Author: Kassia Nameth (Page 3 of 5)

“Should we teach our children as though they have two lives, or one?”

Jason Ohler

In the article Character Education for the Digital Age, Ohler brings up this debate of forcing children to either live two lives by creating a divide between school and personal life by keeping schools “digitally unplugged” OR live one life by integrating the digital world into schools and informing students how to be digital citizens. As educators, we need to move away from the “two lives” approach and embrace the idea of teaching students to live one life. I think one of the biggest reasons why this needs to happen is because you can never really be “offline.” Jurgenson addresses this “digital dualism” in The IRL Fetish.

“It fails to capture the plain fact that our lived reality is the result of the constant interpenetration of the online and offline. That is, we live in an augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online.”

Nathan Jurgenson

Another reason I think the “one life” approach is necessary for the future is that technology just keeps getting more and more advanced and more and more children and adults are using technology more frequently. Furthermore, if teachers are going to be incorporating educational technologies into the classroom, children need to know how to properly use and interact with these technologies. You can’t just start throwing technology at them and hope for the best. Ohler addresses this in the article Character Education for the Digital Age.

“School is an excellent place to help kids become capable digital citizens who use technology not only effectively and creatively, but also responsibly and wisely. But we can only do that if we help them live one life, not two.”

JASON OHLER

Ribble has acknowledged nine elements of digital citizenship that I think will help make the “one life” approach become a reality. Furthermore, each of these nine elements contains three guiding principles of safety, savvy, and social. The nine elements are:

1. Digital Access
2. Digital Commerce
3. Digital Communication and Collaboration
4. Digital Etiquette
5. Digital Fluency
6. Digital Health and Welfare
7. Digital Law
8. Digital Rights and Responsibility
9. Digital Security and Privacy

How do I see myself integrating digital citizenship in my future classroom?

As previously discusses I think that I will include the “one life” way of thinking about digital citizenship into my future classroom.

One method I think we need to move away from as educators is the “scare tactic” method. It is far outdated and generally highly ineffective. I really liked what our EDTC 300 TA Amana Brace said during one of our lectures.

“I am a big believer that edtech, digital citizenship, digital footprints and all those things shouldn’t be scary things. So, when we’re teaching this to kids. We should not be using the fear tactics, we should be encouraging them to use it out of leadership and to use it as citizenship.”

Amanda Brace

I really want to bring this mindset into my future classroom because when I was in school, teachers used the fear tactics and looking back now it really isn’t the best option out there. The shift towards this new outlook of digital citizenship and empowerment is reflected in those nine elements I discussed earlier and even in Saskatchewan specific documents such as the Digital Citizenship in Saskatchewan Schools – Policy Planning Guide and the Be Kind Online Digital Citizenship Continuum.

Another aspect of digital citizenship I want to make a conscious effort to make room for in my future classroom is integrating student’s voices and ideas to make sure we cover what matters most to that particular group of students. Ohler talked about this in his article Character Education for the Digital Age.

“Schools should explicitly invite students to participate in such efforts for three reasons: students know far more about opportunities and perils in cyberspace than most adults do; their involvement gives adults and youth a chance to talk about a world in which the two groups rarely intersect; and, like adults, students will be more committed to living up to values they develop themselves than to values imposed on them by others.”

Jason Ohler

Where do I see myself integrating digital citizenship in my future classroom?

In terms of grade levels, I think the nine principles have a place in every grade level (this idea is broken out very nicely in the Be Kind Online Digital Citizenship Continuum). More and more children have access to technology and the internet at younger and younger ages. So, it is becoming increasingly important that students are learning how to be safe and educated digital citizens at a young age and then we can continue to develop those skills and introduce new ones as they get older. Also, as educators continue to integrate technology in the classroom it is important that we are helping students understand how to properly engage with the technology.

As for subjects that connect with Ribble’s nine elements of digital citizenship, the first subject to come to my mind was health. While reading and looking through the various articles and resources assigned this week I noticed every document touched on the connection between children’s health and technology. So, I decided to go through the health curriculum and pull out various outcomes and indicators that I think could/should include some of the nine elements of digital citizenship.

