With more than 30 years as a teacher including over 20 in the educational technology field, I’ve heard many kids reflect thoughtfully, and not so thoughtfully, on their parents’ digital skills.
Here are the seven most common “I Wish” statements that I’ve heard expressed by children over the last 16 or 17 years. Two of them, I can report, my daughter also mentioned to me ages ago.
Kids wish their parents and other adults would: Continue reading “Digital Kids to Parents: Listen Up!”
I’ve embedded an interesting presentation by Lessig about reforming the United States Congress! Highlights are from a much longer presentation at the MIT MediaLab Conversation series.
Very much 21st Century Learning! And a great opportunity for a civics lesson.
Howard Rheingold presents on May 10th and you can even Tweet in with your questions.
Each time teachers comment on digital citizenship issues in the context of daily lessons and classroom life, they model, as all adults should, a digital intelligence — just what we want our students to embrace, whether they are working or playing in the today’s world.
As educators pay increasing attention to these digital digressions throughout the school day, they demonstrate critical values of 21st Century learning — and life — in a networked world. But more importantly, our students observe that just about every learning activity these days, whether digital or not so digital, incorporates time-tested values such as thoughtful evaluation, respect, collaboration, inclusiveness, and acceptance.
Five Digital Citizenship Minutes to Incorporate into Any Lesson
1. Pause for a moment whenever you use a web site, and explain one or two things that you like about it (or don’t like). Or explain just how you found the website
2. Share an irritating or inconsiderate e-mail or cell phone moment — telling your students how it feels and why.
Continue reading “5 Digital Citizenship Moments for Your Classroom”
A year ago I asked my fifth-graders to write podcast scripts. They wrote about teasing, cyberbullying, gossip, intention vs. consequence, advertising, digital footprints, and the lack of facial cues in electronic communication. Working mostly in collaborative groups, my students recorded complete “’casts” in our informal laptop studio.
As always when it comes to 21st Century learning, a few students improved upon my lesson plan and asked to write podcasts for their other teachers. The resulting efforts helped students refine their digital citizenship perspectives. One student noted, “When an electronic problem [like cyberbullying] becomes a ‘big problem,’ teachers talk about it at school. How come we don’t talk about these things when they aren’t [big] problems?”
Continue reading “The Digital Citizenship Minute: Digital Digressions in the Classroom”
Jessica Matthews, a co-creator of the energy-producing soccer ball, SOccket, visited my school today, taking the place by storm with her stories and engaging presentation.
A collaborative, 21st Century learning team working together for an undergraduate college class project, envisioned a soccer ball that might create clean energy as it moved around, while still being a ball for playing soccer. Their SOccket invention is astonishing and inspiring, creating enough energy to plug in a lamp or charge a mobile phone. Now, several years later, two members of the team have become social entrepreneurs, and SOccket is in production.
This CBS This Morning report gives lots more background. Two of the students, Jessica and her former classmate Julia Silverman, formed a start-up company, UnCharted Play and you can watch company’s introductory video, with an intro by Bill Clinton.
Are you thinking about starting a blog for school, work, or family? It a terrific communication opportunity.
At SomeNovelIdeas, a blog authored by librarian Stacy Nockowitz, would be bloggers will find a comprehensive list of links to help them get started. She organizes her links into following categories:
Also included at the bottom of the resource page is a glossary of blogging terms.
Last year I taught a short blogging course to parents at my school. My Start a Family Blog class, hosted on a WordPress blog for two months, is still available.
It’s a privilege for me to write occasional posts for the Teaching Tolerance blog. However, years before I ever wrote a word for the Tolerance website, I used it as a reference and information source to develop my teaching skills and expand my understanding of the world.
You should too.
If you don’t know about Teaching Tolerance, an arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, or if you don’t visit the website on a regular basis, you are missing an ever-expanding information universe focused on human rights, diversity, anti-racism, community-building, acceptance, tolerance, inclusion, and much more. In the digital age, with information and misinformation moving at lightning speed, we cannot learn too much about these topics.
Continue reading “The Teaching Tolerance Website: Use It-BookMark It!”
Media! Tech! Parenting! 
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