Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

In today's technology-driven world, educators as well as parents are immersed in activities that required the use of technology. Our students (children) effortlessly learn to use any and all technology that is available to them; however, they seldom think about the issues that are part of using technology such as safety, legal, and ethical responsibilities. Therefore, educators need to examine and apply the National Educational Technology Standard 4 for Teachers--Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility. As most school districts these days require all staff and students to sign some type of technology responsibility agreement at the beginning of each school year, students will undoubtedly explore technology without a second thought to the agreement they signed. This could result in safety, legal, and ethical issues. Bottom line...teachers must facilitate and model guidelines and procedures for technology use in their classrooms and even outside of the classroom. One way to complete this is when students begin to use new technologies, establish appropriate guidelines, procedures, and agreements. For example as part of a sixth grade literature group collaboration, students will enrich and expand their ability to collaborate by using a wiki space through wikispaces.com. Each student and parent will be required to read and sign a technology responsibility agreement. (The agreement will be available for parents and students to download from my school web page under "Language Arts -- Downloads".) In addition, the teacher will model appropriate use of the collaborative space.

Model Digital-Age Work and Learning

The question for today's blog is: How do teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society? This question was created from the National Education Technology Standard 3 (NETS) and reveals the importance of having 21st century skills as an educator. Currently, most school districts have some digital tools, simple to elaborate, that teachers may use to communicate with students, parents, and the community. In the Lebanon City School District, students, parents, and community member may collaborate and communicate with students, parents, and teachers through the district website. The website gives information about teachers, assignments, school calendar, educational resources, etc.

If you are an educator that is without a supplied media tool, you can still create your own. Google is a website where you can create a "free" account to use for a variety of digital sources. With an account on Google you may access a Google web page, Google reader, Google calendar, as well as Google word processing. Using this website can expand your ability to communicate with co-workers, parents, students, and community.

Learning and Assessments Continued...

As one of many educators who are responsible for instruction for more than one subject, you are always looking for a balance in learning, teaching, and assessment. Furthermore, with high stake testing driving what instruction should be, it's nice to find technology that engages students and can even assist with assessment. As part of the National Educational Technology Standards--specifically NETS-T2, part b. (Develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning and assessing their own progress.), teachers need to partner technology with learning and student-monitored assessment. An interesting website that is worth investigating if you are required to teach life sciences is cellsalive.com. This website has wonderful interactive illustrations and photographs as well as assessment which students may take and "assess their progress."



In addition, to this new instructional finding for life sciences, the wikispace still seems like a great instructional tool for any subject for students to be able to monitor their progress. The search is continuing for some type of rubric website for students to use as part of the wikispace.

Designing and Developing Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

As you and your students are constantly being bombarded with the 21st century technology, you as an educator must also think about how you can develop technology within the class which will develop in you and your students those 21st century skills. Upon examining National Educational Technology Standards--standard two which focuses on: designing and developing digital-age learning experiences and assessments seems to be a guiding point to examine. As you dissect the parts of this standard--part b. may be a very valuable to examine more closely: develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning and assessing their own progress.

How can this environment be created? For language arts, written communication is vital so the technology implemented needs to be a good fit for such in-class media resources as literature group novels, class novels, nonfiction text, magazines, newspapers, etc. So far, a wikispace seems to be a possible technology tool that students could use to "manage their own learning and assess their own progress." There is currently a wikispace that is being set-up for a sixth grade team so that students can record their path on the literature group cycle any time and it's never missed placed or lost--hopefully. As students become acustom to using the space for this assignment, additional pages on the site may be set up for other assignments. A teacher could possibly embed some type of blog which the teacher could use for a daily recap of concepts covered.

However, there is still a piece missing--assessment. However, do students get or create a digital assessment? As you investigate the technology of Internet you may find sites such as rubistar which has the technology to help a teacher create individual rubrics for any subject or topic. Further investigation of this assessment site is required to see if may be even students could some how use this site for individually-created rubrics for student-created assessment projects.