Grade Two Health:

USC2.1 Demonstrate a basic understanding of how thoughts, feelings, and actions influence health and well-being. [Digital Health & Wellbeing]

• b. Examine daily habits/routines that are healthy/unhealthy (e.g., eating breakfast/skipping breakfast, recycling/littering).
• f. Discuss the basic “cause-effect” relationship among thoughts, feelings, and actions (e.g., If I think I am smart, I will feel “content/confident” and I will try to learn. If I think I am “dumb”, I will feel sad/frustrated and I may not participate in class.).

USC2.4 Examine social and personal meanings of “respect” and establish ways to show respect for self, persons, living things, possessions, and the environment. [Digital Etiquette, Digital Communication]

• a. Develop a common understanding and use of respectful language to talk about “respect” (e.g., tone of voice, manners, behaviours).
• c. Determine how to show respect for own and other’s material possessions (e.g., ask before borrowing, put away when done using)

USC2.5 Recognize potential safety risks in community “play areas” and determine
safe practices/behaviours to identify, assess, and reduce the risks. [Digital Safety & Security]

• b. Examine expected behaviours and general safety rules in community “play areas” (e.g., parks, playground, schoolyard).
• c. Inventory personal habits with respect to safety in community play areas
• f. Discuss how safety rules/guidelines are established to reduce risks.
• g. Investigate ways to identify, assess, and reduce the risk of potentially dangerous and/or possible unsupervised situations in community “play areas”.
• i. Share the importance of practising safe behaviours in community “play areas” (i.e., one’s safety depends on the safety behaviours of others) and the possible consequences of using/not using safety knowledge and skills.

Grade Five Health:

USC5.4 Analyze the connections between personal identity and personal well-being, and establish strategies to develop and support a positive self-image. [Digital Health & Wellness]

• a. Investigate knowledge and information about self-image.
• b. Discuss criteria that can be used to determine if a health source is reliable.
• c. Describe the qualities that are important in a person, regardless of their gender, culture, appearance, sexual orientation, abilities, and/ or language.
• g. Reflect on self-image as “the way you see yourself as a result of what you believe about your appearance, abilities, and character”.
• h. Discuss the influence of self and others (e.g., family expectations, family values and beliefs, culture, religion) on one’s self-image.
• i. Explore and describe what one can think, say, and do to develop and/or support a positive self-image in both self and others (e.g., recognize and refrain from derogatory comments related to any aspect of one’s self-image, challenge stereotypes, bias, and discrimination that are based on appearance and/or self-image).

USC5.6 Assess peer influence and demonstrate a readiness to prevent and/or avoid potentially dangerous situations involving peer pressure (including lying, substance use, and bullying). [Digitial Safety & Security, Digital Health & Wellness]

• a. Discuss why peers pressure each other.
• b. Ask questions and seek answers for deeper understanding (Why is peer pressure often more prevalent during adolescence than during any other time in one’s life? How and why does peer pressure change as one gets older? Why can peer pressure be so powerful? How do my thoughts, feelings, and actions influence my peers?)
• c. Examine the different levels of pressure (i.e., internal, indirect, direct).

USC5.7 Assess the importance of self-regulation and taking responsibility for one’s actions. [Digital Health & Wellness, Digital Rights & Responsibilities]

• g. Compare scenarios where individuals do/do not self-regulate and the impact on self and others.
• h. Examine the influences on self-regulation, including that which comes from adults in the environment.
• i. Determine that all choices/decisions have consequences.
• j. Analyze the rights that go along with personal responsibilities

#saskedchat advice on the matter

My insight is that with the changes that we are seeing in more online learning, it is just becoming more a part of what we do with students. We talk about online etiquette, finding sources, how to interact because it's where we spend all day. #saskedchat

— Dr. K. Christopherson(he/him)? (@kellywchris) March 19, 2021

Have you checked out the resources at https://t.co/Q0eMByQotf or https://t.co/F1s73jLywj

— Dean Vendramin (@vendi55) March 19, 2021

Questions for my readers:

What resources have you found the most helpful for integrating digital citizenship into the classroom?

Do you have any experience integrating digital citizenship into the classroom? If so do you have anything tips or things that went well that you are willing to share?

Secondly, did you have any specific training for this? In the article Character Education for the Digital Age, Ohler says “The board provides teachers with training they need to effectively address issues of digital citizenship. It empowers teachers, librarians, and school counselors to become ethical coaches to help students navigate the many ethically charged issues associated with a digital lifestyle” and I am curious to know if any training like this actually ever happens?

