What Do Your Student's Tweets, Posts, & Instagrams say about them? A #digcit Lesson

Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to do many workshops with mostly high school students regarding crafting their "digital footprint" or "digital tattoo".

One of the activities the students do in this workshop always hits a nerve with the majority of students ( and actually...it does with the teachers in the room as well).

Here we go!

Get out your cell phone, open the app that you use the most for social sharing.  Pull up your feed, showing your instas, tweets, FB posts....just show your own stream.

Now take ONE minute and look through your feed....choose 3 words to describe what others might assume about you based ONLY on what you have shared.

( If you have the kind of classroom culture that permits it...have the students trade phones instead and do this...OR...if you have a colleague in another building, another state etc...you could have the students connect via their social media channel and analyze each other's posts!)

I go first, sharing my twitter stream via the projector and ask the students to choose 3 words to describe me or my interests. They typically say...education, education technology, schools, teachers, New Tech Network, project based learning or other similar words.

Now...the fun begins, I ask students to share their words.

3 words that students typically use to describe them via their social media stream
drama
boys
song lyrics
whiner
friend
food
angry
silly
basketball
sports
Jesus
curser
potty mouth
funny

After everyone who wants to shares has a chance to speak...I have them think for 30 secs about if their "three words" really represents who they are as a whole person.  They generally say, not really or maybe yes, just a part of them.

Then I ask them  to think of 3 words they WISH were the most prominent.
Students then share out those three words

3 words students WISH their social media stream included. ( some are the same)
smart
talented
sports
Jesus
creative
funny
college
successful
happy
good daughter ( son)
brother ( sister)
( some version of a career...teacher, dentist, engineer, stylist etc..)

Then in groups at their tables they discuss this question...

How can we as high school students still "be ourselves" on social media while crafting a "brand of Me"

Students always come up with great strategies for this. Which I won't share because you need to be impressed with what your OWN students come up with.

This is a super simple lesson that can be a springboard to using social media as a learning tool or to get students thinking about how far reaching their online persona can be!

I'm So Much Cooler Online 

by Brad Paisley

Libraries, obsolete? SHH!

I keep seeing articles and posts about libraries and in turn librarians becoming obsolete. While I agree that if your library is simply a "book warehouse" and hasn't keep up with the times, that could possibly be true, my experience with libraries is that they have kept up.

In many ways, I see that libraries have become even more necessary to communities!

Community Partners for Learning:
Our library partners with our schools to be sure our technology is compatible.  They work with our teachers, pulling book collections and other materials to support classroom learning for teachers to check out or for students to find easily. 

We are so lucky to have a community college in our small town of 8,000. It is wonderful to see so many adults pursuing learning!  Many of them need a place to study ( a quiet place, if you have kids at home!), or resources they simply don't have on hand at their house, internet access, computers, copiers, printers, research materials. advice and guidance.

Our library has a full agenda of ongoing education classes with topics ranging from keeping your kids safe online to water color painting, to genealogy, to  all kinds of technology classes, to the typical children's story hour.

We have meeting rooms outfitted with interactive white boards, small kitchens and group seating that are almost always booked for community clubs, groups and businesses.

Connectivity: 
For the students and families where I live and in so many communities, the library is a bridge across that digital divide!  Broadband internet access has become more and more necessary and not just for our students.  Many companies no longer accept any thing but  online job applications, you can do your taxes, fill out the FAFSA and so many things I take for granted because I have internet access at home.

Literacy Acquisition:
Whether you are acquiring English as a second language or made it to adulthood without learning to read, many libraries have  programs for that. Through a grant written several years ago, our library has become a safe and caring place to gain the literacy skills necessary in today's world no matter how old you are.

Our very youngest learners have access to so many books, so much music and other materials at libraries, they can discover and then explore their passions. As a young mom with no extra money to build a book collection at home, our boys fell in love with Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle and so many other authors & illustrators they discovered at our public library. They researched the frogs, turtles & bugs they found in our yard by borrowing field guides and matching photos. To suggest or even assume that all young children have a tablet computer and the internet to do this online at home is just ridiculous.
 
