Promote Digital Citizenship Through School-Based Social Networking

 Promote Digital Citizenship Through School-Based Social Networking

The author starts the article with the notion that with today's technology and having many social networks used to communicate with fellow class mates and teachers are creating many concerns with the issues that have new developed such as teacher-student communication and cyber bullying. The author continues to say that this has left the school with some responsibility to show their students digital citizenship but now schools have created there own social networks for teachers and students to use that tighter on control over them. They are school based networks that are very similar to facebook or myspace. These school social networks are just like those that are accessible to the general public but the great difference is that the school ones are easier to control and are more limited to only the students, teachers and administration at the school. This allows for the school to get rid of spammers, predators, and unwanted dangers that can reach these students and protects them from them. It also eliminates the privacy of sending messages that not all can see. With these new networks everything that is posted, commented, messages is made public so there is no inappropriate activate between students and students, also students and teachers. It creates a safe place for students and teacher have job security knowing they are both safe to use this network for education.  At first they introduced it to middle school students because many did not have public social networks so they were still new to the idea and it was not as big as a high school to monitor them and how it was used. Within days if it being introduced the students themselves found out how to used and began to work with the school based network to its utmost. The curriculum was then integrated in to the social network that extend their technology in the classroom and as fast as the students got the hang of it they began to use it for school work that teachers had assigned on it.

I would love for the school I teach at to have a similar thing such as this school based social network so that I can use with my students and not worry if my students are safe online and that I have a comfortable place to communicate outside the classroom with my students and know that school approves of it. This will benefit students a lot and give them an interest in school.

The end of it is that more and more schools and introducing the type of online community for middle schools and high schools. It is showing an increase of participation and decrease in cyber bullying do to the control that the school has over the website.

The article relates with the NET-S of Digital Citizenship because it shows the student everything that is on that list. Such as proper etiquette and gives them a safe place to communicate with their teacher.

 Winn, M. R. (2011, December). Promote Digital Citizenship Through School-Based Social Networking. Learning & Leading, 10–13. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20111201#pg14

Into The Virtual Frontier

The article that I choose for number five was "Into the Virtual Frontier". It has to do with a women teacher that gets a job offer that allows her to become a teacher online instead of the classroom. this to me was a new notion of teaching until I got into college. The teacher in the article is the author and is sharing her views and experience with this new way of teaching in the K-12 system. she first goes through the issue of how she would set up the class and how to get started. she explain that it was very hard work because she had to find out how to make her lesson plans work online because it was not the same as in a classroom. Also she had to figure what type of programs she would use to communicate, teach, and would do activities with. So as she explains all this work she comes to know that there is a really huge difference from teaching in a classroom to teaching a to online students.

She goes through the different types of things she needs to do such as how she will communicate with the students. She explains that because you do not have a physical presence with them, then you need to find a way to motivate them and have them keep with the class. This seems to be difficult because she explains how all the students are different and have different communication needs. For example the ones that do very well in the course contact the teacher about how they are doing or to get help on homework and assignments, then there is those students who need a little more attention and she goes into how she calls the student or the parents to make sure that they are on track. So to me this would be very very hard to keep up with the students needs. But something that does help she adds is Skype to have that face to face interaction that helps very much with motivating students to participate in the modules that are placed for them.

Next she moves on to lesson plan and curriculum that have to be place and how she does this. She says that the school provides many basic lesson plans for the course that is being thought are just basic. What I thought that was really great was that the teacher is able to modify the lesson plans to what they think is better and have them be more higher thinking modules and make them think critical. Not only this but how does the teacher help the student when they are doing work at that time and she implemented weekly work that is handed in at the end of each week. So the week would start on Sunday and end in Saturday night. So students learn time management and are allowed time to get help and have that responsibility on them. She saw that it worked a lot better than just giving them an assignment and having a deadline. This allowed them to choose what they wanted to first and then work their way through the week.

In all honesty I don't find a way that I would use the things on this article to my future teaching career because it all relates to online teaching and that had never been an interest to me because I feel that i can help a child a lot more with the in classroom teaching rather than online.

Communication and  Collaborative is one way that this article relates to the  NETS-S because the student and teacher are using digital media programs to contact each other on the things that are happening on the online course share the the homework, assignments, and projects that have been given to all those in the class. Next is the Digital Citizenship because throughout the whole online schooling students are made aware of proper conduct and proper etiquette on issues related to technology and the internet.


