Blackberry Alley

It was tough to have to only choose three sessions from all the great ones offered at the DEN 6^th Birthday Bash in Philadelphia on June 25. One of the ones I decided to attend was Symbaloo, since I had created an account a while back as part of a DEN special promotion but had never found the time to really experiment with the tool. Daniela Bolzmann and Kimmie Fortelny from team Symbaloo were in from California for ISTE and also to run this session to give an overview of the tool and discuss ways educators are using SymbalooEDU in the classroom.

First there was Symbaloo; then there was SymbalooEDU. The EDU version is barely a year old and came about when the team realized that educators were using Symbaloo in their classrooms and finding it to be a valuable tool. According to Daniela’s post of June 24 on the SymbalooEDU blog, it was a video created by one of Randy Hollinger’s seventh grade students called My PLE explaining all the digital tools used in her personal learning environment that got the team to seek feedback from Randy and other educators and start the ball rolling on the EDU version.
Randy and his wife Amy are presenting at ISTE on Wednesday, June 29, on the topic of PLEs and project based learning.

My wheels are turning for the coming school year just with the idea of setting up a webmix for each grade I teach (third through eighth) with that webmix set as their homepage with all the links we use regularly. Such a timesaver!

Also at our session attendees were urged to become “Symbaloo Certified” and were told that the certification process is beig revamped. There was a long line of educators adding their names to the sign up list! Whymight you want to get certified?

• Badge to put on website/blog/wiki/etc.
• Heads up before public as to new features
• Swag to pass out during trainings
• Listed on our website as an ‘Ambassador’ available to train – Coming Soon
• Possible Spotlight Educator on our Blog

Even if you are not interested in goring for certification, the certification webmix is a perfect set of tutorials for all the things you need to know about using SymbalooEDU, broken into small chunks. Take a look at the certification webmix.

Over the last few months other DEN bloggers have posted their thoughts on SymbalooEDU, such as:

I still like how I can build a webmix for each content area. The ability to post/link/save multi-media on a webmix is very nice and useful. I like how my students can access this from home, the library, the lab, etc. I know that I have just scratched the surface of what I can do with Symbaloo when it comes to my students. (Eric Strommer April 3)

I like the customizable center widget also, as ESL and bi-lingual students can make connections with the translator too This is a little more user friendly for younger students as you can customize the widget face. There are endless possibilities to what we can do to differentiate using this tool. (Joli Brock)

The students love being able to go to ONE site to get all of the URL’s that they need to complete their computer assignments instead of having to bring a notebook with them to class. (Sarah Thompson May 9)

On February 20 Kelly Hines shared Lisa Thompson’s webmix of “DEN Goodness” and the resources for the DEN birthday bash are even available on a SymbalooEDU webmix created by Cynthia Brown.

Though a basic personal account is free, the teacher pricing plan allows for a teacher account and 50 student accounts. I would have liked to try out that aspect of the site and create student accounts, but my teacher account appears to be broken. Although I received 3 emails from SymbalooEDU regarding my account and how to begin the certification process, when I use that same email to try to log in, it tells me there is no such email. (I was assured it would be looked into). So for now, without any hands on experience myself, I am relying on the information that others have already shared on this tool.

One thing that would be awesome that appears can’t be done yet, is to actually embed the webmix itself into an existing page such as a blog or a wiki. Other pages and documents, and even RSS feeds can be embedded into the tiles of a webmix, and you can even embed a webmix into a tile on a webmix, but right now the only way you can share any webmixes you create seems to be by URL. I can see that in a space such as we have in the DEN blog, the webmix would have to be reduced in size to fit, though, and maybe the visual effectiveness would be lost at a reduced size. The screenshot above is a perfect example of how the webmix could be less than useful at a reduced size.

I am hoping to take advantage of the Symbaloo addon for Firefox and Chrome that will allow you to click a button to immediately add a site to your existing webmix. (So please, Team Symbaloo, fix my broken account!)

Follow Team SymbalooEDU on Twitter: @SymbalooEDU

You may also want to check out:
Doreen Bates – webmix of IWB Resources
Dianne Rees – Serious Games webmix as well as her great step by step for educators creating a PLE with Symbaloo.

At the recent DEN pre-conference in Hershey, Lance Rougeux presented “How Sweet It Is” where he shared just a sampling of the awesome FREE resources available to educators on the Discovery Education site. So…STEP AWAY FROM THE LOG IN…at least until you check out the array of resources for teachers. The glog below gives a visual summary of Lance’s talk. See the full size glog here.

