Week 6 (Due July 10th)

297677914

SMARTBoard Resources

Teachers Love SMART Boards website

 Diigo Bookmarks tagged SMART board

SMART Exhcange – free and purchase lessons/Widgets/Manipulatives

SMART Notebook Express – create and view Notebook files

Intro to SMART board video by me and Dr. Langran

SMARTClassrooms YouTube Channel

Download SMARTboard Notebook 11 (Installation code – Marymount Students only).

Required Reading/Exploring/Watching:

After watching the video above, choose one of the questions to answer and post your answer to the comments on this post. Please read and reply to at least one of your classmates answers.

1. What are specific ethical issues you see kids struggling when they use digital media?

2. How is our sense of identity changing in the digital world? How can adults learn from kids and guide them at the same time?

3. How does teaching and learning change in a world where information is at your fingertips?

What do we know about the brain and how does what we know (or think we know) drive how we teach. John Medina and his book Brain Rules breaks the latest brain research into 12 principles/rules. His book is a great read and it is supported by a companion DVD. Much of the video content on the DVD is shared on his website @BrainRules.net. On this site you can access information/activities to support all 12 principles/rules by selection the icon at the top of the media window.

Check out this news report that does a great job of summarizing the book.

Post 2 responses on your blog/class preparation:

Virtual Class on July 10th! So you can particpate anywhere with a computer and an Internet Connection. Please log in at least 10 minutes before 6pm.

Login here to participate (might need to download a program before you can launch) I will be at the Reston Center if you prefer to be in the lab with me (for extra tech support).

Saturday Class on July 11th will begin at 9 am and planned to last until 2 pm (with additional online work).

42 thoughts on “Week 6 (Due July 10th)”

  1. The specific ethical issues I see kids struggling with when they use digital media are plagiarism/cheating on homework assignments for school, cyber bullying, inappropriate use of profanity, sharing risqué photos of themselves, and the stranger danger that comes when lonely kids chat with adults online. They may also be stealing copyrighted content or connecting to terrorist groups in order to feel a sense of belonging and identity. More and more when I interview families wanting to transfer into the school that I work at, they tell me that their child’s main hobby is playing video games online. The kids have dropped soccer and other extracurricular activities and clubs they may have previously been involved in. So our youth are becoming antisocial, no matter how much they may claim that they like people and want to engage with their peers.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I believe each school should provide a technology class that teaches kids the “right and wrong” things about technology. Almost like an ethics class solely based on technology and social media. They are not learning about this stuff at home, so we need to teach it in the classroom.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

      • Ethics for technology should definitely be part of the curriculum. Teaching kids this aspect of using digital tools would benefit them long term, and help them socially immediately. This kind of teaching is the light at the end of the tunnel that Gardner proposes — teachers as guides, helping students navagate their way through cybespace.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. My personal experience is that kids struggle with many of the so called adult “ethical” issues and laws protecting against copyright. The kids do not want to break any laws but many of them download pictures, music, video’s and use them freely. When I attempt to explain to them that they are copyright protected, they do not understand. Then we have a long conversation about the copyright law and how it is illegal to download anything without permission from the author. The kids in Middle School do not understand and ask, “why is everyone doing it then?” They have many other comments like, “Who is going to know?” and “Will the police show up at my door and put me in jail?” Then we get into the ethics of doing the right thing which brings on another onslaught of questions and comments that usually ends with the students saying, “whatever, everyone is doing it so I am going to do it too”.

