Digital Citizenship

This week’s #EdublogsClub Prompt #28 is about Digital Citizenship. We read this article on Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship based on the book Digital Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey, published on the webpage DigitalCitizenship.net

The nine elements of Digital Citizenship:

  • digital access
  • digital commerce
  • digital communication
  • digital literacy
  • digital etiquette
  • digital law
  • digital rights & responsibilities
  • digital health & wellness
  • digital security (self-protection)

The article is worth reading and mentioned aspects I had yet to think of as being part of digital citizenship, such as access, commerce, law and even health and wellness. Certainly all important aspects of digital citizenship.

For 20 years now, my students in a variety of grade levels (K-8 since the late 90s) have had digital access. Together we have learned about respecting fellow students’ digital file folders when they weren’t password protected, how to share six laptops for 25 students, managed a digital environment with MacBooks for all, and, of course, the never-ending learning curve of navigating the Internet.  In the past and where I spend most of my time as teacher is on Ribble and Bailey’s elements of digital etiquette, literacy, and communication.

Teaching and modeling etiquette in many areas of life are important, I believe, and one of those areas is teaching digital good manners. We can’t let up or leave it to chance learning. It has to be taught explicitly.

Here is a Prezi I made with my junior high students in 2011. I believe it still has a lot of truth about Netiquette (or Internet Etiquette). It was inspired by this online summary of the book Netiquette by Virginia Shea, which is well worth the read.

We spend time on digital literacy and communication in class. My grade 5 students can do a lot already, but I try to take them to a more advanced level of responsible usage. For instance, we learn to use Creative Commons images instead of the ubiquitous Google search and snatch method. They learn to post photos and videos on their digital portfolio to share with their parents. They learn to create and edit Google documents while they write novels. And more.

In addition to etiquette, literacy and communication, there is another important element of digital literacy I model and teach. It is that of digital production. I attempt to inspire my students to be more than consumers. When they are with me, they produce–online publishing, forming connections with world-wide audiences, and adding their voice to make the Internet a better, warmer, friendlier place than it could be without them.

Used with permission from Krissy Venosdale, digital producer extraordinaire.

What do you think?
Is digital production another element of digital citizenship?
Are there other elements not mentioned?

I Am Denise and Other Poems

I am open and questioning

I wonder why I’m so tired

I hear Inshallah and Shukran

I see the turquoise glittering buildings in Manama

I want to know the Truth

I am open and questioning

I pretend to know too much

I feel like screaming into my pillow

I touch my badge and shine it up

I worry that I can’t communicate with my students

I cry at night when I think too much

I am open and questioning

I understand that God is gracious to me anyway

I say God is love

I dream of a world of peace

I try to love

I hope for a bright future

I am open and questioning

I am Denise

 

I’m working on a variety of poetry formats with my class these days, so I’m making sample poems. The one I wrote today, I notice is a bit dark, but ‘I hope for a bright future,’ at least.

The “I Am” poem is an old form I used to use that was published by the ETTC (Educational Technology Training Center) of New Jersey. Does anyone know what happened to these great online poetry forms? Here is the BROKEN link that doesn’t work any longer. (And thanks to the tweeter at @RWTnow, here is a link to the archived list of the poems. They are even better than I remembered! However, beware–if you create a poem on one of the forms, it won’t be able to show it to you. You’ll have to screenshot it. Or just use the ideas for each poem.)

I typed up the “I Am” form for anyone to use. for their class. Click here for my Google Doc–just go to File > Make a Copy.

Found Poetry by Read, Write, Think, using the Word Mover Student Interactive.

You can choose one of the Japanese images that they provide. Or…
You can even add your own image. This is a picture I took from the Bahrain Bay.

Another poetry writing resource–writing a haiku on Read, Write, Think’s interactive Haiku form.

One last poem. Prepositional Phrase Poem

Beside my dying mom

During her last days

In her rock house living room

Next to the rented hospital bed

Because of my great love for her

With sadness in my heart

Without fear, but with God’s peace

Good-bye, Mama

 

What’s My Teacher Doing Here?

“Miss, I saw you yesterday at City Centre!” my student shyly said to me this morning.

After yesterday’s Labor Day national holiday, we came back to school and I was greeted by two children telling me something very similar about our separate chance meetings at the mall yesterday.

“Yes, I did see you yesterday in the food court! It was so nice to see you and your family at the mall. Did you have fun?” I responded.

It was fun to see my students. I was able to introduce my husband to their parents and see their sweet enthusiasm for seeing their teacher in an unusual place.

It reminded me of when I was in sixth grade and I saw my teacher at church one Sunday. It was so odd. Even though I spent hours a day, five days a week with the man, I remember this chance meeting like it was yesterday. I can picture him coming out of the washroom, and walking down the sunny corridor, smiling when he caught my eye.

We spoke very briefly, but it was so awkward for me. Even as a tween, I still had the idea that teachers belong at school. My compartmentalized life was getting shifted, like the young narrator in Judy Finchler’s Miss Malarkey Doesn’t Live in Room 10.

How about you? Do you have memories of seeing your teachers out of context? Or students seeing you?

This is a post for the Tuesday Slice of Life and from tell a story prompt for #edublogsclub.

Standards and Assessment

Standards and Assessment – A few random thoughts for this week’s #edublogsclub prompt.

I’ve taught with and without standards, but I prefer and believe we need standards-based education.

I also believe we need standards-based grading. We should be able to look at the standard and using descriptive narration tell how the student is and isn’t meeting the standard. It seems simple to me. However, I spend so much of my precious preparation time grading and recording numbers around learning. Sometimes numbers make sense, like recording how many sight words this child can read. More often than not, though, numbers don’t give any added information. For instance, in the following standards, how can a number help us know what the child can do?

