Month: March 2024

I have to be honest…. I don’t watch, listen or look for the news anywhere. Ever. I cut news out of my life more than a handful of years ago because I found that everything that was being reported was full of negativity and quite honestly, it was hurting my heart. When people are discussing current events, I often have not heard about them (ahem, Kate Middleton discussion on Tuesday night? I had no idea what was going on!) and 99% of the time, it doesn’t bother me.

No news is good news, right?!

This week’s class was actually incredibly eye opening, but also stirred up a sense of fear inside me. I feel like I’m pretty good at identifying, say, a fake social media profile, but this new AI technology where “people” aren’t actually the “real people”? That freaks me out. I think it’s completely unfair for people to take advantage of these new technologies to try and scam people just because it’s so easy for them to do so and is yet another reason why I stay off the internet as much as possible. Or, is this just solidifying a belief that I hold onto and it doesn’t actually make it correct?? According to npr, it is much easier to call a fact a fact when it is something that you like or agree with. This makes sense to me, but I recognize that it doesn’t aid in the process of sharing factual information if our personal bias keeps getting in the way!

Image source here: https://imgflip.com/i/1qdll1

With the digital world and technology continuing to evolve at a break-neck pace, it is important to be teaching students about digital literacy, but how can that even be done effectively? We must start the discussions at a younger age now as so many youngsters are regularly accessing the internet without a doubt being exposed to clickbait in the process. In the Canadian School Libraries Journal article from our reading list this week, it references the National Enquirer papers that were so boldly displayed at the grocery store alongside other tabloids. When I was a kid, this was our clickbait – bold fonts and headlines to grab your attention – except I would just out that back on the shelf and walk away.

The difference in the articles today is that the entertainment factor has disappeared and has been replaced with an ominous presence. All of the technologies seemingly used to dupe anyone and everyone continue to make it harder and harder to decipher what is real or true and makes me question what I can actually believe.

The Backfire Effect, as creatively outlined in The Oatmeal’s comical demonstration, deserves some attention. I have personally suffered from the backfire effect many times in my life. I just didn’t realize there was a name for what I was feeling! This creative article confirms that it’s normal to feel upset when someone challenges beliefs that you’ve held for most of your life. Who wouldn’t? But, it also highlights the importance of listening to a new point of view and allowing time for your emotions and your brain to calm down if your longstanding beliefs have been challenged. I don’t disagree with that suggestion!

I cannot share the source of this particular photo or quote because I have no idea where I found it, but I’ve had it saved in my camera roll since… 2018!

The NCTE framework is something that can be reviewed and considered in any subject requiring access to tech and the internet for research purposes. The foundation of the framework and the need to exhibit caution in evaluating and analyzing sources remains important across all subject areas. Teaching students how to determine whether a source is relevant and acknowledging the perspective that the information is being presented from is also very important. The research and identification process becomes increasingly difficult with every fake news article posted on the internet. Providing grade and age appropriate examples of how to identify false information, especially with our younger students, will hopefully set them on the right track to be able to discern between “real” and “fake” although I question my abilities to do the same on an almost daily basis.

For everyone out there accessing the vast, scary place called the internet, my advice is to err on the side of caution!

During our class last Tuesday evening I had a flashback to last school year during the Scratch demonstration… some students I was working with had gone through multiple simple coding exercises to get to the point where they were able to use Scratch on their own.

Floating around the classroom, I returned to one student’s work station and I think there may have been 14 dragons of all different colours plastered on the screen!

(Believe me when I say this a minor representation of what the student’s screen showed!!) There should also be a warning that pops up before adding the “meow”…….

I decided to check out the Hour of Code options since I had never heard of it before. What a cool website! I love that there are so many different options for ability levels. With technology being introduced and used at younger and younger ages, it is beneficial to have learning options available to those in the pre-reader age range. I also think this is beneficial to those that may be learning a new language as to not feel overwhelmed with a task such as this. The article I’ve linked even suggests that games can be a helpful way to learn a new language, in this case, English.

This is where I need to shoutout . As soon as I saw the T-Rex option, there  was no changing my mind as to which game I was going to code! As it it turns out, it was super fun and super easy. I definitely found Scratch harder to navigate when we used it in the classroom. That being said, I chose the beginner level because that is where my brain is able to process these new and challenging technological pieces!