Recently I attended a Classroom2.0 Live session where Barbara Bray was the featured guest. Barbara, a learning strategist from California, spoke on the topic of “Joy in Learning” (session recording here)and the importance of play in the learning process. In her post Full Steam Ahead: The Power of Play, she says:

Schools in the US are designed around the industrial model where the teacher is the all-knowing expert delivering instruction to meet the standards and tests. With this model, students are learning the same thing at the same time. If schools are going to produce a new type of worker who can deliver what people need on-demand where they personalize each situation for each user, they will need a different kind of education system than we are delivering now. Students will be active learners designing their own learning environments based on their needs and finding the most creative learning environments that build on their strengths.

Play and bringing back joy to learning is what schools have to do to prepare our future citizens. When you are involved in playing a game with your friends, how do you feel? Watch children play and interact with other children. They are fully engaged and probably remember those activities for a long time. Ask a child if they remember the worksheet they filled out last week. Was that fun? Do they remember the answers? Schools need to provide engaging activities that turn students into critical thinkers, researchers, and designers.

A few posts later she also mentions Sir Ken Robinson’s “Changing Education Paradigms” (love those RSAnimate videos!) which addresses the same concerns.

A sad contrast was shared by David Warlick in his October 27 post Confidence Lost. He wrote of conversations with faculty and administration of a local university who were wondering how they could affect change and move schools forward. From their conversations he said he felt that we in education have lost our confidence and our sense of educational entrepreneurship, that sense of freedom and encouragement to “innovate” in order to motivate our students. Especially telling was a comment shared by one of the professors who said that his daughter, coming home from her first day in sixth grade,  said that the principal had told the students that they will not be having fun. They will be learning.

Fun and learning can not be opposites. We need to find ways to engage our students the same way that their out of school activities engage them. Perhaps we can take some lessons from gaming strategies.

Tom Chatfield, in his TED talk of July 2010, says we can learn things about “learning” by studying video game strategies. The seven lessons he sees in video games are:

1. Experience bars that measure progress – Players associate themselves with this progress; they take ownership of it.
2. Multiple long and short term aims – Goals are varied.
3. Rewards just for trying – Failure is not punished.
4. Feedback – rapid, frequent, and clear
5. An element of uncertainty – This “lights up” the brain and the concept is a “neurological gold mine”.
6. Production of dopamine in the brain – Studies of dopamine levels predict how memory and confidence figure into learning.
7. Other people! Collaboration with other gamers, working as a team is a big turn on.

Wanting something + liking the activity = ENGAGEMENT.

Game designer David Perry in 2006 said the average age of gamers was about 30, and 43% of them were women. There are millions of adults involved in World of Warcraft, for example, and they are paying thousands of dollars for virtual property in online games and virtual worlds. He also asserted that 83% of games have no violence or mature content. Another fun and thought-provoking presentation on the power of games was that of Jane McGonigal “Games Can Make a Better World“. According to McGonigal, “ In the best-designed games, our human experience is optimized: We have important work to do, we’re surrounded by potential collaborators, and we learn quickly and in a low-risk environment. ” Sounds like a great description for school.

Perhaps educators would do well to investigate what games their students are playing and why they find them so engaging. I asked some seventh grade students recently about their gaming interests, and the serious “gamers” were about falling out of their chairs to tell me about them, they were so excited to share. On the other hand, one boy said he was not allowed to do any gaming (Also not allowed to blog in school, but that is another story!). I asked a fifth grader when he wanted to title his blog “Spore Guy” if he meant “Sport Guy”. He actually meant Spore, a virtual gaming environment about evolution created by Will Wright, and that he really was good at that game. Needless to say, I had to check out Wright’s explanation of Spore.

Can we find ways to take the ideas of not punishing failure but instead rewarding effort, of scaffolding so that challenges we present are not too difficult but also not too easy for the individual learner, and get students excited about engaging in collaborative activities not only with classmates but with other students around the globe? Maybe by getting involved in some gaming ourselves and trying it out, we can sense the power of these activities and see how we can up the engagement level of our students.

There are many great ideas being shared in the Global Education Conference going on this week (Nov. 15- 19) for ways to have our students collaborate and engage in real world problem solving. ISTE’s Don Knezek had a great  presentation (archive here) on Nov. 15 regarding using  digital learning environments to engage students in authentic projects and solving problems that really matter. One of his “Many Faces of Innovation” – a list of ideas that we can be incorporating into 21st century education -  is “students learning through simulations and serious games”.