Prior to last class and before watching the An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube video, when I thought about participatory culture my mind instantly went to newer forms of media such as TikTok or memes on Instagram. I didn’t think of YouTube at all but I was never big into the YouTube world and I guess I just didn’t see if as a place where people would recreate trends – or so I thought I thought.

However, as I was watching the video I got a whole wave of YouTube flashbacks from my childhood after the Charlie bit my finger video was brought up. Wesch brought up how “the Charlie bit my finger video was redone and remixed over 2,000 times” (14:12). My siblings and I found that video hilarious and we would watch all the remixes and recreations and quote it all the time. Then, I remembered how my siblings and I were also obsessed with thecomputernerd01 parody videos. I went back and listed to the “coke and sprite” Dynamite – Taio Cruz Parody for nostalgia sake and I somehow still know an embarrassing amount of lyrics. I feel like making parodies must have been a trend at one point because you could find so many. However, I think the fact that my siblings and I we were too young to actually join in on the participatory aspect of YouTube is why I kind of forgot about it and didn’t think of it as a big contributor to participatory culture – because it seems like YouTube now is just full of influencers.

I feel like participatory culture is really everywhere in the lives of youth now-a-days. I don’t know if I’m just getting old but it seems like the trends come and go way too fast for anyone to stay on top of them. When a sound becomes popular on TikTok I swear it will only be used for a week before there is a new major sound or trend.

I also have gotten myself onto fashion TikTok a couple times this year and even fashion trends move so quickly because everyone wants to different. So, once too many people catch onto the trend and everyone’s doing it, then it isn’t cool anymore so they find something else.

I think as educators it is very important to try and know what trends are happening in the lives of our students so that we can guide and support them and make sure students are participating in trends safely. Although Wesch stated that teens make up 25% of featured YouTube users and children make up 12% (13:17) these stats are from 2008. I think it is safe to say that these numbers would be drastically different today. Especially since we know that on average children today are 10.3 years old when they get their first smart phone and 11.4 when they sign up for their first social media account (Hildebrandt, 2021).

“Media is not content. Media are not just tools of communication. Media is mediating human relations“

Wesch (12:04)

In the video, Wesch describes how thinks of media as mediating human relationships because when media changes so do human relationships. This means that media has the ability to impact and change the education system. I think this has to potential to be a really positive thing. I always think about my first ever education class in university when the professors started by us “What is one thing that a time traveler from 100 years ago would be able to recognize in society” and the answer was classrooms.

So, if the education system let’s media in I do think that it would create positive change. For example, I think it would make more space for educational technologies. I think the educational technologies that teachers use also sort of follow a participatory culture of some sort. Teachers are more inclined to use the educational tools that are the most popular at a given time. The when a new and better tool comes along then all the teachers jump to that one. It also allows for teachers to use the various forms of media students use in classrooms to enhance learning. I think about a very simple but extremely creative example Sarah Stroeder found and shared on twitter.

This is so cool!

— Miss Nameth (@MissNameth) March 7, 2021

Another thing I thought about was how the education system has been viewed throughout history and how it changes (or more likely how people want it to change) to better meet social values. So, already I feel like media sort of plays a role especially since it offers a way for views to become widespread very quickly. You can have a PLN of people you have never met in real life because as Wesch describes media brings “new forms of community…global connections transcending space and time” (4:58). Teachers are using this to their advantage sharing and getting ideas with educators from all over. An example of this is the #saskedchat that connects educators from all over the province and beyond.

I was very excited for this weeks assignment because we have been learning about so many cool tools that I kept saying I would check out or try but then I never did but this project gives me a no-excuse-reason to try one out! In class, when Amanda was going over this assignment description and going over different tools I wasn’t too sure what tool I wanted to use. I was already making videos each week to document my workouts and I have used a couple screen casting tools before for projects.

Then, I found an article from The Cult of Pedagogy that discussed classroom jobs and how they can be beneficial in high school classrooms as well.