Becoming Media Savvy
As well illustrated in my colleague @PaulSCurtis 's latest blog post, our students may do a great deal of research online, but do they actually KNOW what they are doing?  Enter the librarian!  There is no one better suited to help our students (and us) be aware of just what a valid source is and where to find one. Critically evaluating sources is only going to become more necessary as the ability to self publish and declare oneself a guru becomes easier.

Libraries are a Place of Equity
Rich, poor, old , young, no matter what your race, creed, religion or political leanings, all may enter the library, meet, study, learn and in fact have your privacy protected.  No one is monitoring what you check out and then putting up ads for it on your Facebook page. No one is saving your credit card information for future purchases.
Libraries have a long history of defending patron privacy. This is supported by confidentiality laws in almost every state.

I know I haven't even begun to touch the surface of why libraries are important to our schools and communities, what I do know is that each time we have cut a librarian in our local school system in the name of cost containment, my heart breaks a little. For although the libraries themselves can be wonderful, it is the people in them and the expertise, guidance and inspiration they provide that truly brings them to life.

"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation."                

                                                                                                            Walter Cronkite

Singing in the library ala the Music Man? YES!

What Song Makes Your Students Think of Your School?

I'm watching the Grammys, knitting and glancing at my Twitter stream (my knitting pattern is on my iPad, so it's not THAT much multi-tasking).

When I see a tweet that warms my heart

Emcredible is a HS freshman that I have never actually met face to face. I follow her on Twitter, she tweets with us during #PBLChat, I see her tweet encouragement to her friends, thank visitors to her school, and now, thanks to Twitter, I know how she feels about Adam Levine. (I agree, Em!)

She is crafting a great digital footprint.

That isn't what made me have to put down my knitting and write this short post.

As soon as I read her tweet, I wished for every student to have a home at school.

What song would students say  makes them think about your class? Your school?

My Digital Life: A Timeline of Sorts

I thought I'd create a little timeline in honor of Digital Learning Day about the course of my digital learning.  Chronology  might be a little mixed up due to the fact that some of this was a LONG time ago.

• About 1984: My HS added a computer class, I learned to write "go to " statements. Whatever.
• Around this same time (I think...) my dad brought home a Commodore 64, I wasn't too interested in it, after all I could get a lot more excitement by playing Pong our Atari.

• 1985 My big graduation gift from my parents was a typewriter that had a little screen and it could correct without white out or correction tape. I was pretty fired up about this one.
• Called home from college once a week from a shared room phone. Long distance was expensive!
• I don't really remember much about tech in college...we did have some kind of computer class, but nothing too memorable occurred in that for me, I guess.
• 1992, asked by my principal to write a 4 R's grant to get Apple IIE 's in our K & 1st grade classrooms, got the grant & was then placed in charge of the PD for it.
• This is a milestone! I've written about it before on this blog, but the way even the MOST reluctant writer took to typing a story & being able to put in floppy disk 2 for the super awesome pixelated graphics to enhance a story was the BEST! 
• Also around this time a HUGE lifesaver was purchased for use at our home a wonder of wonders to the mom of 3 boys who at the time were all under 6 was a cordless phone! I could still chat with my sister and be mobile anywhere in my house? WOAH!
• Writing in my inquiry driven 1st class was a huge part, I loved those Apple IIE's and what they could help my students express.
• During this tech journey some of the things we loved were, KidPix & Hyperstudio, very creativity driven tools that the kiddos could use independently. 
• One of my struggles was two computers & about 25 students, 
• We moved to South Carolina, very exciting but sad to be far away from our extended families
• The tech leader part of me continued in SC, I had an amazing Gateway computer in my class, this district was just getting started with tech so about 1 teacher per grade level had one. No tech support, just here is a cow box...have at it!
• Fun outcome here was, since I had a lot more experience, my students became a building tech team (3rd graders) and often worked w/ teachers on trouble shooting or if we did a writing project with Kid Works Deluxe, my students would go teach another  class how to use it. They LOVED this.
• 2nd year at this school I was asked to be an out of field licensed media specialist. Really the purpose was to advance the technology integration, I did tons of PD as we added more and more computers. (Props to all media specialist/librarians, I seriously had NO idea and was very unprepared for this position and have mad respect for the profession.)
• We also got, through a grant, a whiteboard that after we wrote our notes, it would print them on nasty slick sort of fax paper. We thought this was WAY cool. 
• Enter the purchase of our 1st home computer & dial up internet. Oh baby! We had saved & saved for this purchase. Our kids used KidPix, Kid Works Deluxe, Math Blasters, Interactive story books that I can't remember the name of & more...
• I left the classroom &  bought a little business called CompuChild, it was a franchise that taught preschool computer ed classes in daycare centers. This let me work mornings only, teach in preschools and it was so great! I did this for a few years. I was the first person to purchase this franchise online!
• The internet at home was awesome for emailing with my family back in Indiana, we  would chat using ICQ, or have a family chat in yahoo chat rooms.
• I remember logging on, listening for the dial up tone, going in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher, then going back in to the computer to see if we were connected yet.
• I also got my first "car phone" during this time. I was cutting edge. It cost about a million dollars a minute to use and made your ear really hot, you had to flip it open and pull up the antenna. I thought I was hot stuff.