Whether it be collaboration and creation in virtual worlds such as Reaction Grid or Quest Atlantis, or something as simple as creating a glog in the classroom, students need to buy into the goal and enjoy doing the activities that help them reach it. I missed the session by Peggy Sheehy and Lucas Gillispie on World of Warcraft in Education yesterday during the Global Education Conference (archive here) but I am hoping to catch the presentation “live”  on ISTE Island in Second Life tonight (Nov. 16) at 5 SLT (8 pm Eastern). I confess to having lost track of time myself when creating things in that virtual world.

Do you play any online games? Participate in virtual worlds? Feel a sense of immersion and a rush when accomplishing a goal or mastering a level in a game? Maybe you get that same sense of accomplishment and exhilaration after a great round of golf or a completing a do-it-yourself project.

My post title is from a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw: We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. Let the games begin!

DEN Virtual Conference attendees were wowed in session two by Porter Palmer’s Out of This World Ideas for Showcasing Student Work. She directed us to research from Chris Weber’s Publishing with Students: A Comprehensive Guide,  especially his information on web-based publishing for students.  She pointed out that research shows grading writing discourages students from taking risks, while publishing encourages them to take risks. Porter collected all of her links for the presentation in Live Binders, a great way to keep presentation resources organized neatly. (While looking at LiveBinders I happened across another binder of Technology Integration Resources for library and media specialists by mnpsil. Definitely going back to that one later!)

First on Porter’s list was Posterous. This tool lets you post video, audio, and image files, as well as text. You can also include documents and even embed Google Maps. You can set up the page yourself or email your files to them and it is turned into a page for you. There is also a handy bookmarklet.  Note: Since Posterous accounts are for ages 13 and older, elementary teachers would need to post students’ work for them.

She also demonstrated how teachers can use wikis such as wikispaces or PBworks for classroom pages and to embed student videos or store documents. Speaking of wikis, Porter also showed how students can actually become serious content creators by contributing to Wikipedia after they research a topic. Another site to which students can contribute is World 66-The Travel Guide, a great resource for information about various travel destinations. Each entry is editable by anyone else. Note: It is not clear what editorial checks occur on these pages, however, and their Terms of Service do not mention age, just provide a link to content filtering tools that parents can use to block harmful content.

Next on the menu was SlideShare, a way for PowerPoint presentations to be shared online. Use the embed code to place into wikis, blog, glogs, anywhere you can embed. You can even turn your slides into a slidecast with audio added to the slides. Note: Terms of Service indicate the site is not to be used by anyone under the age of 13. SchoolTube was also mentioned as a site for sharing student and teacher created videos.

Other sites on Porter’s list included the ever-popular Glogster EDU, which she termed the “new book report site” indicating just one of its many uses in the classroom as a digital poster. For easy voice recording over the phone, she pointed us to ipadio. An example of its use might be students creating a voice recording for a foreign language class. Note: In order for a student to call in and create a “phlog”, they need to register by providing their first and last names, email addresses, and the phone numbers they will use to call in, so this is definitely not for elementary school students. Perhaps a work around could be the teacher being the account holder and using the school number for calling in, allowing younger students to record  voices in that manner. These phlogs are embeddable in blogs, wikis, etc.

With Storybird, students can choose beautiful illustrations from a variety of artists and compose an original story. Teachers can create classes of students and there is an option to collaborate with schools around the world. Storybirds can be set to public or private and an embed code is provided.

ToonDoo is a site where users can create comic strips with existing graphics. Note: Terms of Service say “ToonDoo will only provide the Service to “persons and entities who can form legally binding and enforceable contracts under applicable law.” Since there may be objectionable material created by some users of the site, caution is advised. Someone in the chat offered the suggestion of Toondoospaces, which is private and for educational use, but only provides a 15-day free trial before you need to select a payment plan. Xtranormal, a way to turn a typed script into an animated video clip, has two versions. The online version clearly states it is not for under 13 years of age, and in fact anyone who is a “minor” needs parents to register for them. The only option for schools seems to be the downloadable version known as “State”, which is still in Beta and does not yet seem to have a lot of options, but may be worth experimenting with.

All of Porter’s links used in her presentation can be found in her LiveBinder. Be sure to visit the archived webinar when it becomes available on the DEN site. Thanks, Porter, for a jam-packed presentation of ways to showcase our students’ learning!