I am curious what everyone's experience with classroom jobs were growing up? I know for me, it was only a thing in elementary school. Because of this I never would have thought of the benefits for older classes. https://t.co/mFYqVyQyD6 #edtc300 #feedly

— Miss Nameth (@MissNameth) February 12, 2021

One of the classroom jobs high school students could “apply” for was podcaster. The job description went as follows:

“Produces a regular brief podcast on a topic of interest to students, using tools like Soundtrap or GarageBand to make it happen. To keep it manageable, Gibson recommends only having students do one podcast per month, and keeping each episode under 3 minutes”

Cult of Pedagogy

I thought this was such a cool classroom application of podcasts that it inspired me to learn a podcast tool for my blog this week. So, I started looking at the recommended podcast tools to see which one I should try. I quickly realized that I couldn’t use GarageBand that was recommended in the above article because on Katia’s list is says that it is a Mac only editing tool and I don’t have a Mac. So, based off the other tools Katia and Amanda recommended my other options were Zencastr or Anchor.

Thankfully, a few of my fellow classmates, Ian Mansfield and Janelle Boutin were on the ball and posted their blogs before I really got started with the tools (reading week has just been flying by) and they both recommended Anchor. So, I am glad that they did the hard work because it let me just jump straight to trying out Anchor!

Check out my experience using @anchor this week to document my #learningproject for #edtc300! Also, shoutout to @ism939, who inspired me to try #Anchor
Dropping my Anchor (on Spotify)/ That's How [Learning the Piano] Goes- Part 2 https://t.co/UjsnuAqhuJ via @wordpressdotcom

— Janelle Boutin (@jjboutin4) February 17, 2021

How to use Anchor:

When I first started playing around with Anchor I was using my laptop. So, the first step was making an account and verifying my email, then I was ready to get started with creating an episode!

The first thing I did was hit the “Let’s do this” button and just checked out what all the categories were for and did I recorded a little test audio to see how it sounded.

After doing that I decided that I wanted to switch to the app because I felt like the audio would be better from my phone than my laptop. The app was just as easy, if not easier, to use than the desktop version. I recorded my audio and then added in some interludes, one at the beginning and one at the end, and then I even played with adding some sound effects into the podcast episode too! Once you add audio, sounds affects, or interludes it is very easy to rearrange their sequence. You just have to press and hold the segment you want and then drag it to it’s new spot and then don’t forget to hit save otherwise it will just go back to the original order (I only made this mistake a couple of times before I realized there was a save button).

After I finished making the episode, I hit a minor roadblock when it came to actually posting it. I  was trying to hit the publish button and it wasn’t working which I didn’t understand why. Then I realized I hadn’t actually set up the actual podcast to post the episode to. Setting up the podcast was very simple and straight forward as you will see in the pictures below.

Once I had the podcast set up I could finally post the episode that was saved in my drafts. That was as simple as hitting the publish button and giving the episode a name (and later realized you also are required to have a description for it to work).

I honestly felt so cool seeing my published podcast and I was very excited to go see it on Spotify because that’s when you know it’s the real deal. However, I guess I was too impatient because it originally did not work and I got an error message (please don’t judge the song I was last listening to).

However, a couple minutes later I got an email saying that it had officially been approved to be on Spotify!

• 

• 

Now, it might seems like I am leaving you hanging here but…… you can listen to my actual podcast episode here. I know I know, I could have just included it here but I personally felt more organized giving the weekly blog part and learning project parts their own posts!

Throughout high school, twitter was the one social media platform I never really got into. Everyone I knew my age that used twitter was on it for the memes because apparently memes got popular on twitter and then after they were dying out on twitter they would become popular on Instagram, which is generally where I would see them. So, I would also get mad fun of for being “late to the game” on the meme trends. But from what people talked about around twitter it seemed like there was no community guidelines at all and people really just posted whatever they pleased which steered me away from getting twitter. So, I was very shocked in my first year education classes when they suggested everyone make a teacher twitter account. I thought to myself “really?!? Twitter?!” but now here I am learning about all the beneficial uses for teachers to be on twitter – who would have thought.

The twitter I am currently using I did actually get in my senior year of high school specifically for when my school hosted the region 10 drama festival. At previous festivals, they had started a hashtag for everyone to post on throughout the festival and I wanted to incorporate that aspect into our festival. Of course, our festival was vine and meme themed so the whole hashtag is just drama memes we made. Then the hashtag didn’t even catch on with the other schools at the festival. However, if you scroll far enough back you’ll see some random posts about that!