    The students comment that only adults follow those rules, not the kids. Sigh

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • The Cramberries had an album called “Everyone Else is Doing it So Why Can’t We?” So many kids now aren’t being brought up with any sense of morality, so they are deeply poor in that sense. Everything you tell them makes a difference, Joe. Keep pointing them in the right direction; a lot of them will remember what you said when it counts.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    • Hey Joe, yes, that is the trend these days but don’t lose heart. One of my favorite authors once said, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” He kept doing what was right even though the popular culture around him was living otherwise… swimming upstream… going against the grain… the life values you try to live by and the attitude in which you respond when you fail to live by them but still press on in living by them because they are right, will communicate more to kids than what you say. There are many others in history who faced the same challenges in their own cultural/historical contexts so you are not alone. Press on Joe!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  3. Teaching and learning is dramatically affected by information being at our fingertips. Students only have to Google whatever question they have about some aspect of the universe. If a person wondered where the saying, “caught red-handed” came from, then they need only to perform a google search for the answer. The issue with today is the misinformation that is happening around the world. As teachers, we need to teach students how to find credible information. We need to show students how to decide if the information they are reading is reliable. The digital world is a great facilitator to learning, but students need to know how to use it. The way teachers educate their students can change as well. Instead of lecturing, teachers can assign their students group projects. Students can look up information and create posters and projects to share new information with the class. The way students learn has begun to change, and it will continue to change as new technology makes information easier to find.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • Brandon, the struggle is real. I see it year after year, and unfortunately it doesn’t REALLY click until late in middle school, but students just do not understand what a credible source is. We teach them, show them, help them decide in mini activities, but when students are in the middle of a research project they tend to click on the first search result, regardless of who published the site. It is absolutely our job to teach them responsible computing including responsible research.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    • Totally agree. A college course I just took had as part of the primer lesson a handout that discussed being able to distinguish a credible website from a non-credible one. It was amazing to me that it was even an issue, but then I see internet hoaxes spreading every day on social media, and I guess it makes sense. Are our students really any worse than the population in general? Gullibility is definitely an issue. But it’s an issue that we can teach defense against!

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    • Brandon, I completely agree with you that the evil of this generation is the misinformation. With so much information out there, it becomes harder and harder for young learners to discern what to select and how to select the right piece of information, and whether or not it is reliable. It is definitely our job, as educators, to teach these children how to use technology wisely and with responsibility.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • Brandon, I totally agree with how easy it is to get information today. I can’t even count the number of times my daughter and I have been talking and a question comes up during the conversation. What is her response . . . “Let me google that.” There is indeed a wealth of information on the internet some good, some not so good, and some just down right bad. We definitely need to equip our students with the skills to determine the difference.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  4. How does teaching and learning change in a world where information is at your fingertips?

    When information is at your fingertips the entire face of education changes, requiring teaching and learning to be drastically different than it has ever been before. Gardner explains that in the new digital media world teachers must be coaches and role models, not information givers. He warns that just because wikipedia is out there in the .com world and that information is readily available, doesn’t mean that going to those sources is always the right way to go about getting information. He doesn’t delve into this comment deeply, but I am under the impression that he means that unless students are able to synthesize the information that they read and are able to apply it in a conceptual framework and understanding that the information is useless to them.