•  We moved back to Indiana in about 1999, I began teaching 3rd grade again and had one desktop computer in my room for students and one on my desk & I was team teaching so my team teacher had one too.
• We had the internet in our classroom and phones! Woo hoo!
• We also had a tech director who thought elementary kids should never be on the computer, they would just break it.
• I chose to be a ridiculous rule breaker. I let kids use both of our teacher computers for writing, let them go online, loaded my own programs on my computer and then unloaded them at the end of a project. Brought in my own computer from home, bought my own printer.
• It was CRAZY frustrating to have great access & connectivity and a tyrant who kept kids from using it.
• I continued using the classroom computers for writing mostly, a little research & we had a classroom newspaper that was a great authentic project the kids worked on weekly. 
• I also got my Masters during this time through a distance ed program. The ladies in my cadre and I were the 1st class to do this at this particular school. It was done w/ VHS tapes that were mailed to us. We then met each week in our cadre to collaborate & reflect.

• After a couple of years, remember the franchise I owned in SC CompuChild? Well the WHOLE company came up sale. My husband & I bought it  and did that for some years. I learned a lot about marketing, communication, SEO, google ads, website creation & marketing, We did all of our sales online and lots of support for our franchisees there, too.
•  Getting broadband access happened somewhere in here, then the move on to wireless, too.
• Next big jump came when we I was asked to be on a technology committee for our school corp. We had a forward thinking new Supt.(read about her here) who was ready to shake things up , thank goodness!
• The tyrant of the tech dept retired. (In all fairness, he did a great job of getting our buildings all connected, great bandwidth, etc...he just didn't have the pedagogy thing)
• We sold our company & I became the tech director:) It was the best! I felt like the good fairy! We un-handcuffed our teachers & they went to town connecting our students to the world!  I worked with awesome people on my team, fantastic teachers and super excited kids.
• During the 5 years I was there we:
• went 1:1 at the HS and wall to wall PBL as a part of the New Tech Network, added more bandwidth, projectors in every class, IWBs in every class, tons of digital cameras, video cameras etc..google docs, "legalized" cell phones, did TONS of PD, video conferencing equipment in every building and wrote a boatload of grants to help pay for all of those things. Our tech dept motto was "If a teacher needs it for student learning, make it happen or find a way"
• I also got to work with the curriculum side of things so we weren't just throwing tools at teachers, but integrating them in meaningful ways to advance & engage students & staff in learning.
• We did a LOT, I probably left a bunch off of that list!
• I now am Online Community Manager for New Tech Network. A sort of typical tech day for me might include any or all of these and happen all mixed up all day long
• Check twitter feed, open about 20 windows, check the links to retweet, or send to people who need the resources shared
• Read local paper online & Indy Star online.
• Check out Facebook page, see what our schools have been up to, share.
•  Read blogs, write blog, share blogs
• Check Google Analytics
• Find resources on BYOT, AUP or other topics for school/teachers
• Answer emails
• Work on any number of presentations for schools or conferences
• Skype with a class or group somewhere about digital footprints
• Web ex or Vidyo w/ a teams or people from NTN who are likely to be anywhere from CA to NY
• Check cell phone, texts, tweets etc.
• Google chat is always open.
• Participate in webinar on any number of topics
• Prepare for #PBLChat, participate in other chats
• Take iPad into the kitchen, use recipe I had pinned earlier to make dinner
• Text kids, family, friends, work,
• Maybe watch Netflix or something I dvr'd 
• Shop online, plan & book vacations online, pin things to Pinterest for house ideas
• Order books online, read book on Kindle or iPad
• Find knitting pattern on Ravelry, download pattern to iPad knit with iPad propped on table and lurk on a twitter chat on my laptop.

