“…students are often not learning to be safe and responsible Internet users at home, so schools and teachers must make sure that students are acquiring these skills in the classroom; otherwise we are putting young people at risk.” -Page 7

“If we want students to be lifelong learners, they should see learning as something that can happen at any time, but by keeping technology out of the classroom, we send the message that school is separate from “real life.” ….Incorporating digital worlds and digital citizenship into the curriculum helps bridge the gap between school and home.” -Page 9

Digital Citizenship in Saskatchewan Schools – Policy Planning Guide

Ribble’s Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship – Reflections.

Here are some of my own notes and takeaways of the main points from the guidelines;:

-Respectful and appropriate communication to and with others

-Allowing children to fully participate in digital society

-Understanding ethics, laws and legalities

-Understanding the implications of digital communications and digital footprint

-Teachers must develop their own digital literacy capacities first; then they can pass this important knowledge on to students

-How money is spent online, taking care and cautions, and avoiding scams

-Exploring freedom of expression and protection from bullying and harassment online

-Balancing physical and emotional health and wellness with internet use

-Protection of personal data, protection from viruses

-Bring your own device policies and programs: There are benefits to letting kids use their own devices!

As Educators, we must:

-Always be teaching at age and grade appropriate levels, embedding knowledge within various subjects whenever possible and appropriate

-Be familiar with outcome and indicator goals and incorporate appropriate teaching and learning within these contexts

How to connect Ribble’s nine elements of digital citizenship with grade levels, subjects, outcomes and indicators?

-Introducing digital literacy as a core learning goal, at the beginning of each school year

-Use of multi-disciplinary learning: For example, embedding digital literacy practices into other subject areas. E.g. As learning increasingly uses more digital software and platforms, digital literacy practices accompany.

-As the class becomes more familiar, asking them to draw upon their knowledge and share with classmates and teachers what they have learned and are practicing

-Children learn to analyze, and explain the purposes of digital literacy practices, breaking it down into step-by-step practices and purposes

-Schools become digitally literate, and it becomes a common school language

-Children understand the knowledge and expectations appropriate for their age and learning level, and are able to apply these skills in the classroom.

How can you integrate digital citizenship into your future classroom?

-Have regular, open-ended discussions with students

-Keep a list of goals and priorities on the wall

-Allow students to reflect and grow on their digital experiences

-Teach scenarios: “What is the worst that can happen?” and “What does healthy digital citizenship look like?”

-Create mini workshops and tutorials for parents to help keep them updated, educated and informed

Student’s need to develop twenty-first century skills!

Apollo Research Institute’s 10 key skills critical for the future workforce are:  

-sense-making  

-social intelligence  

-novel and adaptive thinking  

-cross-cultural competency  

-computational thinking  

-new-media literacy 

-transdisciplinarity  

-design mindset  

-cognitive load management  

-virtual collaboration

Supporting digital fluency will help nurture the development of these skills.

Some ideas for using iMovie in the Classroom. And how does this fit in with the SAMR Model?

As I read about ways to use iMovie in the classroom, I can’t help but think about some of my own ideas and inspirations for classroom learning.

1. Use for collaborative learning
2. Projects for kids to share their learning experiences with their parents (and classmates!)
3. Telling Stories
4. Helping kids to learn step by step processes
5. Documenting classroom experiences
6. Field trip videos!
7. Doing a photography project and creating a slideshow with music
8. Self-Awareness and Awareness of others practices: Using media to help kids talk about their personality qualities and how they see themselves and others.
9. Making videos about feelings. E.g. What does Peace look like? What does Peace feel like? Etc. 
10. Incorporating nature into the classroom using video technology. Why not get out and film a river flowing for a while, and then make an iMovie to play as a peaceful background during quiet reading or reflection time?! Kids could learn the story and history of this river, spend some time at this river as a class, and then connect with this river via video in this classroom while they work.
11. Increasing access and connection to First Nations culture by various forms of video. Creating community partnerships and engaging in projects to increase availability of relevant video materials to students. Ideally, students are part of these projects and feel connected to the videos.
12. Classroom video exchange – The next step up from Pen Pals – A video exchange group between two cross-country (or cross-world?) classrooms!

SAMR Model:

This is my favourite depiction of the model.

The 4 Stages of EdTech – The SAMR Model for Technology Integration

How Does iMovie fit into the SAMR Model?

The use of iMovie easily slides across the three furthest domains of Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. With iMovie, there is space and opportunity for functional improvement in learning (Augmentation), resdesigning tasks (Modification) and redefining how kids learn entirely!

Here are a few helpful articles with useful tips and ideas:

Six Ways to Enhance Students Learning Using iMovie

Five Ways to Use iMovie in the Classroom

According to Michael Wesh, “When medias change, human relationships change.”

In his YouTube Documentary, “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube” the themes of global community and connection are explored as viewers learn about the history of the ever-popular YouTube website.

The concept of cultural inversion stands out. Welsh analyzes the dialectic of expression: individualism, independence, and commercialism to value: community, relationships, and authenticity.

We are expressing one thing, while valuing something else. YouTube seems like such a powerful medium to hold space for the entirety of this dialectic. Wesh says that cultural inversion leads to cultural tension. This community has provided a global space, and is one form of response, or expression to that tension.

The values we must explore as future educators, living in an educational technology world, require intellect, understanding and knowledge. We need to know the programs. We need to know the systems. We need to know the benefits. We need to understand the risks. We need to keep our students safe, and we need to keep them connected to their communities.

