Excellent article on cyberbullying and an example of a girl who was harrassed online and killed herself. This sort of thing is tragic and we should consider what we think aboutinternet harrassment penalties, particularly against children.
There are mention of several websites including one I'd never heard of called CyberBully Alert.
A joint survey by Highlights for Children and Glubble for Families
Forward this survey to parents - it is a highlights and glubble joint survey. I'm glad they are looking at this because I know of very few parents who discuss online activities and safety with their child.
FRONTLINE: growing up online: readings and links | PBS
Bookmarks from the growing up online series for parents. These are links to the major websites for online safety.
Again, as a health thing, you shouldn't REALLY put a laptop on your lap. I have a food tray that I use when I use my laptop in the recliner. In addition to claims that it causes infertility in men, it is also not good for your laptop to cover the ventilation holes with your clothing (or that little bit of pudge on your thighs.)
This is something to mention to laptop users as part of digital health and wellness with digital "citizenship" and safety.
Whither censorship? « What Counts!
Very interesting ponderings from an elementary teacher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada about the balance and issues that have caused some parents to want to block all "social" tools in school.
I think she has very balanced ponderings on this and it is excellent reading.
From Leann Lacy - some cool materials to use with children for safety and other educational games.
Mathtrain.tv brought to you by Mr. Marcos and his 6th grade class in Santa Monica, CA. Let your students find answers about what they are doing here. This is amazing!
This is an excellent example of WHY students should be creating and sharing with other students.
Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success
This is the RSS page on netvibes that pulls together all of the most recent resources for advocates. If you have netvibes, this is a great tab to add to your group.
Group Ad4dcss's best bookmarks
The advocates for digital citizenship, safety, and success diigo group has over 400 bookmarks categorized by the 9 aspects of digital citizenship that we are using to organize. Join in and share your bookmarks. This is becoming a great resource.
ad4dcss » I read blocked blogs
The information at the advocates for digital citizenship, safety, and success about the I read blocked blogs week. This loosely joined group of educators has created a central clearinghouse for activities such as this. Create activities that fit within digital citizenship and join and post. We have a blog, wiki, and more information -- everything is linked at http://www.netvibes.com/coolcatteacher#Ad4dcss -- Join in.
Announcing “Blocked Blogs Week” — June 29th - July 5th at Change Agency
I read blocked blogs week is the week of NECC -- this site has information about the buttons and shirts that you may order to take with you to NECC.
Tapped In Festival 2008: Beyond conflict -- Building Peaceful Communities
Tapped in has been a mainstay in education and a non threatening method of using chat to link with people around the world. This longstanding contributor to education has its 2008 Tapped In Festival scheduled for July 23 and July 24th with some neat things planned. This website has more information for you and certificates of participation will be available for those who participates.
Teachers should connect in which ever way they feel most comfortable and the power of embedded networks should never be ignored.
Michel Foucault, Privacy, and Doubts about Web 2.0 | Connecting the Dots
Fascinating ponderings by Mike Curtain about how many of us are relinquishing our own privacy. This is a very thought provoking post and yet another one I wouldn't have read, had he not linked to my blog post yesterday asking for bloggers to share their links.
This is a very powerful blog post. Wow! I personally think there is a balance here, but also agree than many are not considering the privacy they are relinquishing when they post things that don't belong out there for everyone to see. Internet privacy is an illusion, it really is.
Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher: Online Activities Have Offline Consequences
Great post by Alfred Thompson, "the" microsoft education blogger. I think he hits the nail on the head with this one. Great post!
HotCity Wireless, a non-profit organization, has been established to promote the use of low-cost wireless technology as a media and tool for economic, social and educational advancement to underprivileged citizens in the Philippines.
Organizations such as this that work to provide access should be encouraged. Wow!
And the Walls Came Down: Viral Professional Development - NECC 2008
Just started the discussion for the viral pd session at NECC over at the NECC 2008 Ning -- watching some interesting discussions take place -- join in and converse. If you have a session, you're asked to create a discussion -- I hope they'll show us our tags so that we can tag and find sessions easily.
Ariel Waldman » Blog Archive » Twitter refuses to uphold Terms of Service
Cyberbullying can happen anywhere, even twitter. Warning: this post is rated R for use of 1-2 words of profanity.