The NETS listed on the ISTE site are something that I have referred to often in my coursework and also in my teaching and my support of teachers integrating technology into the curriculum. There are so many Web2.0 tools to choose from but the value of the tool is best judged by its ability to help teachers and students better meet these national standards.

One of my favorite Web2.0 tools is student blogging, and in my case the platform is classblogmeister.com, developed by David Warlick as part of his Landmarks Project. Giving students the opportunity to blog certainly provides the opportunity for students to “communicate and collaborate” (standard 2). Blogging allows students to see that they are part of the global community and publish their writing for a global audience. Participating in the Student Blogging Challenge is a way to open to the door to interaction with students around the world and develop cultural understanding and global awareness. The student’s individual blog page can also be a place to showcase his or her creative projects. Through this challenge my students have had the opportunity to participate in Blog Action Day held on October 15. The 2010 theme is “water” and the 2009 theme was climate change. Becoming aware of global issues affords students the opportunity to read about current problems and think about possible solutions and share those solutions with others. (standard 4).

For creativity and innovation (standard 1) my thoughts jump to a number of Web2.0 tools that allow students to showcase their knowledge in creative ways, such as Glogster EDU. It has been my experience that students love the platform and will spend a great deal of time designing their glogs. They can follow a logical thought process and explain their concept or newly acquired knowledge with others by sharing it via this creative digital tool. Students can also use digital tools for collaboration and “use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues” (standard 1c)  in many of the projects showcased by Discovery Education such as Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge.  This again fits well with standard 4 as a platform for critical thinking and problem solving.

The theme of Digital Citizenship (standard 5) needs to be present in all our work with digital tools. I have often relied on video sharing sites such as YouTube to open up discussion on Internet Safety, and I am also hoping to be involved in the Digiteen Project which will focus on Digital Citizenship. Students involved in this global collaborative project will rely on such tools as wikis and Skype and Google Docs to accomplish the project goals. I do have one eighth grade student who will not be thirteen years old until January 22, but I am hoping that will not be an issue in the first weeks of the project.

Although there are many other wonderful tools that could fill a book (and many writers have done just that) the tools that I have mentioned above have become rather standard fare in today’s classrooms. These basics can be enhanced with tools that showcase student work and allow diverse groups to come together to collaborate and appreciate each other’s similarities and differences.  These tools have helped and continue to help both teachers and students navigate the 21st century global seas. We just need to keep paddling.

Images

canoe paddle http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwallick/2964718526/
Thomas a Becket glog http://s53hakr.edu.glogster.com/thomas-a-becket/
Blog Action Day badge http://blogactionday.change.org/

In reviewing the exemplars of PBL in week one of EDIM 502, I was struck with a sense of déjà vu after reading about and viewing the work of Frances Koontz and her class as they participated in the Journey North activities. Quite a few years ago (dare I say at least 15 to 20?) I was involved in the Jason Project with my fellow fifth through eighth grade teachers at my previous school. That was the closest we ever got to project based learning, though we did not use that term at the time. It was an amazing journey of learning, exploration, and discovery initiated by Dr. Robert Ballard and a team of scientists. Some lucky students across the country applied to be part of the Jason expedition as “argonauts” and got to experience it first hand, though none of our students ever participated in that way. It was interdisciplinary, required us to team teach, took extensive planning on our part as teachers where we had to decide which areas of the curriculum we would be responsible for, which of the learning activities we would be able to incorporate, and how we would bring this experience to life for the students. The culminating activity was a trip to Lehigh University which was one of the hosting sites that communicated live with the expedition and we never knew when we booked our day exactly what the scientists would be doing and what we would experience.   We were in awe of the “technology” used at Lehigh for the live interaction with the expedition, especially since technology was almost non-existent in our classrooms at the time.  

Was that true project based learning according to the definition used today? How did it compare to the three exemplars from week one of the PBL course?

I will confess up front that although I am probably the most daring member of my faculty and the most willing to jump in and try something new, I am still somewhat “jaded” by the fact that so many of the great ideas out there in education sound wonderful in theory but sometimes leave one extremely frustrated in the harsh light of reality. Having been around for so many swings of the pendulum, one of the first things I tend to do when I see video clips of awesome projects being done in a particular classroom is to count the number of students in the room and note the amount of open space they have available. When you work with classes that average around 35 students  and have very little open space this is a reality that cannot be ignored. After seeing in these three exemplar videos that the students shown numbered 20 or fewer, I immediately sense that there would have to be great adaptations made in my school for undertaking similar projects. I struggle very often to see the glass half full rather than half empty!