We need to be able to utilize technology in ways that seek to support our students’ capacity for growth and connection, all while informing their awareness of potential risks and minimizing any harm to them.

There’s a lot to be said about the potential for creating wide open spaces on the internet, where people can experience a sense of freedom in creativity, and self-expression. As Wesh puts it, webcams or watching others on video may give people the “freedom to experience humanity without fear and anxiety.” This idea has significant implications, and though as Educators we wish to create varied forums for self-expression, we must stay cautious.

Our ultimate goal in using technology is to increase human connection – between our students.

Finding a balance between technology use, and providing opportunities for real-world interactions and in-person social interaction, including the development of interpersonal skills is critical. If we can harness the power of Ed Tech to help benefit our kids’ relationships safely, then we know we are doing a good job.

Let us always seek to find a balance, and to keep mental health at the forefront of our educational goals.

Connection matters. Human connection matters. Connection can happen in various forms – and we can be open to grow and change with the new possibilities that each year and generation of technology offers. Let us open up our practices and classrooms to evolve with technology safely.

How can Twitter be used in the classroom?

-Twitter Chats 

-Sharing Resources – using hashtags and having specific hashtags for a class or group

-Collaborative Learning – sharing ideas with a focused learning purpose

-Developing a sense of community through class engagement

Twitter is used for a variety of interactions:

-Hashtags -Mentions -Replies -Networking -Dialoging

How can Twitter be used as a professional development tool?

Twitter is a great way for education students as well as new teachers to access a variety of resources. One of the suggestions made in class is to find different people and groups to follow.

Connecting with other students in education has huge benefits, for helping us learn together, share our ideas, and grow as a community of educators.

“Twitter is whatever you want it to be” – Teach Thought

I found a great guide for Teachers getting started. 

The Beginner’s Guide To Twitter For Teachers In 10 Steps

Here are some of the best Educational Accounts on Twitter to follow!

50 Of The Best Education Accounts On Twitter

Some of my personal challenges using Twitter so far:

-Keeping it brief is hard for me! During the class #SaskEdChat I found myself wanting to write long comments, but having to reduce my words to fit the limits, and then struggling to keep up with the pace of the chat as a result!

-Linking Twitter to my blog site took me a bit of playing around, but eventually I got it!

-There are so many interesting people, groups, chats and hashtags to follow. It was hard for me to stay focused!

And finally, from the journal of Educational Technology:

“Students, teachers, and other stakeholders use it as a pedagogical tool to gain information, interact and engage with each other, participate in their respective communities of interests, and share their insights about specific topics. Moreover, Twitter has the potential to enhance students’ learning capabilities as well as improve their motivation and engagement due to its unique features and non-traditional teaching approach.”

Retrieved from: https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-019-0166-x

This week, I subscribed to Feebly, an online feed reader that organizes information from the web into one place. A few categories I set up to organize my favourite topics are: Education Resources and Yoga!

Two favourite education resources I discovered are:

1. Ted Ed

Ted Ed consists of short educational videos. This site is an offshoot of the Ted Talks, with videos designed specifically around educational topics.

I watched a cool video about the air we all breathe – this feels especially relevant in the era of global warming and the season of the covid pandemic and continual mask wearing. We need to think about our air!

2. Teach Thought

This site offers a wealth of teacher resources including quotes, inspirational and ideas lists, podcasts, workshops and webinars.

I read a great article about Reciprocal Teaching, where students take on both roles of teacher and learner within small groups as a method of improving their reading comprehension. I love collaborative learning approaches, and I like encouraging learning that involves using multiple areas of the brain to help solidify understanding and information consolidation.

What Is Reciprocal Teaching?

I am looking forward to using Feebly! I have never used this app before and it’s cool to try something new! It’s got a great set up – right off the bat, it seems very organized and easy to set up! The one downside seems to be that the search options seem limited without paying for a subscription. For example, when I went to search for #naturekids (a topic I am very interested in), it said nothing was available without a subscription.

What is my experience with Educational Technology?

-For a long time, I have been fascinated by the use of tablets for communication support in kids with disabilities. For several years, I have followed the story of Carly – an autistic person – who learned to communicate with the use of a computer. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4311223&page=1

-My bonus daughter is a huge fan of the math learning game that she uses on her tablet at elementary school. It’s called Sum Dog! https://www.sumdog.com/cn/

-I have seen how some schools in Whitehorse make use of websites for building community and sharing learning adventures with parents. I think it’s a really cool way to get connected! Surely, it must instill a sense of pride and joy in children to show their work online to their parents and caregivers too!

-I follow some Facebook groups for teachers – one of my favourites is called “Teacher Memes” – It’s memes made by teachers trying to let off steam at the end of a long, hard day of teaching.

-Some of my classmates used Twitter in previous courses.. This one is new to me – I am open to learning.

-I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends. My Dad takes many beautiful photos of Yukon animals and landscapes. Here is a photo of an owl that he recently shared on Social Media:

What are my thoughts on Blogging?

-The best approach is to just sit down and write. Having a bit of an outline, or starting with a point form summary, seems to help me when I get stuck. Then I can just fill in the blanks for each topic!

-I feel relieved that I already have a blog set up from a previous course- it makes it easy to get started on making posts for this one! It’s also nice to have a written record of my learning experiences and journey.

-It helps me to write out my thoughts, and to articulate my ideas.

-I like the opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas with others in the class, to receive some feedback, as well as receiving guidance from the teacher.about:blankImageUpload an image file, pick one from your media library, or add one with a URL.UploadMedia LibraryInsert from URL