Friday, February 15, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
People Are Awesome (Video)
I ran across this video on Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day blog. I know the title says "People Are Awesome," but I think Mr. Ferlazzo states perfectly that this video "could easily be subtitled, 'People Are Crazy.'" Check it out!
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Could You Go Through a Digital Detox?
Happy New Year everyone! I know it's been a while since I have posted (ok - almost 4 months!), but I am going to try and make more of an effort this year to post lessons, ideas, videos, etc. of what we are doing in our Tech Lit class.
Today, I posed the question to my middle school students - could you go through a digital detox? First of all, we had to come up with the meaning of "detox" which many students associated with drugs and alcohol. I had one student define detox as "getting the poisons out of your body;" another student defined it as "giving up something."
I came across an episode of Dateline on Sunday night where they followed a group of twenty-something girls who went through digital detox for two weeks. No cell phone, no Facebook, no Twitter, etc. Check out the clips below:
Digital Detox Part 1:
Digital Detox Part 2:
After I showed these clips to my students, we discussed if they could go through a digital detox. I'm not even sure I could go without my phone or social media for two weeks! Then I had my students take the following survey http://bit.ly/WSQMAV about their cell phone usage. Feel free to take this survey yourself or share with your students!
Today, I posed the question to my middle school students - could you go through a digital detox? First of all, we had to come up with the meaning of "detox" which many students associated with drugs and alcohol. I had one student define detox as "getting the poisons out of your body;" another student defined it as "giving up something."
I came across an episode of Dateline on Sunday night where they followed a group of twenty-something girls who went through digital detox for two weeks. No cell phone, no Facebook, no Twitter, etc. Check out the clips below:
Digital Detox Part 1:
Digital Detox Part 2:
After I showed these clips to my students, we discussed if they could go through a digital detox. I'm not even sure I could go without my phone or social media for two weeks! Then I had my students take the following survey http://bit.ly/WSQMAV about their cell phone usage. Feel free to take this survey yourself or share with your students!
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Digital Citizenship Contract
To wrap up our Digital Citizenship unit, I had my students work together on a Google Doc to come up with expectations for themselves and for others while they are online. I took the top 5 responses from each of my seven classes, and designed this bulletin board. The graphic of the young girl may look familiar - I traced it off the commonsense.org website where they have a digital citizenship poster for elementary school students. Once I completed that, along with the student-made expectations, I had each of my 130 students sign the board. I decided to have my students sign the board so this would always be a constant reminder to them as to how they should act while they are online.**Student names have been blurred out for privacy reasons.**
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Detecting Lies & Harmful Links
In Lesson 2 of YouTube's Digital Citizenship curriculum, we discussed the topics of detecting lies on the Internet and determining whether certain links were harmful. Many students said they have received suspicious emails from companies or have seen pop-up windows (You have won a free iPad!) where companies are trying to lure them to give out personal information. We also discussed ways to determine whether a website is credible or not: figure out what the point of a website is; investigate who developed the website by looking at the host or "about us" section; and follow the rule of three-check three other websites to determine if those facts on the initial website are reliable.
We also used "The Wayback Machine". This website is hosted by the Internet Archive and it's a great way to see how websites have evolved over the years. The students loved looking at how our school's website has changed over the past 12 years, and they especially liked when we searched and viewed Google and YouTube's changing websites.
The following videos below were provided by YouTube as a part of Lesson 2:
We also used "The Wayback Machine". This website is hosted by the Internet Archive and it's a great way to see how websites have evolved over the years. The students loved looking at how our school's website has changed over the past 12 years, and they especially liked when we searched and viewed Google and YouTube's changing websites.Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Weather Wiz Kids
Weather Wiz Kids is a website I found this morning while trying to find hurricane resources for my students. WWK was designed by a meterologist for students to learn more about different weather events. Within each weather section, there are resources for both teachers and parents to use with their student. If your classroom is doing a weather unit, this would be a great website to check out!
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
YouTube Digital Citizenship Curriculum
Courtesy of David Andrade's blog (http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com), Google has launched a YouTube curriculum on Digital Citizenship. There are nine lessons and each include a teacher's guide and PowerPoint slides. Topics include cyberbullying, privacy, reporting content, and copyright, just to name a few.
My class completed the first lesson today, and the students liked being able to use YouTube to answer some of the questions. They also loved being able to watch some of the most popular videos on YouTube.
Check out the following link to find all of the materials in the curriculum:
Here is a video that also explain the curriculum:
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