In each of these projects there was a driving question of sorts, though not the Big Question with global implications as presented in the Apple CBL model, at least not directly stated, although the Monarch project and the related activities on the site are global projects.  Perhaps the articles just didn’t particularly name that or for the younger students that is not part of the vocabulary. It seemed that each of the three derived the driving question from a different source. For Mrs. Huemer’s class in Newsome Park it seemed the students’ interests and curiosity drove the project focus. In Miss Reeder’s geometry class in Seattle it seemed that she set the focus and the goals she wanted her students to achieve and designed the architecture project around that, and in Frances Koontz’s class the questions were derived from the Journey North curriculum projects.

All three projects had the students working in groups and engaged in hands on activities. The geometry students obviously were more self-directed as far as group dynamics because of their age, but the collaborative experience is vital for all age groups and is a very important skill to develop.  Assessment needs to be considered in the planning of projects and assessment was really only mentioned in the geometry project. I imagine there had to be periodic assessments by the teacher along the way and not just at the end of the six weeks. I am concerned about 40% of the final project grade coming from the assessment of the architects, but again, there is probably much more to this than was presented. Having coached students through PJAS (Pennsylvania Jr. Academy of Science) projects and having experts in various sciences be their judges, that can certainly be a flawed process if not screened carefully, but obviously she had developed a relationship with the architects and shared her project goals with them.

Project based learning still needs to incorporate curriculum standards  and Frances Koontz did mention how she was able to work in her language arts standards in the project, and also the idea of multiculturalism.  Miss Reeder’s class apparently scored very high in testing so she obviously did a great deal of preparation and planning to develop a project that incorporated the necessary benchmarks in geometry throughout the course of the project.  She was concerned with skill transfer but in the projects with the younger students that point was not raised.

Although I guessed as much coming in to this course, PBL entails a great deal of planning behind the scenes on the part of the teacher in order to be able to develop activities that will engage students and provide authentic learning with global implications, and still meet state standards. Planning time is definitely at a premium for most teachers and as Mrs. Vreeland noted in the “barrel of worms” article, it does take a great deal of effort. All three exemplars brought in outside experts in the field to speak to the students and interact with them, helping them to see real life application for their learning.

 Although the concept of PBL appeals to me and I see the educational value, it also seems overwhelming and I understand how someone might look at it and say “How would I ever have time to do that?” I can see that without administrative support it may be difficult to undertake. Without a teacher who is willing to work off the clock, waaaaaay off the clock, it won’t happen. But if we want our students to be engaged and to develop a desire to be life-long learners, we have to take baby steps and be willing to give it a go.

I especially liked how Mrs. Vreeland said that “the students know that Mrs. V. doesn’t have all the answers, and they also know that it doesn’t bother her in the least.” We are all students, some of us are just much, much older than others. This student is looking forward to learning more about PBL.

Images

 glass half empty http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffyoungstrom/29620336/  CC 2.0 license

 Robert Ballard http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikcharlton/2302884405/# CC 2.0 license

clock http://www.flickr.com/photos/halderman/2344645773/# CC 2.0 license

Work complete for Wilkes-Discovery Master’s Program as of March 12, 2010

EDIM 508 Digital Media – Instructor: Lance Rougeux

“Digital Citizenship – Internet Safety”

Use of Glogster “US Constitution Grade 5” glog

Google Earth Virtual Field Trip – “Rainforests of the World Grade 3”

Blog entries for this class posted on this blog site.

EDIM 507 Using Technology to Support Creativity – Instructor: Luke Lyons

1. Reaction paper: “Steering a Course Toward Globalization in Teaching”
2. Reaction paper: “Working as a Team in 21^st Century Education”
3. Reaction paper: “A Path to Global Awareness”
4. Technology Product Assessment: Classblogmeister
5. Creativity Lesson Plans:” Rainforests of the World” and “Canada- Latin America Travel Video”
6. Final Project: “A Challenge to Act”

EDIM 514 Internet Tools for Teaching - Instructor: Jacqueline Derby

1. Campus fusion blog posts
2. Digital Story with a Cell Phone – “A Teacher’s Path”

Contact Info:

Email
Twitter: Patti211
class blog
www.olphbeth.org

I attended the Classroom2.0Live session on Saturday, February 13, where Edmodo was explained by Jeff O’Hara, I planned to simply bookmark the site and come back to it perhaps for consideration next year. There were a number of aspects of the Edmodo platform that would be duplicating what we already had in place as far as teacher and student communication, and I did not see the need to create that type of platform just yet because there was no way I would have time to develop student use of it at this point in the year.

