Thursday, October 23, 2008

Daily Spotlight on Digital Citizenship 10/24/2008


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Daily Spotlight on Digital Citizenship 10/18/2008


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Daily Spotlight on Digital Citizenship 10/13/2008

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Daily Spotlight on Digital Citizenship 09/08/2008

  • 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.

    tags: education, safety, ad4dcss

Monday, August 25, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 08/26/2008

  • 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.

    tags: education, ad4dcss, digitalcitizenship

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 08/24/2008

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 06/22/2008

  • 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.

    tags: math, edu_news, ad4dcss

Friday, June 20, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 06/21/2008

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 06/11/2008

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/30/2008

  • 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.

    tags: education, privacy, ad4dcss, digital_responsibilities

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/29/2008

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/28/2008

  • 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!

    tags: education, ad4dcss, digital_access

Monday, May 26, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/27/2008

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/23/2008

Monday, May 19, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/20/2008

  • 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."

    tags: education, hz08, technology, digitalcitizenship, ad4dcss, digital_safety

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/18/2008

Friday, May 9, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/10/2008

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/07/2008

  • 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.

    tags: education, ad4dcss, edublog, blogging, edu_news, edublogger, professionaldevelopment

Monday, May 5, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/06/2008

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 05/04/2008

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Online Course Meetings Scheduled

Course planners (and those just interested in what we're doing) -

2 meetings for this week have been scheduled!

These meetings will be in Elluminate - click on "Elluminate Session" next to each date below to attend the meeting - the meeting room will open shortly before the scheduled times.

You can use this time zone converter to see if the times will work for you and your schedule (for FROM format, choose US/Central or CST6CDT for converting from CST)

Course Planning Meeting: Wednesday, April 30 - 12:30 p.m. CST (1:30 pm EST) - Elluminate Session
Course Planning Meeting: Thursday, May 1 - 7:30 p.m. CST (8:30 pm EST) - Elluminate Session

I realize that this is rather short notice and you may not be able to attend, but I figured we'd get the ball rolling and see if we can get anything accomplished. Vicki is being excellent about setting up meetings when needed, so I plead yet again - if you have input on preferred time for meetings, PLEASE comment and share!

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Online Professional Development Course

(Cross-posted at Kate Says)

As ad4dcss (Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success) has been up and running now for several weeks, it's time to really get moving on the online professional development course that we have decided to create. This course will be a free moodle course (generously hosted on one of Professional Learning Board's sites - full disclosure: I, Kate Olson, do consulting work for PLB) but we haven't gotten past adding our names to a list of willing volunteers - this needs to change! I'm currently working on getting the volunteers added to the course so we can begin building it, but there needs to be a LOT of discussion before we can start. Some of the things that need to be decided are:

1) Who is the audience for this course? Teachers, parents, community members, administrators, everyone?
2) Will the course be self-study or will we have volunteers facilitating it?
3) What's the curriculum?
4) Will there be some form of recognition upon course completion?

These are just some of the things that the we need to discuss - all of which need to be figured out before course-building can begin. I would like to have a real-time, preferably voice, discussion on this with at least a portion of the course volunteers in the very near future - getting the 4 things listed above decided is crucial and would best be decided in real-time (I'm thinking Elluminate) meeting.

As with any larger group project, certain people will rise to the top as leaders and certain people would rather hang back and do the behind-the-scenes work. I completely understand this (and depending on the project, settle into either group) and hope that at least a few of the volunteers will be willing to attend a meeting (or if unable to attend, provide copious input beforehand) - I can NOT make these decisions on my own for the group as a whole as this is much larger than me and my knowledge-base or agenda.

What can YOU do?

1) If you haven't already, add your name to the course planning wiki page so we know who to contact for planning
2) Add your input in the comments here if you don't wish to work on the course itself
3) Add your input to the discussion area on the course planning wiki page
3) Attend a meeting (to be announced soon)
4) Join the new Moodlers Diigo group (I just created it yesterday) to share resources for Moodle course creation with the course developers - these can be general moodle resources, not necessarily specific to this course

I'm also trying to determine the best way to communicate with course developers and volunteers - suggestions would be more than welcome! Right now the course planning page is part of the larger ad4dcss wiki page, so messaging within the wiki ends up going to the entire group. I'm thinking of setting up a separate wiki for this project.........again, input on this would be appreciated! You can comment on that here as well.

If for some reason you need to contact me directly about this, you can email me at kolson29 at gmail dot com, but it would be best to have all input out in the open so the rest of the group can see it.

Let's move on this!