    As educators, with all of this information readily available, we have to monitor which resources our students are receiving this content from. If an upper elementary or middle school student is on a NASA website reading a peer reviewed journal, they are not going to be able to understand what they’re reading, and the content and information will be lost. My students struggle with this often, especially when conducting research on a particular topic. They type in a search term in google, and then boom 1 MILLION results on electromagnetism and they open the first page, then frustrated when they don’t understand what electromagnetism is. As teachers we have to help them navigate the content overload in a meaningful way so that they can be successful in this digital media world.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • I agree that information overload can be an issue for both students and adults! As teachers, maybe we can start with a few good resources (like educational technologist Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything) that can help us to teach students to use just a few key websites and then critically evaluate the information they retrieve.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  5. I agree that it’s impotant to help students navigate the content overload. They need to be explicitly taught what a reliable source for the purpose of their inquiry is. When I taught ESL at a university in the Middle East, their Interactions textbook had exercises on how to do a meaningful search with a search engine.
    The sample task was to do research on sleep for a paper. The book gave students a list of search results with short descriptions and asked them to pick the ones that would be useful. The students had a hard time with this because of their struggles with the language and vocabulary, but another problem I see is that the fact that these search results come up at all gives them a legitimacy in the eyes of young learners. Clearly an ad for mattresses that contained the search word sleep was not going to be helpful for writing a scholarly paper on sleep, but my students struggled with eliminating this choice from the list of sources.
    A lot of practice with exercises like this helps students, and I’m sure you and others in our class can come up with even better, more interactive lessons to teach this skill, maybe using real online searches instead of just textbook examples.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. The sense of privacy is one of the largest ethical issues I see students struggling with when they use digital media. There is a sense that right to digital privacy is a guaranteed right in the same way that the right to privacy is considered an inalienable human right – but regardless of that sense, such a digital right has not been assured even in the larger sense of the world. In the sense of a student’s world, there are a number of issues that can immediately affect their digital lives.
    One major issue that I thought I’d talk about that I don’t know if many people in the class know about is called “doxxing” or “doxing,” short for “dropping documents.” This is when a person searches for and publishes private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent. It can be carried out for numerous reasons, but generally for children the main reasons come down to harassment and public shaming.
    There are numerous examples of this occurring, but to paraphrase one, let’s imagine there is a student with a following on a social media site. That student has people that both like and dislike them on this site. One of the other members of the site uses the student’s username on the site to link the person’s identity to an e-mail address, and hunts around to link the e-mail address to a different social media site specifically for the LGBT community, and maybe uses it to find an old myspace profile or some other profile containing a real name and/or a photo, maybe even a phone number or an address. Now the member publishes all that information together on the original social media site with the intent of embarrassing, harassing, or shaming the student by connecting in one post the student’s social media presence, their real life name and photo, and their sexual preferences. That amount of information can wreak havoc on a person’s life if discovered by persons with poor ethical control.
    Students now live in a world where, in many cases, the only thing standing between them and the ethical violation of someone else’s right to privacy is their own morality preventing them from performing that (sometimes easy) violation. They have to struggle with the ethical understanding that they may not yet have fully developed an understanding of – not only in terms of not violating another person’s rights, but also in the sense that they need to protect themselves, as well.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Chris- I had not heard about doxing either. That is such a scary subject matter, and with student’s entire lives posted on social media these days I’m sure is a very prominent occurrence. There was a matter addressed at my previous school with public online shaming through instagram and since our generation of youth are so advanced with technology our administration was astounded and unsure at first as to how to handle it. I think this is another reason as to why we need to teach students to protect their identities online and to teach everyone how to professionally use the internet. I still can’t believe students are doing “doxing” though- how disheartening.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      • Alyssa, I totally agree with your statement statement that students need to be taught how to safely utilize technology. In addition to this statement, I think teachers need to teach students about social media etiquette. It is awesome that students can post their thoughts online and have a conversation with other people in social media; however, I see social media being abused each day. Instead of having a conversation, people online are calling other people idiots. I even read a post today where someone said, “I hope you die.” This is a ridiculous thing to say on social media, and people would never say to someone’s face what they say to them online. As teachers, we need to help students understand to respect other people’s opinions.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Chris, I had never heard about “doxing” until this post. I completely agree with you that students struggle the most with privacy when in the digital world. The idea that I can say or post anything because it’s on the Internet is completely not true and in fact gets students in a lot of trouble. Cyber bullying has become a major issue. Just like you were say about doxing, students are posting private information about other people and doing it in a malicious way. Students I think feel like because they can’t be seen they can do or say whatever they want. The role of teachers becomes vital because they have to set the example and teach students issues like these.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • Chris, I agree that digital privacy is a huge ethical issue that students have to contend with. I had not heard about doxing, but when I did a search on it, it was scary to see that there are actually step by step instructions readily available to anyone that wants them. Everything from getting someone’s IP address to hacking their Facebook and even their PayPal account for personal information. How do you even begin to protect kids from this kind of threat OR educate them about their own moral responsibility to respect someone else’s privacy?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  7. Thanks Chris — I hadn’t heard of doxxing. I guess Apple hasn’t either because it autocorrected the word for me, lol. It’s sad that this sort of thing goes on, but another reason why the kids need their teachers’ help with making their way through cyberspace.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. Teaching and learning is definitely impacted because of information being so easily and instantaneously accessible at our students’ fingertips. I have seen this impact by younger siblings in middle and high school, who are ALWAYS on social media and always obtaining answers to homework from online. I think that as teachers, it will be important to respect students fulfillment with technology by coaching them on how to safely and effectively utilize it for the purpose of education. Showing them that Wikipedia is a source that is unreliable since anyone can edit it, and providing them with professional resources and judgment on where to obtain instant answers online will benefit students tremendously. Also, with students always being on social media and having access to so many controversial issues, current events, and identities, I think it will be important to teach students how to make a professional and educational class twitter or blog and to use that blog to teach them the importance of protecting their identities, being safe, following or liking professional posts, and still having fun with social media at the same time. Lastly, I think it’s important to use methods of a flipped classroom in order to maximize learning time with the teacher while also preventing students from needing to use sources like Wolfram Alpha to complete their homework, which will teach them nothing. If students need to use a source to cheat on their homework since they don’t understand or have time for it, why not give them a different kind of homework where we have them watch the lesson and can then coach them through the homework and make them feel more successful with the topics in the classroom.
    – Alyssa

