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.**

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.  

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.

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!

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:

http://www.google.com/edu/teachers/youtube/curric/index.html  

Here is a video that also explain the curriculum:

The Prediction

This would be a good video to share with students.

Homemade iPad Stylus

If you use iPod touches or iPads in your classroom, I have found an easy and inexpensive way to make a stylus for your students to use.  

Materials:

Unsharpened pencil

Aluminum foil

Scotch tape

#0000 steel wool (this will NOT scratch glass)

Colorful duct tape

1.  Attach a small piece of scotch tape to one corner of the aluminum foil.

2.  Attach the tape to the middle of the unsharpened pencil.

3.  Begin to tightly roll the aluminum foil around the pencil.

4.  Tape the loose end of the aluminum foil to the pencil.

5.  There will be excess aluminum foil on each end of the pencil.  Cut half of the foil off each end and fold over the end of the pencil.  Make sure each end is smooth and then tape to the pencil.

6.  Get a small piece of #0000 steel wool and wrap over one end of the pencil.

7.  Tape the steel wool tightly to the pencil.

8.  Use colorful duct tape to customize your new stylus.

Welcome to the Tech Lit 21 Classroom Blog!  This is the first posting of what I hope to be many.  For those of you who do not know what Tech Lit 21 is, let me share some background with you.  My name is Christina (Jesse) Hanson and this is my third year teaching Tech Lit 21 (or Tech Lit, as many of my students call it).  Tech Lit is a project-based class at Lincoln Junior High in LaSalle, Illinois for 7th and 8th grade students.  

During this year-long class, students will learn how to use a variety of Web 2.0 tools and apps on the iPads, collaborate with students and classrooms around the world and many other computer skills in order to make projects for other classes, and to try and keep up with the ever-changing world of technology.  

I will be sharing with you lessons, activities and events that are going on in our classroom.  Feel free to share these lessons with your students or fellow colleagues too.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me by email (hansonc@lasalleschools.net) or on Twitter (@cjesse21).  I am also working on making a Tech Lit 21 page on Facebook so look for that release soon!