Reflection - Horizon Project 2008
This 10th grade student has written an exceptional post-project reflection. I hope you'll take time to read it. Here is an excerpt:
"There is no doubt that this technology is dangerous. It is apparent that few people, not adults, not teenagers, truly understand how collaboration, conduct, and manners affect the internet. This project has to teach others that as well. It is necessary to know how to handle yourself on the internet. That’s why Horizon Project is so important. We have to educate tomorrow’s leaders how to use new technology without abusing it. The highlight of this project is the education we are giving every single person who has been a part of the Horizon Project."
One of the best wikis on the digiteen project, this wiki covering digital law is marvelous and was put together by 9 students from my classroom here in the US, Qatar, and Austria. This is an excellent wiki on Digital Law and has made my wiki hall of fame for this year! Wow!
Seeing my students blog like this one on cyber security makes me realize that effective online communication and writing is important. I'm proud of my student bloggers and glad that we've made time to blog this year!
The page made by the digiteen students on digital etiquette. Although this page does not have the hyperlinks that it should have, it does have other great information.
digiteen » WHS Middle School Action Planning Wiki
The course planning wiki for the digiteen action project from my ninth graders for the middle school. They've done a nice job of planning and sharing the materials. I like their google presentation which has evolved significantly over the last three weeks.
Blogging and Free Speech Rights of Public Employees « Educational Insanity
Great discussion emerging on Jon Becker's blog about free speech and blogging of public employees. I learned as much from the comments as the blog post itself.
Join thought leaders in education policy and national politics to discuss how the Internet is changing the discourse of education reform, and how those changes are affecting the 2008 presidential election. ED in '08 welcomes ed-bloggers and political bloggers to take part in the discussion.
I'm glad the "thought leaders" in American can come, however, the timing of this conference precludes most teachers I know from even considering coming we're all in the "home stretch" and rarely are we able to leave the classroom, especially this time of year.
I would hope that one day the edublogosphere would truly level us so that teachers would be included in these discussions. For, until that happens, I doubt we'll find any truly relevant change for the classroom.. just more buzzwords and "programs" that don't suit today's student.
Hint: If you want reform, ask some good teachers or at least include them in the discussion. There are some big picture thinkers out there that ARE teachers in the public classroom.
the 31 day comment challenge is a program to promote effective, meaningful comments run by several amazing edubloggers -- this is an example of something that those interested in facilitating effective communications should discuss and participate in.
Transparent Learning: Why am I fighting for Social Networking?
This teacher is fighting for "social" networking -- I left a comment that she instead fight for "educational" networking. I think that the demonization of "social networking" by our media makes this term a death sentence for one's efforts.
Read this post and see what you think.
Microsoft Popfly lets you make mashups and build web pages without knowing code. I am to the point I don't teach the detailed web site creation coding I used to. I teach RSS, embedding, creating wikis, uploading media of all kinds, but I just don't know how important coding is any more at the basic level.
I want to spend some time tinkering with this.
This is a website where tv enthusiasts are sharing videos and collaborating. This is an example of how television and all of our entertainment is evolving to become more customized.
In addition to creating personal learning networks, we will also be creating personal entertainment networks (PEN's) -- all via this amazing thing we call RSS. Understanding RSS is not only important for learning but just living your life.
User created content is here to stay.
You got the love? My week at Suffern Middle School | Welcome to NCS-Tech!
Kevin Jarrett talks about his week at one of the leaders in innovative technology, suffern Middle School. An excellent read to see what this digital revolution is all about. Wow!
Royal today, average tomorrow? - Digi Teen
Considering the posting of photos and what should be shared is something all teenagers should consider. This is a blog post from a teenager on the digiteen project about the difficulty lawmakers have in prosecuting "digital blackmail" cases. Certainly harm was done, but legislation has not been passed protecting photographs posted on one's Facebook page and shared with friends. This is hard for students to understand but is an important case study to read about.
Certainly having teenagers research and report their findings is a great way to help them understand the implications of what they are doing.
We're starting a video contest -- nominate the videos that you think best advocate digital citizenship, safety or success in schools. We plan to have some surveys in the future to let you vote.
Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Bloggers
Encyclopedia Britannica is now free for bloggers from an article on 4/18/08 -- yet another reason for our students to blog. (I have students blogging publicly under pseudonyms.)
This is fascinating, but also interesting to see how Britannica is playing catch up to Wikipedia in the market it once owned. I wonder, which would be more authoriative to you, a wikipedia quote updated daily, or Brittanica updated less often that doesn't display the authors of its content?
facilitatortips » Online Surveys and Forms
Incredible wiki page about online surveys and forms. I highly recommend that we begin to have our students conduct surveys as part of authentic research. This is an excellent page about this topic. (The rest of the wiki is nice as well.)