McBride, H. (2012, November). Into the Virtual Frontier. Learning & Leading, 24–27. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/201211#pg28

Teachers Beware

Teachers Beaware

 

Belch, H. E. (2012, October). Teachers Beware. Learning & Leading, 15–19. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20111201#pg18

The article is mainly about if a teachether has or would have a social network account of any how kind they should be aware of the dangers and effects that it could have to their teaching career and there teaching methods. The author of this article, Harry Ess Belch, gives many examples across the nation and even international about how many teacher have been disciplined for showing, depicting and writing inappropriate material online. Many of them had nothing to do with the school but according to the article and the laws one has the 1st amendment but you can still get in trouble depending on some other rules in placed for teachers. One is the amount of trouble you can get in depends if you have a continuous contract, if you behavior has a nexus to your effectiveness as a teacher, if the behavior show is or can cause a problem in the educational process of students, and/or if what has been posted is damaging to the school or reputation. So the purpose of the article is to inform teachers that there social network can be damaging to their career because it could have a bearing affect on their job. the author wanted to show how it could do this damage  and what could be done for a teacher to protect themselves on what not to do. So he found out what schools are doing to help teachers not fall into these issues. He explains how schools have placed guidelines and restrictions on how teachers can use social networks, such as they are not allowed to privately contact students over these sites, they are not allowed to accept any invitations from students or invite them to one on one contact, and if they use social network in the school with there equipment then there privacy is under the same rule the school has established. They also urge that teachers should be careful on what they post because it might be offense to others.

They way I would use this information in my class is that I would familiarize myself with the rules and restrictions of social networks because I know that I would be using some for educational reason. They will allow all my students to connect with each other outside of the classroom and give them a chance to get extra help and understand of the material in class. So it would be in my benefit to make sure that I am aware of the does and don't of using the these  types of programs.

In conclusion, the author educate his colleagues in how they should use these websites and how they should protect themselves. He informs them on how they need to know that just because they are out of school and it there own private account they still need to think about what they post could affect there teaching. After his awareness session he told his co workers to write down what new things they have learned and many wrote that they did not know that they could get in trouble for what they posted on their social networks.

Now it was hard to relate this to the NET-S for students but I feel that it looking more into it it connects to Digital Citizenship. Because just as the teachers need to practice safe use of technology so do students so they need the example of a good model of this.

Go Digital

 Go Digital

Edwards, M., Wirt, T., & Smith, S. (2012, October). Go Digital. Learning & Leading, 12–15. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20120910#pg16

In the article "Go Digital" the authors write about how Mooresville Graded School District need to find a way to integrate technology in a community that has a divide of technology due to economic reasons. The article by Mark Edwards, Scott Smith, and Todd Wirt explains how the School District wants to become more technological driven in the classroom but the issue is that many of the students do not have the financial backing for the technology that is required for the change. The school district decided that because many of the families in the school districts could not afford
this that they would provide laptops for the students for the whole school year and allow them to take home. Essentially it is there own computer. By having the school move into the technology age it made the students interested in school and it had a improvement in their education. Test scores have increased and drop out rates decreased since this had been implemented. It was about more than five thousand laptops that were lent out and also the program did not just stopped there they allowed for students to work at the help desk to gain more technology and use it as an elective. The purpose of the article and the point that the authors are depicting is that in a school with low economic students, low test, and high drop out rate that one change in teaching could turn students education for the better. Even though it was a lot to provide for these students the return that they get from the students is a positive one and have motivated students. They let the technology playing fielded for their students to level out. The Digital Conversion program extended the education of the students and allow them to expand their education horizon.

By reading this article I was trying to imagine a way I can use this in the future but I realized that I needed to use this information not in the classroom but with the actual school because the article dealt more with how the school integrated the Digital Conversion program to help students be up to par with technology; so if I taught at a school that needed to improve there students I would purpose a similar program that the Mooresville Graded School District did.

By actually stepping into one of these classrooms one can see and experience the effectiveness of what the program has brought to the students of MGSD. This was also seen by the superintendent by how the students would be in such rush to class and also they would cut some of there recesses time to continue with technological education that they are receiving. This was something never seen to the faculty before and the staff even thought something wrong was happening because they had never seen the students be so eager to participate in the new methods of teaching due to technology.

In accordance with NETS-S this article fits within two categories, the first is 1) Creativity and Innovation. What the Digital Conversion Program does is that it generates new ideas and processes for students that have never been able to do with out the technology provide for them.They can create work that expresses the usage of this new program and allows them to explore more complex systems of work. It also can fit within 2) Communication and Collaboration because by having new technology provides an opportunity to connect and collaborate with their fellow peers through programs such as pwoerpoint, blogs, social networks, etc... Not only that but they can also gain more information and share their own ideas with everyone they choose.