The Netsmartz lessons have given us an opportunity to have discussions with students about their experiences using the Internet for learning.

I belong to an educational group on line that webcasts. I have met some great educators in the process. When an opportunity to join a closed social network arose, I jumped at the chance to take part. Nancy Shaw was also game and with her creative writing class, we saw a way to share their work. Youth Voices is a way for students to write and comment on other students’ work, in this case in New York City.

At first some of the students were a bit ambivalent, particularly the seniors! Most of the juniors seemed to jumped right on, set up their profiles and then write their first post. Nancy and I were a bit concerned, but then we got an e-mail from Susan, the organizer of the project. She was so excited about some of the posts our kids were making. She said her students were commenting and very excited to write back.

As a matter of fact, I covered Nancy class one afternoon, and one senior was jumping up and down as he had received three positive comments on his last post. The assignment was one he didn’t particularly care for, but now he was willing to write some more because the three students had made some very constructive comments. Truly a new audience! It confirmed for me that students will write differently for a bigger audience. Collaboration is powerful.

Some of the other things I saw were students helping one another whether technologically or with editing. We gave very little instruction for how to set up their pages. Our job was to structure the assignments and in my case offer tech support which was barely needed. I am pretty convinced that this kind of community is a great motivator for student writing. Unfortunately you can’t just log in and see their work without an account, but if you are interested in seeing any their work, I would be happy to give you a tour.

Netsmartz in grades 2, 3, 4 & HMS?What do we already know? Do we need to survey or gather data?

What do we want to know from the kids?

We don’t want to just be the “police”, we want to talk about the responsibilities of being a citizen on the Internet.

Develop ideas and lessons about bandwidth use and filtering as a continuum through the grades so we can open things further and demonstrate accountability.

I want to thank Alan for embarking on this unit with me. It’s clear that our students are comfortable in an online world of social networking, but do they know what it means. We had thought about sending out a survey to students, but this project was much more effective in small groups.

Alan did a great job explaining to students what using new technology was like and how it had changed for him over the years. He also explained how the changes are more radical and prolific as we race toward the future.

After the students worked in their small groups and reported out, it was clear that the two biggest issues are invincibility and caching

Students did not know that web pages are cached and that anyone can see them, even though they have taken a picture down. My guess is that all of our students think this way. There was a general sense that Facebook is a student place and should be closed to all adults. Most of Alan’s students did not know that anyone can get a Facebook account.

When Alan and I debriefed, we talked about this as a possibility as a unit for all seniors or a possible Senior Seminar discussion. I think the critical piece of this unit was awareness. Part of being a digital citizen is knowing how to function in an online world and on our continuum under Technology literacy “students will consider and understand the global and dynamic implications of technology.”

In Human Behavior class students are learning different aspects of socialization and networking. One of the components is a discussion of online social networking sites. Our students are particularly comfortable with Facebook.

Reading for students:
Israel, Betsy. “The Overconnecteds.” New York Times Education Life05 Nov 2006
<http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20061106monday.html>.

Group Activity:

1. Students are be broken up in 5 groups and take a look Thoughts on Facebook; Cornell University’s policy toward Facebook and similar social networking sites which reveals a mix of encouragement and warnings.
2. Each group read a brief section of the report and identify just 2 or 3 key points spelled out in that section. Summarize the advice in clear and concise statements on the poster paper. Be prepared to explain it to the whole class and indicate what you like and dislike about the policy.

• • Group I – Invincibility
  • Group II – Caching
  • Group III – Freedom
  • Group IV – Responsibility
  • Group V – The Law
  • Group VI – Conclusion

Digital Citizenship in Grades 9 -12

What will we do to examine our question?

• Develop a sequential progression of instruction that we will use with students in grades 2-12 to address appropriate use of the Internet.

• Review of articles in Educational Journals

1. Pew Internet: Reports: Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview
2. The New Media Consortium, Educause Learning Initiative. “Social Networking.” The Horizon Report 2007 12 – 15. March 23, 2007 <http://www.nmc.org/horizon/>.

• Highlight the Internet Safety links available on our schools’ web pages through newsletters, parent contacts and classroom usage.

1. Human Behavior Class (see the January 24th post)
   

• Draft a set of standards that update our Appropriate Use guideline for students and faculty. These should be in School Handbooks and on the web pages.

• Goals for 2007-2008 School year

1. Student government come up with a set of guidelines for appropriate internet use

• possible model
• Look at the Horizon Report and explore the positive use of social networking

2. How do we train staff?