Teaching Digital Citizenship

As I looked through the McREL lesson plans, I realized that the Digital Citizenship standard could be applied to most lessons.

• Advocate responsible use
• Exhibit a positive attitude toward technology use
• Demonstrate personal responsibility
• Exhibit leadership for digital citizenship

In our classrooms we can create a culture of digital citizenship.  Here's an interesting site targeted to digital citizenship: http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/. They define digital citizenship "the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use."

Last night's class was fun for me as it let me recall my work developing policies and acceptable policies in school districts back in Michigan. I recall the first time around we had some help from vendors, other tech directors around the state, and, of course, our district attorney. Tapping the school attorney is an expensive endeavor so we would write first and get feedback after we had a pretty solid draft. Now schools can get sample policies from major law firms that represent boards of education, other districts, state and national technology groups, and the school business organizations.

Policies related to technology are there to ensure efficient operation and protect children, staff and the school district - and ultimately the community. It has been interesting to see policies change over time. As you continue your career, changing technologies, legal demands and the changing school culture will make us sharpen our policies. We do know what's to come in technology but I'm sure we'll be writing new policies  to keep up.

Making the Shift

At Western Michigan University, David learned a skills based approach to Physical Education and that approach was used in his internship in a high school setting. Here's a "skill's based" example - if the topic is basketball, students memorize the rules, are taught a skill like shooting the basketball, practice in class, and are assessed in their the improvement in scoring baskets. If they scored 1 out of ten times at the beginning of the unit and improved to 6 out of ten by the end of the unit they performed vary well. He started teaching at IMSA where the expectation was an inquiry approach. Students understand the elements of the shot, are provided a variety of experiences with the skill, can recognize a good shot, and can integrate shooting with other skills. We saw a piece is that last night as students analyzed Portia's technique to help everyone's understanding of the underhand serve. That was a major shift for David. But he has embraced the approach and continues to develop his classes in that direction.

His presentation made me think about the shift we are asking teachers to make to use technology in an effective way. We hope that they can move from making a special effort to integrate technology to treating technology as just part of their professional life. The McREL lesson plan is organized to force a teacher to include technology standards and technology tools. They day will come so that teachers include those elements as technology becomes as natural as a textbook or a chalkboard.
Dennis

Great First Day!

I see this is an advanced group – so far your blogs look great! The content is right on the spot. I hope you can all complete creating your blogs by class time tomorrow. If you are having trouble, we will take time during computer lab to get it going.

When writing real world blog entries, a post should start with a grabber, something to spark interest - then a bit of development - and end with intended action, an opinion, or if you want to enlist comments, a question. A picture, link, or video adds interest. Remember you are not writing a novel. Posts can easily get too long. 

During our class, applications each day, for the most part, are connected with the topics of the day. As you explore the apps, think about how they fit into our topic of the day and how the apps can be used to enhance learning. We are connecting Marzano’s instructional strategies to the categories of technology presented in the text.

The first day was a great start - well done! I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

Dennis