Pose and respond to specific questions by making comments that contribute to the discussion and elaborate on the remarks of others.

Recognize and correct inappropriate shifts in verb tense.

Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

I think a number does not show growth. Numbers tend to stop conversation. The student and parent are either happy or unhappy with the number, but not much else is discussed except the number.

Tomorrow we will have Student Learning Presentations, where parents, teacher and student come together and report learning. It’s a beautiful thought, but I know from experience, the numbers will trip us up at times.

This year one of the goals of our School Improvement Plan is “All students at Al Raja School in grades KG-5 will improve reading and writing in English.” We have chosen to measure our success on this goal using the fall and spring scores on our computerized standardized test: Measures of Academic Progress (MAP).

Last year we had only 26% of that age group make annual yearly progress. This year at the winter midpoint, I’ve just stopped to look at the data I had so far. This winter, we had 46% meet or exceed their progress goals.

So, there is an assessment that helps us see if we are growing. I’m pleased with the progress so far, but not satisfied, of course. We have work to do.

Fortunately for us, we aren’t driven by tests. We are new to standardized tests. It’s only our second year taking the MAP. We look at the data, and try to let it help us get to know, teach, and help our students, but it’s not the only measure.

I still hope we can eliminate grades and use paper and digital work, photos, video, stories and other evidence of the students’ learning to report about their learning.

I guess I feel the way we take the MAP test can help in that reporting, as well.

What do you think?

The Pendulum Swing – Or maybe just finding a better way

When I started teaching in the 1980’s, I was given a stack of books to teach, and that was what I taught–science, social studies, reading, grammar, whatever the school board or admin or committee chose for the books, that was our curriculum. I did it for five years in grades 2 and 3, in a public school and a private school, in two separate states. There was no such thing as curriculum, just the books we were given to teach.

Then, I became a stay at home mom for ten years during the 90s. During those years, the pendulum swung toward standards-based education, or what they called in those years Outcome Based Education. I wasn’t paying that much attention, but I did read a few articles because I was surprised my conservative friends seemed so against it. It made sense to me that we should ask what students should know and be able to do. Then figure out how to get them there. Education was obviously a more complicated idea than just covering a stack of books.

Now, “I wasn’t paying that much attention” was the truth because when I went back to teaching in 1999, I took my stack of books and carried on as I had years before. I was in Arizona at the time, and fortunately, I had a great instructional coach. One of the first times she came to see me, I was proudly finishing touches on a gigantic dinosaur mural. It had 3-D mountains and trees and a volcano flowing with lava. My students and I had made it. Grade 2 artist dinosaurs populated the prehistoric landscape.

She asked me why we were doing dinosaurs. I said it was a chapter in our science book, and I let the students vote on which chapter they wanted to do first. She then opened the Arizona State Standards for grade 2 science. She showed me how there were no dinosaurs in second grade science.

“What? How can we not do dinosaurs?” I thought or said. I don’t quite remember which one. I was in tears before she left, but that experience left an indelible mark on me. It began my journey to understand standards-based education.

I went on to teach grades 2, 7, 8 and work as a reading specialist, using the Common Core State Standards for most of those years.

When I moved to Bahrain, I found the pendulum hadn’t really swung. I am in a school with American curriculum–that is American books. We are kind of in the 1980s mode of teaching from books.

We have some good benchmarks for the KG-grade 2 department, so it was easier to not rely totally on the books. When I moved to grade 5 this year, I realized that our curriculum is focused on the textbooks. We have lessons on interrogative, declarative, imperative and exclamatory sentences, not because our English language learners need to know that terminology. They don’t. We have those lessons because Houghton-Mifflin put them in our books.

As the English coordinator this year, and the ‘owner’ of the school improvement plan goal to “improve reading and writing in English grades KG-5,” I have an important reason to help the department swing toward a better place with appropriate standards-based curriculum.

We have made a lot of progress, and I look forward to seeing a curriculum in place that is appropriate for our students to learn.


It’s Tuesday. Time for a Slice of Life post.

This is late, but I was interested in the topic from Week #13 in the #edublogsclub about pendulum swings in education.

Currently – A Slice of Life List

Looking Around My Home

  1. Piles of work, unfinished and begging for attention.
  2. White walls
  3. A painting my daughter made in high school. I love it. (It’s also the header on this blog.)
My daughter’s painting on one of my white walls.

Looking Out My Window

  1. The 24-Hours Market
  2. Dust
  3. Minarets

Found: a few balloons on a rainy day. #cy365 #t365project

A post shared by Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs) on


Looking Around My Classroom

  1. Furniture that at the beginning of the year brought great hope for a classroom full of alternative seating, but now I’m ready for it to go away
  2. I wonder if it is a place for learners to learn English?
  3. I can no longer find a pencil.

As I Ponder…

  1. I’m saddened about the fighting in U.S. politics
  2. I find it hard to keep my eyes off news shows
  3. I still have hope.

What I’m Learning

  1. How to personalize learning for my students

What I’m Creating

  1. A Breakout EDU game
  2. Lots of writing on my blog
  3. Keeping my class blog organized

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I’m Reading

  1. Bible stories
  2. Queen Bee
  3. The Story of Waheed

What I’m Watching

  1. News
  2. Politics
  3. Children playing

What I’m Hearing

    1. “The Gummy Bear Song”

What’s on My Camera

  1. Lots of pictures of Grade 5 events and learning
  2. Photos for my Capture Your 365 challenge

What I’m Drinking

  1. Mango tea
  2. Skim milk
  3. Water

What’s Happening in the Kitchen?

  1. Roasted chicken
  2. Bran muffins
  3. Roasted cauliflower

A Quote I Want to Share

My 6-word memoir to share with you today.