I look at this as a challenge. All the time I am trying to get more bang for my buck when it comes to fitting as many standards into a lesson as possible. There are many teachable moments that cannot be wasted. As I have heard from other teachers who are trying out a new form of technology in their classroom both student and teacher have to get their feet wet and come upon issues of digital literacy as they arise. Teachers sometimes are fearful of this because as a species teachers are kind of control freaks and like to see road block and avoid them, but I think it is healthy to teach students important lessons about proper program usage by making mistakes as they go along but subsequently learning from those mistakes.
Regardless of how full our schedules are digital literacy is a topic that must not be overlooked. It is our responsibility as educators to teach children how to conduct themselves on the internet in a safe and respectful way. Common sense media has many great lessons that can be melded with other lessons. We also don't have to spend a large amount of time teaching these lessons. I think that short little tidbits of pertinent information can be shared with students so that they have opportunities to learn and apply new knowledge about digital citizenship in a seamless way.
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Since the first semester of this program when we were asked to start finding tech tools that would help us to achieve a goal in our classroom. I bumped into a video about Seesaw and instantly was drawn to what it could do for my students. Seesaw is a tool that is user friendly and easy for students to learn use. As the teacher, I am allowed to have multiple classes that are easily accessed by snapping a picture of a QR code. When students are in their class they have the ability to do many things. They can add a video, a picture of work they did, add a drawing, a link, a note or a picture from the camera roll. This product is added to a digital portfolio. This digital portfolio is a running total of all of the work that is submitted during the year. I can post assignments that are either created by me or have already been created by another teacher and posted to Seesaw. These assignments can be organized into folders. One of the things that has proven to be somewhat of a challenge for me so far is managing student work. Many times students will not complete work from the week prior so I will leave it up so that they can complete it without a harsh deadline. When I post an assignment i can assign it to a folder but for some reason those folders are not visible to the student...or at least I have not figured a way to make them visible. This means that if I post an assignment to the math folder. I want them to be able to navigate to the math folder with all of the math assignments easily accessible. Instead, all of the work is listed in the assignments tab with no delineation of subject. I am wondering if this is something that I am doing wrong or if that is simply the design of the app. I have put it on my personal timeline to find out. There are capabilities that I have not yet explored on Seesaw because it would require me to purchase the PLUS version. I do appreciate the ability to allow parents to see what their child is doing at school and enable them to interact and leave comments on their child's work. This is a wonderful incentive tool for the students. I also have cut down on a lot of the paper that is wasted each week by doing exercises digitally. I have found Seesaw to be extremely helpful in developing the 21st century skills of my students. I look forward to increasing my knowledge of this resource.
Seesaw Tutorial In last week's class when we discussed digital citizenship I started thinking about which key aspects of internet usage were vital to making sure that first grade students understood. It came down to two many aspects : safety and respect. In order for these young people to have a firm foundation for continuing to use thes internet in a safe and respectful manner they needed to be given to tools to understand what to watch out for when using the internet and how to keep themselves and other safe when using it.
The lesson that was designed for these first graders did exactly that. It covered what kinds of things to tell an adult about and what to do if a stranger interacts with you in an inappropriate way. How sharing your personal information with people online is not safe. Teaching kids the right way to communicate so that they are not partaking in bullying behavior as well as noticing if they themselves are being bullied is very important. I look forward to teaching this lesson to my students and helping them to become responsible and respectful internet users. Safe internet usage/ Cyberbullying Lesson |
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April 2019
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