How does one teach students the best practices for participating in social networking? Modeling responsible behavior and allowing students to be guided through a real social network would be ideal, but hardly practical in a K-8 setting. Most sites have age limits of 13 and older for users for their sites. I know some teachers have created a Ning for their own private network with students, but for me to create a Ning to be used with only 8th graders whom I see for 45 minutes per week and already find it difficult to manage the topics I do have, it seemed it would be an extreme effort for little return, at least for this year. From Ning.com:

The Ning Platform is not directed to children younger than 13 and is offered only to users 13 years of age or older. If you are under 13 years old, please do not use the Ning Platform. Any person who provides their personal information through the Ning Platform represents to us that they are 13 years of age or older.

Because of the readings presented in this week’s module for the EDIM514 course, I spent a great deal of time watching the videos for the K-12 online conference that featured the Taking It Global social network. I felt that there were actually a number of ways this network could be used for collaboration in a variety of themes such as culture, environment, and especially technology.  I had to first create my own membership in TIG before I could be an educator on the network. In order to create an actual class, however, you had to get past step 3 by paying a class enrollment fee of $29. The K-12 online videos presented an obviously expired code for three months free trial, but search as I might, I could find no current offer for the same. The person who made the presentation after several years at the head of the organization is no longer in that position.

I did not go past step 3 and pay the fee. I am not averse to spending my own money for worthwhile projects, and I often do. But at this point there seemed to be a great learning curve in actually using this site to its potential. I also scoured the fine print for evidence that students under 13 could or could not participate but I only found evidence that it was okay to enroll students under 18 without divulging personal information, and that it was possible to create a completely private classroom environment. Perhaps the fact that it is a Canadian site, they do not consider the same privacy laws regarding children as we do in the US.

The other site I investigated was one that had been mentioned in a previous Wilkes class: Global Dreamers. This site seemed to offer collaboration and communication in a safe environment, but just like TIG, the information was outdated, and it seems the activity in the network has decreased greatly or even ceased altogether.

But why would we create a completely private classroom environment? If students are too young to interact with others outside the walls of their school, they are too young for social networking. For what purpose would I go to the trouble of creating this private classroom for them to interact among themselves, which they already do? The lessons they need to learn regarding safety in social networking can be presented without creating an entire social network for private use.

During these last few weeks in technology classes we have been discussing Internet Safety. The topic is adjusted based on the grade level (3-8). My goal for this unit of study correlates with ISTE’s NETS:

5. Digital Citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.

Students:
a. advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology.
b. exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity.
c. demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning.
d. exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.

To meet Standard 5a for Digital Citizenship I used as the starting point a PowerPoint unit created for a previous Wilkes class. Each topic in the unit (Social Networking, Email Scams, Online Shopping, Posting Images Online, Cyberbullying) led to a Discovery Streaming video as a start. From there we are using class discussion and other resources such as YouTube videos or websites to add information to the topic.

In the sub-category of social networking and using caution when relaying information about yourself, I  used  information on the Facebook Privacy Policy as well as the following videos for upper grade students:

Internet Safety   (how children can be misled online)
Internet Safety – A Cautionary Tale (how easily personal info can be found)
Digital Dossier (how much info is available and what you don’t have to fill out on forms)

as well as this informational site: Social Networking Sites – Safety Tips for Tweens and Teens

There is a built in quiz in the PowerPoint slide show, but I plan to also follow up with student blog posts where they write their own tips about safety on the key areas discussed. This would be another form of assessment in addition to the video quiz.

I do feel that with the current tools I am using to develop awareness of social interaction on the Internet (blogging, wikispaces with discussion and wikimail) as well as direct instruction in intellectual property rights and Internet Safety issues, I feel that I am providing enough information on social networking without actually creating and using a specific social networking platform in our school. The above mentioned lessons are currently being used and it is having an impact on students and thankfully some are re-thinking their behavior on social sites. When time permits I may investigate the TIG option or Edmodo platform, but for now, I have enough resources to meet the objectives of standard 5a Digital Citizenship and to help my students to grow in safe, legal, and responsible use of technology.