I likely left out a bunch of things in the above list, technology has become such a ubiquitous part of my life. I don't even notice it, except when it doesn't work!
What are the milestones in your digital timeline!

Notre Dame + Alabama + Frustrated Fan Tweet = #DigCit Lesson !

Last Monday night I was watching the BCS championship game, Notre Dame vs Alabama, ( I know, I know, #rolltide...blah...I'm an Irish fan, don't rub it in)

I like to have Twitter open and follow the conversation about the game as well.  Tweets add a different kind of color commentary!

As I checked my feed, I saw a tweet from a student that often engages with us during #PBLChat, he uses social media really well as a student, he tweets encouragement to students in lower grades on their presentation days, celebrates his academic success and future goals, shares his learning and compliments his friends, a stellar example of a teen crafting a fantastic digital footprint.

BUT....

He is a Notre Dame fan....did you SEE that game?

His tweet was one word....one 4 letter word.

Uh oh!

Because he oftens tweets during #PBLChat I had no problem replying to him and letting him know that he has a better vocabulary than that, but before I could hit reply, I watched in real time as a conversation with one of his former teachers unfolded...here it is:

Trust, respect, responsibility, relationships and great school culture? Yep, all that is in place and evident by this exchange!

We don't have to be afraid of students and social media, we can be there for students to remind them that indeed, they are better than that!

Kudos to Josh for being receptive to his teacher's words and to his teacher for being there for Josh!

Seriously, STOP Blocking & Banning for Educators!

As Connected Educator Month draws to close, I'm appalled by the fact that many of our teachers & students are prevented from participating  due to blocking of ALL social media sites at school for both teachers & students

I am often asked the following question:

"How do we get our <Principal, Superintendent, IT Director, School Board, State Department of Ed> to stop blocking social media at the very least for teachers, if not for students?"

Here is where I would like to jump up on my soapbox and just RANT about trust, freedom of speech, access to information, fear-driven decision making, keeping everyone in from recess because one teacher misbehaved...but, I know how busy you are so let's skip the outrage and go directly to action steps:

Become knowledgeable:

The technology is there to facilitate the work not the other way around. The tech dept should not be making curricular decisions. In order for this to happen you must actually understand CIPA and Erate, so that when someone says to you, "Nope, all forums & social media must be blocked, if we don't comply with CIPA, we'll lose our E-Rate funding" you can refute the complete incorrectness of that statement!  Common Sense Media provides a great resource for you as does Dr. Mark Wagner in this slideshow.

Stop blaming the Technology
Facebook does not cause bullying. If you have a bullying problem in your school, that is a culture problem and all of the blocking in the world isn't going to make it better. Blaming the technology is an excuse for not solving the larger problem. Ignoring the prevalence of student's online lives is much more dangerous than blocking their access during the school day. We should be modeling and teaching digital responsibility in a safe environment where students can see that digital tools are not simply for entertainment but can be used professionally to expand their knowledge and create a digital footprint that will not come back to kick them later.

Accept that you are a BYOT school
Your students AND staff are using their own technology at school, whether they are texting within the  pocket of their hoody or surreptitiously in the bathroom between classes, they are bringing their own devices and they are using them. I have witnessed so many cases of teachers asking children to break the "no cell phone" policy. When a site is blocked on the school computers, teachers simply look the other way so students can access the needed information via their own cell phones.