Fun fact: one of my kids (no one will admit to who actually did the deed) created a YouTube channel in my name back in 2018. They really liked Brawl Stars so that eliminates one of the three… anyway… My “original” YouTube channel is now strictly dedicated to streaming my kids’ sporting events. Between volleyball and basketball, one would have an entire weekend of entertainment lined up!

Instead, I went out on a limb and created a new YouTube channel so that I could share some of the videos that I recorded of my progress in creating this little T-Rex game! I probably shouldn’t pat myself on the back to quickly, but I navigated the YouTube app like a pro <insert pat on the back here>

Please enjoy this short video clip of one of the final stages of my coded T-Rex game!

I feel like incorporating tech into the classroom and introducing coding to our students is nearing a must. Technology is where it’s at, and has been for a number of years. I acknowledge that I am a much older learner, but I am coming around to these new apps and technologies that so many of you are already familiar with. I might actually be proof of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”! But, please don’t refer to me as an old dog because that would make me grumpy!!

Last week in our breakout rooms I shared with everyone in the group that I was pretty sure that I’m quite a few years older than most everyone in this class which means the internet was a new thing when I was growing up. We had six Mac computers in my elementary school library…… and they weren’t connected to the internet. One of our tasks in my computer class in junior high school (we had an entire classroom full of computers and had an entire class dedicated to learning how to type) was to create an email address – this was a brand new thing for us teenagers to have our very first Hotmail email address! I’d still be using mine today had it not been hacked and used to send spam emails from an IP address that pinged dangerously close to Buckingham Palace!

There was no discussion about cyber safety when I was in school. With the internet being such a new thing, there were far less threats out there than there are now. When you typed in a subject to search into good old Netscape Navigator, you got all of one page of hits and each of the links took you to a website that had information that actually pertained to your topic. Can you even imagine?! I’ve learned a lot along the way as the internet has changed into what it is today. Trying to explain to my own kids that not everything you see is actually what you’re looking for was something that was important to me. And with almost all research being done online rather than through the use of physical books at a library, it is so important to be aware of what you’re looking for and to know how to decipher truths from all the garbage that floats around in cyberspace.

Approaching digital citizenship and cyber safety in the classroom can be related to situations in real life. I think we all need to approach our online presence as we do our real lives. If you wouldn’t say the thing you’re about to post online to someone’s face, then you’d best reconsider posting it. Be respectful is always my main message!

Being mindful and setting screen time limits as an adult can be hard some days, but as we discussed in class, adults need to set the examples for children and model behaviours that we expect to see from our children and our students. I think it’s important to emphasize to our youngsters that it is important to be respectful of someone when they ask you to shut down an app or put away a device, whether it be at home or at school. I also think it’s important for kids to know that it’s actually okay to not have all of the same apps as their peers and they shouldn’t feel pressure to use certain apps just because the majority of others are partaking. I will use my own son as an example – he just turned 18, but about a year ago he decided that he was wasting (his word, not mine) too much time on Snapchat and deleted the app. Did he take some heat from his friends? Yep. Did he rejoin the world of Snapchat? Nope.

Jorgenson’s article The IRL Fetish hits on many points that I have thought about not necessarily in my own life, but definitely in my own children’s lives. A lot of younger people lack the “real connection” that comes from face-to-face conversation and some even struggle to hold a conversation or maintain focus. My first smartphone was the iPhone 4. Because I don’t care about having the latest technology, I’m sure I waited to upgrade my old flip phone until I could grab an iPhone for $0! My kids were never allowed to have my phone. When we went to the grandparents’ houses for supper, they were (and still are) expected to engage in conversation with the “old people”. When we would go out for supper on occasion, the kids were expected to engage in conversation or do some colouring, but screen time was never allowed at the table. I’ve had adults, mainly my kids’ teachers, comment on how nice it is to have a conversation with my children because many kids lack conversational skills these days. I do attribute that to my refusal to allow phones at the table and the necessity to engage in conversation. Being present and in the moment is much different than feeling the need to take a photo to document everything to be posted online to prove that it actually happened.

Ribble’s Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship were bound to need to change or evolve over time. The internet has changed so much over time that any recommendations or suggestions would surely need to be updated or changed. His nine core ideas are very much valid, and will continue to be, but he will likely have to tweak his wording again in the next decade.

My relationship with the internet, cyber security and digital citizenship is very different than my children’s and my students. Being forced to adapt to the changes that have happened over the last thirty years has been beneficial as a learn as you go and a learn as you grow process. These days I just want to wish parents “good luck” as they navigate this new era of digital madness!