Digital Citizenship

With many teachers implementing blogs, social media, and computer use into their classrooms, too many cases of students taking advantage of this privilege have arisen. Teachers are being blamed for the inappropriate behavior and students aren't phased by the permanent impact that the internet has in their life. Parents are expecting teachers to supervise their students online behavior and are asking them to be responsible for posts and chats that are happening outside of the classroom. The situation is messy to say the least.

As an innovative educator, I am excited that many teachers are taking their first steps in implementing technology into the classroom. However, I believe that it must be implemented in the correct order. At a charter school in Riverside County, students are not allowed to go online until they complete a digital citizenship class and pass a digital citizenship test. Once the test is finished, they must sign a document that says that they will act like digital citizens and will follow the school's internet policy at all times. Teachers are extremely strict with this policy and students are issued strikes if they do not adhere to the rules. After three strikes, the student is dismissed from the school.

While this technique sounds like a great preventative measure, the school has still struggled with plagiarism, inappropriate comments left on a public google document, and many other minor issues along the way. In short, schools cannot prevent inappropriate things from happening online. It will take a joint effort between staff and parents to monitor and lessen the damage that students can do to themselves or others while on the internet.

In my classroom, I plan on having each student sign his or her name at the bottom of every assignment. Just like when you sign a legal document, you are certifying that the information above is true and correct and that you are the creator of the work. If and when a student in my class plagiarizes, I can then remind him or her about their signature. I believe this is one more way to hold students accountable for their work on and off the computer. That is the most important part to me.

Emerging Technology

For my final project in EDUC 515 Emerging Technologies, I researched the TouchCast software. It is an excellent idea for a classroom. Unfortunately, it has a lot of drawbacks that will discourage me from using it again any time soon. Hopefully the program gets some updates and revisions so that it is more teacher friendly.

Read my full review and thoughts on TouchCast by clicking the link below!
TouchCast Review

Unconference Success

A new tool that was introduced to me was the idea of an "Unconference". I heard about these online conferences through my EDUC 515 course at Azusa Pacific University. At first, I was a little confused about the way these conferences worked. So, I started working with them.

At first, I began by following @cybraryman and followed along with #edchat one evening. The chat was overwhelming because answers kept popping up every few seconds and I couldn't even scroll far enough down in the chat to find the question that these people were answering! When I finally found the question, there were twenty more responses that were available to read. To put it simply, I was confused! I was told that the best way to familiarize myself with these chats is to simply observe and get used to the format. So I did.

After that experience, I began looking for other chats that would be helpful to follow along. My interest was peaked when I heard about #mathchat. I was intrigued by this because I knew that a lot of educators just came back from ISTE and would have great apps to share for math. The chat that I followed along with became a great and interesting resource for my future classroom. The specific resource that I found was from a program called Slide Share and was uploaded by a math teacher. This resource provided me with 15 apps that are amazing for use in any classroom. I was so excited by this post and I began following the person who shared the slides with the chat. I did not participate in the chat by adding posts, but I did participate by retweeting some of the posts that I found to be the most helpful.

I am glad that I am learning about the effectiveness of these chats. For the future, I can see an Unconference being an awesome way to discuss staff problems or school concerns as they arise. I can also see unconferences being very helpful for classrooms during back to school night for parents who cannot make it to the classroom. I hope to find more ways to use this classroom tool in my classroom!