Let's Raise a Cheer for Digital Citizenship!

USD is Common Sense Certified - Let's Keep the Ball Rolling!

Thanks to all of your hard work teaching digital citizenship in the classroom, we were officially able to become 1 of the 40 Common Sense Digital Citizenship Certified School Districts in the nation! In order for us to maintain this certification, we need your help in continuing to teach digital citizenship to students. Read more to find out about new lessons you can be teaching your students!

New Look, New Lessons

Thanks to the new Google Sites, we've updated the look of our USD Learns website. We now have a brand new Digital Citizenship page with 3 new Google Slides lessons for each grade level band. If you teach grades 1-2 or 7-8, you will now be teaching Unit 2 Scope and Sequence Lessons. Grades 4-5 will no longer be teaching Digital Passport and can start teaching Scope and Sequence lessons from Unit 1. Like last year, after you've completed a lesson, please don't forget to do the Lesson Completion survey. This will help us track the number of lessons so that we can re-apply at the end of the school year to maintain our certification.

6th Graders Learn about Copyright Law

This week I had the pleasure of going to both middle schools to do a lesson on Copyright Law, Fair Use and the Creative Commons. Now that many of our upper elementary and middle school students are creating digital portfolios, it is essential that they learn how to find, use and cite media for anything that gets posted to their site. You can find more information about this lesson, along with the new Photo Bingo activity, by going to the Middle School Digital Citizenship page. If you need any help teaching this topic to your students, please email me and let me know how I can help!

DMS students learn to look for the Creative Commons
license so they know how to cite the image.

Digital Citizenship / EduWin to Alice Baum from DMS

Digital citizenship is a topic that is essential for all students. Our goal this year at USD is to become a Common Sense Media school district. In order to do that we, the Tech ToSAs, are working hard to create ready-to-go digital citizenship lessons at every grade level. You can already find some of those on our USD Learns website.

It's been so exciting walking through the Union and Dartmouth Middle School campuses and watching the 6th grade students and teachers embrace the new take-home Chromebook program. I have to give a HUGE kudos to all of the 6th grade teachers and everyone who put time and effort into planning and executing the rollout of the Chromebooks. It was definitely not an easy task, and it will be interesting to collect and analyze data throughout this school year. 

It is especially important for our 6th grade students who have access to the USD issued Chromebooks 24/7 to be responsible digital citizens. Common Sense Media has a lot of great digital citizenship curriculum for all grade levels, but there is one brand new resource for middle school students that was just released this year. Digital Compass is a choose-your-own-adventure game that gives students the responsibility to make tough digital citizenship life choices in a fun, safe way. There are 9 possible endings to this game and it's all based on the 50 combinations of paths and decisions that students make along the way. The better their choices and the more lessons they learn, the more points and better badges they earn.

Here's a video trailer for the game:
 

The 6th grade team at Dartmouth has taken an impressive blended learning approach to teaching the Digital Compass lessons to students.

This week's EduWin goes out to Alice Baum, a 6th grade ELA and social studies teacher from Dartmouth Middle School, for the great work that she's done using Digital Compass to teach her 6th grade students about digital citizenship.

It's never easy implementing something completely new into your curriculum, but I was super impressed when Alice showed me a Google Slide presentation that she put together to help teach her students how to begin and navigate through the game. It was clear that she had taken the time to go through the Educator Guide and the game in order to capture screenshots and important information that her students would need in order to be successful. We will be continuing what she has started by putting together Common Sense Media lessons in Google Slide Presentations that will reinforce the most important lessons learned in Digital Compass.

Alice has done a great job stressing the importance of digital citizenship in her classroom! Thank you, Alice Baum and all of the 6th grade teachers for all of your hard work and dedication to your students and the Union School District!

Digital Citizenship with an EduWin from Elise Plutt

While the official Digital Citizenship Week was last week,  as our students begin to learn their way around tech, there are lessons that go hand-in-hand with their new environment. Students need to learn to respect themselves and others, how to protect their privacy and the privacy of others, and how to connect to and communicate with others.  There are many different websites and services that provide lessons for digital citizenship, but the one most educators prefer is Common Sense Media.

I first learned about Common Sense Media as a parent. It provides ratings on movies, books, games, and apps. I always appreciated their take on "good for ages...." and the ability for me to use the sliding age range to help narrow my search. Each year, right before the gift-giving holidays, I'd share their information with my students' parents who look for guidance when exposing their students to media.

As an educator, I found the Common Sense Media Digital Passport lessons fun and engaging for students. Geared to students beginning at about third grade, it is easy to enroll students, assign modules, and then track student progress. 

Elise Plutt, a third grade teacher from Guadalupe, wrote, "I was able to create an account, and then sign my kids up for the Digital Passport. That then gives them access to 5 different games to teach various lessons about being a good "digital citizen." i.e. lesson on cyberbullying, oversharing information online and even a game to teach how to search things with effective keywords and how to cite sources when using images. You can enable or disable games depending on what you think is appropriate for your kids to learn about. For example, I disabled the game about cell phones and texting. "

Each of the modules are Common Core aligned, come with a teacher-led lesson to introduce the topic, and a Family Tips sheet to send or e-mail home. Click here for the Educator Handbook to get started.

Another resource I used that is more teacher directed can be found in Common Sense Education. You will need to register with the site as a teacher at your school. Once you do that you will have access to lessons that range from K-2 through high school. Topics as early as K-2 include Internet Safety and Privacy & Security. 

As teachers, parents, and responsible adults, we naturally try to teach children to be kind to each other in our classrooms, homes, and on the playgrounds. It is now equally important for us to pass on these social norms for online behavior. Common Sense Media helps us by providing the tools to do just that.

If you or one of your colleagues are doing something in your class that uses edtech tools, please let me know. I'd love to share it with other teachers.