Friday, April 25, 2008

@ad4dcss tweets again -- woo hoo

Hi, if you haven't come across me before my name is Jocelyn (aka @htjoshua). I teach ICT to about 55 pupils with moderate learning difficulties in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England. I fell into the start-up meeting for AD4DCSS by way of a tweet from Vicki Davis two weeks ago (happy birthday @coolcatteacher). So it seems rather appropriate therefore that my first involvement with AD4DCSS should be by way of setting up the grouptweet we know as @ad4dcss -- and I would like to take this opportunity to explain how @ad4dcss works.

First, if you don't really _get_ Twitter now you may want to watch this cool video.



Now hopefully you see the point of Twitter and certainly it would be a good idea to sign up and follow all your friends at AD4DCSS. Here is where to find them, just click on the follow buttons and I am sure in no time at all a crowd of people will be saying hello.

Finally, what's with the grouptweet...? Basically all you do is follow @ad4dcss and then @ad4dcss will follow you. From that point on, any Twitter direct messages you send to ad4dcss will be retweeted in PUBLIC as if from @ad4dcss -- to all of @ad4dcss's followers.

Here is an example from earlier today.

I saw a tweet from Kate Olson (@kolson29) I thought AD4DCSS people wouldn't want to miss out on.



What I did was to direct message a copy of Kate's message to the grouptweet @ad4dcss.



The direct message arrived at @ad4dcss and grouptweet turned it into a normal tweet as if from @ad4dcss. Of course all the followers of @ad4dcss could see the normal tweet as clear as day.



Good hey....? Mmmm..., almost too good. Don't forget the direct messages to @ad4dcss are turned public almost straight away. This is not the normal convention and some people -- somewhere else I hasten to add -- didn't realise and embarrassed themselves quite badly. Indeed, grouptweeting was off for a while on that account. All is back up and running now (thank you @aaronforgue). But don't forget -- the prior convention might have been for direct message to be a little private -- but @ad4dcss does not keep secrets.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 04/25/2008

Monday, April 21, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 04/22/2008

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 04/21/2008

  • 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.

    tags: digital_law, ad4dcss, case_studies

  • 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.

    tags: ad4dcss, education, video

  • 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?

    tags: digital_access, blocked_blogs, education, ad4dcss, edublogger, edublog, digitalcitizenship

  • 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.)

    tags: hz08, collectiveintelligence, bestpractices, edu_trends, digital_literacy, ad4dcss

Friday, April 18, 2008

This video says it all: What wikis are the best for promoting change?



We are working to add the 10 BEST videos on educational change to the wiki. What are they? Where should they go (looking for the best on each topic.)

When we give people these videos, we're giving them something that helps them "sell" what they are doing . I suggest showing these videos for professional development, school boards, and anyone who cares about education.

Add yours to the wiki. If we get too many, we may have some sort of voting thing (which would be great to have that much interest!)

tag: , , , , ,

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 04/18/2008

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 04/17/2008

Look at what has happened in 72 hours.

a cross post with Cool Cat Teacher

Since this project is now 72 hours old, I thought we'd give a few stats for what is happening!

  • We have 27 people signed up on the Advocates public list.
  • 16 Readers for our Blog (Feed set up 24 hours a go.)
  • Over 1200 views of the wiki, with 70 edits, and visits from 9 countries and more than 300 unique visitors and 64 members.
  • 74 bookmarks sent to the diigo group with 40 members.
  • 52 members of the Google Group with 24 discussions being tossed around
  • Slowly percolating in the blogosphere with 7 posts so far. We can do better than this, maybe some people are waiting a bit.
  • Lots of tweets beginning to share although I must admit a few of us are hogging the tweets.
  • A logo design and another on the way for us to share and discuss.
  • A set of tags for sharing and facilitating exchange of data and links
  • An aggregation page for all of this (it is my personal launch page to start this.)

Two projects that are gaining steam and volunteers:
  1. I Read Blocked Blogs Awareness Day/Week - as part of the digital access aspect.
  2. A Professional Development Class to train people on the 9 digital citizenship topics -- Still forming. The hosting for the Moodle has been facilitated by the great people at Professional Learning Board.
What I'm seeing is that people are just joining in with what fits best with their daily tasks and vision.

I'd really like to see some people begin talking about creating a flyer or handout on Digital Access, which is the first of the 9 aspects of Digital Citizenship as we have outlined on the wiki.

What can you do?
Well, we're really trying to compile things now. I need a little help on the wiki for someone who understands RSS and also, we need some people to start putting thumbs up on the links coming through diigo so they'll start having more meaning. (Our way of "vetting" the sources.)

Will you take 5 minutes and go through some of the links and add your thumbs up -- if you see an important link missing, please send it to the group AND use the tagging standard we've set up, in addition to any other tags you wish to add!

Thank you for caring. This will probably be my last full cross-post on Cool Cat Teacher, if you want to follow this effort closely, please subscribe to the Ad4dcss group blog.