Getting all the goodie bags stuffed ? #skdramar10 pic.twitter.com/VJbBAaWAHZ

— Miss Nameth (@MissNameth) April 11, 2019

Then, once I started university, I started to morph my account into a teacher account and I pretty much just used it to post about different university events that I attended, mostly professional development events and then a little bit about my ECS 100 field placement.

I got to spend my Saturday morning at my first ever PD day along side my ECS 100 classmate and friend @TamaraBartley4! I was very nervous going into the workshop but I learned so much. Thank you @LeeAirton for coming to the U of R and providing us with the amazing workshop! pic.twitter.com/t5ctei6wH1

— Miss Nameth (@MissNameth) November 16, 2019

Although I have had my twitter for a couple years, I am really just starting to figure out how to actually work it and use it consistently. I am also really starting to understand why it is so beneficial for teacher, there is literally a whole community of teachers on twitter supporting one another and sharing their ideas – which is honestly so cool. I am actually shocked that I have never heard of the #saskedchat before! You think that in my first year when they were mentioning that we should all have twitters that they would explain why we should, which could maybe include talking about the #saskedchat. I think the ability to have an online support system has really increased in importance over the past year, so I can see my use of twitter growing for this reason.

This is so important! Thanks for sharing this https://t.co/eadAfzOIGu

— Miss Nameth (@MissNameth) February 4, 2021

I really enjoyed the #saskedchat week! I was excited, overwhelmed, in awe, and stressed all at the same time! I made a TikTok that describes how I felt during the chat to a T (also yes I realize that I made a TikTok and then upload it to YouTube to embed onto my blog, I forgot that you could just embed TikToks). I feel like some of my classmates may relate as well!

It probably just felt like this because it was my first ever chat and first time using Tweetdeck so there was a lot going on! I think it was helpful that we did the #saskedchat as a class because a lot of us were in the same boat when it came to being newbies and also with some of our answers to the prompts. So, it didn’t feel like I was the odd one out in a chat filled with very experienced teachers that had such good answers to every single question.

This week we were tasked with getting an RSS reader. This should have been a fairly simple task since Katia showed us exactly how to maneuver around the site and set up different feeds. However, I waited a couple days after class before I tried to set mine up and I somehow managed to forget everything Katia showed us and the zoom recording of our last class hadn’t been posted on UR courses yet. So, it took some playing around but it did eventually come back to me and I think I have it all figured out now.

To start following new sources, I searched a variety of things including: edtc, distance education, online-learning, early childhood education, elementary education, e-learning, education, and I also clicked on some of the suggestions that randomly popped up as well. With each of these searches I went through and pretty much just followed the ones that had the most amount of followers. Another thing that I was kind of looking for when following accounts was posts related to covid and the effect it has had on the education system. Then, I either added them to my #EDTC300 feed or my Elementary Education feed. I also added a Board so then I can scroll through my feeds and and add articles that I might want to post to twitter to that board.

One source that I found on Feedly was the Cult of Pedagogy . The account originally caught my eye because of the a podcast episode titled 6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2021 | Cult of Pedagogy which I saw when quickly glancing at the profile. I also noticed that the account had a lot of followers so I decided that I would also follow. Then, when I was on twitter, I saw that a fellow classmate, Laura Fiddler, had posted something about the Cult of Pedagogy’s Twitter account and there is plenty of good stuff posted on twitter as well!

Another Account that caught my interest is Mindshift KQED because their articles seem to be all about the impact the pandemic has had on the education system and how it has affected students. This is seen in articles such as:

• ‘I’ve Tried Everything’: Pandemic Worsens Child Mental Health Crisis – MindShift (kqed.org)
• Parents With Disabilities Face Extra Hurdles With Kids’ Remote Schooling – MindShift (kqed.org)
• Pandemic Schooling Is Overwhelming. Here’s How One School Lightened the Load. – MindShift (kqed.org)

I want to end off by asking if anyone has found any good Canadian sources to follow on Feedly? Also, if any of my fellow elementary educators out there found any good sources to follow, I would love to add them to my Elementary Ed feed (as you can see in the screenshot it is lacking)!