A website with examples of best practices of wikis used in EFL (english as a foreign language) classes. Excellent.
Kudos to this!
This is a wiki being built for a digital literacy program for teachers within a school division. This approach is a great one for districts and is a way to reach everyone with current information. I also wish they had a blog to compliment it, but sharing these sorts of websites are great.
It would be nice if we had a template of information that people could copy to get started.
Open professional development by Darren Draper and Friends. These opportunities will let you open up your classroom and join in with others to learn collaboratively about blogs, wikis, and more. Take a look at it.
Internet Safety Video from Thinkquest - Dear Diary asks kids to find the mistakes
Videos where students are asked to see the mistake that someone made with their new friends. This is a pretty interesting video to show and makes a point about age.
It is definitely a shock type video. I wish we could put star ratings on this one because this seems a little over the top to me. I don't know that I would use it. What do you think? I think there should be a better video to discuss the mistakes kids make in chats. What do you think?
This site is full of information about the scary side of the Internet -- it talks about predators and what they look like. It also shows predator warning signs, which could be interesting. I'm curious to see if there is balance and where their facts come from. This is targeted to age 10 and up. There are games and other things in here. I'd like to know some people who have been through this material. It won an award in 2007
princecaspianproject wiki - Annotated
An excellent project for 4th - 6th grade sudents from Jennifer Wagner called the Prince Caspian project which will allow teachers to collaborate with other teachers around the world about the book and the upcoming movie "Prince caspian."
Think.com - Safety & Netiquette Lesson - Annotated
Think.com's safety lesson with nets standards. Think.com is excellent to use with younger students and is very walled and has an excellent profanity filter. I highly recommend it and have personally used it for a summer blogging project. Excellent site. It also requires an extensive verification process by the participating schools.
MASSP News Center » Can You Hear Me Now? - Annotated
Confiscating and looking at information on cell phones by school officials is still not clear. This is a very interesting case study for those working with digital citizenship issues at their school.
Professional Learning Board: Transforming Knowledge into Learning, Online
The company that will be working with us for the ad4dcss project to make available a course for parents, teachers, and teens about digital citizenship. A growing group of volunteers is picking up to make this happen.
This website is a conglomeration of scientists who are blogging and writing.l They respond to research journals and bring forth "hot topics." In science. Time magazine has written an article about this site and how they are changing the face of science.
Blogs are becoming integrated into all aspects of the world and knowing the method of writing effectively there is important.
Technology Integration Matrix - Annotated
Technology integration matrix from Florida. This amazing resource was picked up from Lucy Gray. Really amazing.
Technology in the Middle » Blog Archive » 1:1–Digital Citizenship
Excellent blog post about the elements of digital citizenship from an educator. This makes a case about what should be done and how.
Do You Read Blocked Blogs? at Change Agency - Annotated
Bud the Teacher and Stephanie Sandifer are planning an I read blocked blogs day. This is going to be an event for educators advocating access. It would also be a great time to talk about ways to monitor when you provide access.
This also happens to be the first aspect of ad4dcss and we've listed it on the wiki. They have shirts that people can get and buttons for your blog.
Phenomenal page about integrating ICT into the classroom witha wide variety of rubrics based upon Bloom's taxonomy. You'll see blog journaling, wiki editing, threaded discussion, bookmarking rubrics, search rubrics, podcasting rubrics, audio conferencing, data analysis, and collaborative rubrics. I haven't been through all of these but would love it if we could go through them and work on them.
They are in PDF format, but it would be great to share and edit them collaboratively. Very nice website.
Digital Citizenship - What does it mean to our students? — Parents as Partners - Annotated
The need for action is highlighted in this article by an edublogger. There is a mention of the Advocates project.
YouTube - Everyone - Think Before You Post (English)
This is a very nice public service announcement, think before you post article. We need to address children posting innappropriate pictures of themseves ONLINE and on cell phones.
Cell phones transmittals are one step away from going online and really the lines will blur between cell phones AND online. I like this video as one to use with students.
We also need a counter for WHY you post and what types of things TO post.
The Web2.0 Prophecy: An Adventure | Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts
This is an excellent article that has been reposted. It includes a lot of the information that outlines WHAT web 2.0 is. This includes videos and many important hyperlinks. Excellent article for newcomers to web 2.0 to pick up on.