Beware of numbers
I'd rather have 1 committed person than 100 people just putting their names down, and that is what we've got. We've got some amazing, hard working, very BUSY people who don't have a lot of time, just bookmarking a little smarter and tweeting and talking towards a common purpose.

The Cat on the Hot Stove
Some, I think have the cat on the hot stove syndrome.

If a cat sits on a hot stove, he jumps up. The only problem is that he will not ever sit on the stove again... not even a cold one.

I think that so many of us have gotten involved in something just to see it peter out. Just to see it go "poof." So, we don't want to get all involved and invested in another "poof project." We just won't sit on the stove!

Well, if I'm trying again, so can you. I've jumped headlong into thing that went "poof" before too, however, I will say this... every time I have, I've come away with more learning and meeting new people. Even the "poof" projects haven't been to waste.

However, I'm going to predict something. I believe that there are going to be some newcomers on this project who are going to become well known very fast because of their amazing efforts. I'm already seeing it.

If you're a beginner and you don't know where to start... our virtual volunteerism and cooperative efforts as educators are just now getting started. Join in where you see fit. And if you really want to be "in the know" sign up for the Google group and get our daily digest.

On my to do list is to e-mail some amazing bloggers that I know. I've really been waiting until we have all of our wiki edited, feeds coming in and people's names on the list and going so that when we approach the disillusioned who've been doing this a lot longer than I, that they'll know that there is something here.

Teaching is a noble calling and this is a noble cause. This is a connecting point. A facilitation and linking in a common cause to help us. This is grassroots organizing. We want to see you as a part of it!

tag: , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Vicki's Digital Citizenship Links of the Day 04/16/2008

Advocate Action is Heating Up

We've created one page to monitor all of the activities for this project - http://www.netvibes.com/coolcatteacher#Ad4dcss

Where we're sharing
  • We've also got a wiki started at http://ad4dcss.wikispaces.com
  • The wiki uses the links we create in diigo and feeds the resources to the 9 major categories of digital citizenship that we're addressing. (See wiki for those.)
  • We have a diigo group for bookmarking. at http://groups.diigo.com/groups/Ad4dcss
  • This blog is where we'll list major announcements AND resource links, so it will be a good place to follow the activities.
Where YOU can volunteer
  • We have a donated Moodle space and Kate Olson is organizing an online course done BY educators for people wanting to know more about Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success. We are planning a preliminary meeting within the next 7 days, however, we're discussing using the 9 areas of digital citizenship as posted on the wiki to serve as our starting point.

  • We're working on a logo and have a volunteer who is working on this.

  • Wiki Work - We're working on pulling in the diigo links RSS to the wiki page so that the diigo group will automatically feed the bookmarks to the appropriate category. We could use some help putting those RSS's on the page. (Much of this is being done w/ people giving 30 minutes here and there.)

    I would personally love to see the wiki have some basic information, but remember, we're working to create things to go offline so it is about resources, handouts, and useful things.

  • THE BIG THING YOU CAN DO NOW! - Besides telling people about this (include ad4dcss in the twitter or blog post and it will aggregate on our netvibes page so we'll know you're there.)

    We NEED people to join the Diigo group and USE THE STANDARD TAG DICTIONARY. We also need people to go through the bookmarks and thumbs up or thumbs down the best resources so that we may start using that feature. This will sort of be our way of "vetting" the sources.

    If you could spend just 10 minutes going through your bookmarks on digital citizenship and tagging them.
We're also talking about several action days a year about different points and I know a lot of you have already broached this subject. Access, digital safety, blogging, so many different things we could do.

Is this some sort of political thing?
Well, honestly, we don't know what this is yet. Any organization of people that becomes effective ends up having a political impact, however, we're not starting off that way.

We're starting off to create useful things to help YOU take the discussion of these tools offline. Handouts for boards of directors. An online class for anyone to take who wants to become educated.

When we have large numbers of people, then we'll have more clout on the political end.

But for now, we have a growing list of charter members who are going to tweet, bookmark, do a little wiki work, and share their ideas.

How do "we" decide where to move?

I think that some fresh faces no one has ever heard of will emerge to lead the charge on some things that we'll sit back and say "now why didn't we do that before."

So, what my role is that when there is a group of people who says to me "we want to do this," I'm using the reach and network of mine to help facilitate and give them the resources to make it happen (and a little geeky programming stuff in the background.)

Power of Newcomers!
Newcomers are perfect for this effort because they more clearly see the obstacles that are holding newcomers from joining in and learning more. They clearly see the other side of the fence because they can remember the other side of the fence.

I wish I had more time to tell you more.

We are looking for a few more group bloggers. So, join in. Speak up. Share.

tag: , , , , ,

Sunday, April 13, 2008

This blog will be a location for the Advocates

We'll be adding more about this grassroots project by teachers, but meanwhile, go to our project launch page to learn more.