Social Media IS a part of the "real world"
Educators are very fond of telling kids what the "real world" is like. Pretending that sites like Twitter & Facebook don't exist while students are at school is simply a denial that the real world exists inside your school. Students will be googled by their future (and current) employers.( Every mom I know googles potential babysitters and if they see a Facebook page that looks remotely irresponsible, that sitter will NOT be allowed in the house!) For the most part students don't have any idea that their tweets are being housed in the Library of Congress for all of eternity. We teach students about sex ed, stranger danger, drugs & alcohol, texting & driving why would we not teach them about social media, both the good and the bad?

Great things happen when students & teachers get connected

• Connect with higher education
• Find scholarships
• SKYPE with authors, scientists, and more.
• Create student culture with a Student Voice Chat like Lakeland Leading Edge 
• Get involved in the Election with projects like #MYparty12
• Model for students how Social Media is being used for global change 
• Teachers connect with others all over the world through chats & hashtags like #PBLChat, #edchat #kinderchat, #sschat, check out a very thorough list of ed hashtags here.
• Check out Pinterest Boards with Teach not Block Resources, Social Media & Digital Citizenship links
• Your community can find out from YOU what is happening at school via Facebook. Some great examples:
• DaVinci Charter Academy
• Dumas New Tech High
• Delaware New Tech Academy
• There are countless more great examples here on this crowdsourced doc from @Joe_Mazza 
• Need more resources? Try these books & sites
• Communicating and Connecting With Social Media
• The Dragonfly Effect
• The Connected Educator: Learning & Leading in the Digital Age
• Unmasking the Digital Truth Wiki

Take steps to make changes

• Update your Acceptable Use Policy
• Crowdsourced AUP
• Worlds Simplest Online Safely Policy
• Livebinder with BYOT AUP examples
• Do the research for your school board or administrators
• CoSN's MAKING PROGRESS: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media
• ISTE's NETS for Admin, Teachers & Students
• You simply cannot meet the NETs with overzealous blocking
• National Education Technology Plan
• Online communities are a part of the plan but we block them locally...REALLY?
• Let Students Lead the Way
• Consider this as a student led project
• Empower them to develop the new policy based on their own needs, research & conclusions
• I wonder what their driving question would be? 

I'd love to see examples of driving questions in the comments, examples of schools that have had success in making this change happen for their staff and students or resources that have been helpful for you as you continue to have more open access to the Internet at school!

Not Enough Student Voices! Engage with Education Nation!

Education Nation’s second-annual nationally televised Teacher Town Hall is this Sunday, September 25^th, continued live streams around specific topics happening on the 26^th and 27^th.  

When I attended an event at  Calumet New Tech High in Gary, Indiana during Secretary of Ed. Arne Duncan's Midwest Bus Tour, Dr. Martha Kanter engaged in a round table discussion about education, engagement, higher education and many more topics with the students.  The wisdom and experiences they shared should be heard by policy makers!

This year on their registration form they have included a dropdown choice of “student”.  I thought it might be something you would be interested in having your students, view the livestream,  comment on Facebook , follow on twitter . I would love to see some student voices come across the twitter feed.  We don’t hear from our students nearly enough during the national education discussions!  

Of course being able to work with this event and your students requires any number of progressive policies in place at your school, unblocking Twitter, or at the very least that it be unblocked for teachers and perhaps  students could access on their cell phones (if those aren't banned, too)! If you need some resources around unblocking, you can start here with an easy to understand post from the folks at Mind/Shift. 

A very helpful site when following a twitter stream around an event is TweetChat . You just type in the hashtag (for example,  during the Teacher Town Hall, #TeachersEdNat )  and it will pull up every tweet being tweeted.  Also, you won’t have to keep typing in the hashtag as you post, it puts it in your tweet for you! Each topic on the 25th, 26th and 27th  has its own hashtag and can be found as you scroll down this page.

Please forward this to teachers in your school(s) that might be interested in working with their students around this, or that may tweet or facebook during the discussion as well. I would suggest it for anyone leading current events/Government/Econ and/or digital media.

Hope you can tweet and/or chat during the Education Nation Teacher Townhall on 9/25 and for any of the events following on the 26^th and 27^th! I look forward to hearing those student voices!