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • You made a lot of points in here! I want to discuss one that hits home with me. I totally agree that students are looking up answers on the internet now. That is why teachers have to think outside of the box (non traditional) to assess the students knowledge. I like the idea of having them post a response to a blog and explain why. Then have the students comment on at least 1 other classmates blog because they can’t look that up on the internet! this is a true assessment of how the student is doing.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  9. How does teaching and learning change in a world where information is at your finger tips?

    Gone are the days where teachers can send home a worksheet and expect their students to complete it on their own. Having the Internet has changed teaching and learning forever. A simple search online can give you almost any answer you are looking for. “Googling” something has become the answer for teachers and for students. As teachers, it makes learning and teaching much more difficult. Students don’t feel the need to have to learn information, because it is right at their fingertips. It also makes it for teachers to have students take the basic facts and information and then make it meaningful. Teachers have to encourage and create lessons that aren’t just information driven but reflective and thought provoking.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Alyssa, your ideas about homework are right on for the way students are learning now. In the end, if we really care about these kids and their mastery of the curriculum, we have to try to stay at least a few steps ahead of them, especially with the tech stuff – they’ll thank us later :).

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. “How does teaching and learning change in a world where information is at your fingertips?”

    I think the skills that will be required of our students as future professionals include networking, collaborative team work, critical analysis of information and media, and innovative global thinking. That means that in a world where information is at our fingertips, teaching and learning need to adapt to ensure that students are prepared to use the easy access of information as a vehicle to function competitively and successfully. We already know that students today are capable of using technology in collaborative, creative, and entertaining ways. But in order to go beyond procedures and data, they need engaged teachers to mentor them towards finding credible sources of information, exploring the deeper implications of the information they find, and developing the ability to use this information to solve real-world problems.

    I believe that teaching and learning now have to shift to allow students to become engaged in challenging work that has value beyond the classroom and can make a difference to themselves and those around them. We have to find ways to use the readily available information to capture the minds and hearts of students using strategies like authentic, inquiry-based learning that can guide them towards being of service. In this way, teaching and learning is not just about what is happening in the classroom, but is preparing students to be of service to a global community.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • Well said Charlotte. Yes with information at all of our fingertips, teaching and learning need to adapt to help keep students engaged as well as show students how powerful and useful technology can be. Additionally, with technology, teachers do not have to rely on old school methods and strategies to teach children. Instead, they can go to the internet and find lots of information for different strategies and ideas. Technology is now a big part of the 21st century and teachers need to become familiar with technology so they can guide and mentor students and like you said be of service to a global community. Technology also teaches business skills which I believe is something that everyone must have some knowledge of in the real world.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  12. Howard Gardner established the Good Play project which studies the relationship between involvement with new digital media and the ethical sense of young people. The digital community is one of unknown size and duration and as you enter that community you become a member of it. You are no longer just part of your friend and family community. Additionally, this new unknown digital community brings about ethical challenges that young people are faced with. These ethical challenges that young people are faced with are as follows:

    Sense of Identity
    Sense of Privacy
    Ownership/Authorship
    Trustworthiness and credibility
    What it means to participate in a community
    Adults can understand that when they enter the digital world, there is no way to know how big it it or what will happen to the information and whether or not information will ever be erased. Adults realize they lose control of the information. However, for young people this concept of permanence is difficult for them to grasp.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • You are right Danielle. It almost makes you want a script on what to say to students in the classroom because the enormity of it all should be shared in a way that will be just the right thing to say to kids.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  13. The ethical issues I see children struggling when they use digital media is that, most of the time, they do not know how to discern between the right and the wrong; which is a huge concern, as they have access to an extensive amount of “bad content”.

    I believe schools should have a class specifically for students to learn the “ethics of technology,” how to use it wisely, how to select information appropriately; the “cans” and “cant`s” of social media, such as copyright issues, creating a fake account to harass people and so many other things. Honestly, I do not expect children to know these things (I would be surprised if they did); they do need to learn them from their parents, from educators.

    School is definitely the place for children to learn about the ethical implications of technology, and I think it should be part of the curriculum. As the use of technology increases in the classroom, it should also increase the concern about how it is being used by students and what we, teachers, can do in order to raise awareness on ethical issues.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  14. 2. How is our sense of identity changing in the digital world? How can adults learn from kids and guide them at the same time?

    According to Gardner, it is no longer easy to define our identity based on our neighborhood friends/community because of the digital community where so many people now gravitate towards. It’s become very easy to pretend to be someone you are not which could lead to confusion for the individual or members in the community, possible deception and worst case, causing harm to yourself or others. I agree with him on this point and feel there is a great pull/pressure to be someone you are NOT to gain “likes” or to be “followed” and when that doesn’t happen or worse, an individual is ridiculed or “bullied” online, it may lead to social dysfunctions, emotional instability, or other mental health challenges.

    He made a good point that the “forms” should not dictate what’s right because they were not meant to do that but only to open up access and provide information.(4:10) We need to learn from kids by understanding what they are into so we can connect with them. At the same time, we need to have the maturity and objectivity to keep it at arms length when needed to acknowledge that we don’t “need” it as if it were an essential drug to live on nor the defining factor in who we are. I agree with him that we need to fulfill the role of coaches and models of what it means to interact with technology in healthy ways without being defined by it or negatively addicted to it.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • I like your ideas about getting negatively addicted to technology and how to show our students the appropriate way to handle it. As teachers it is our job to model behavior often far out of our subject area especially with elementary school children and if we set examples of this is an appropriate time to use technology and this isn’t and making them understand that like anything it should be enjoyed and used within reason we can really make a difference. So many kids these days are so glued to their devices parents are implementing “screen time” limits at home and we should teach kids how to respect technology as they would anything else so limits do not need to be imposed.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • You bring up a great point here Tony. Kids are no longer defined by their neighborhoods and surroundings. They can be totally immersed in their technology and it seems many are becoming consumed by it. I believe this is just the beginning. The longer we teach, the next generation of students will be even more engrossed into this technology environment and some will not like the actual reality (neighborhoods and surroundings) they live in. So many adults are playing fantasy realities to escape their surroundings. So how do we capture the students interests and bring out that one special thing they bring to our class? Really it is what you said, how can we relate to them so that the student is a willing and full participant in our class? Interesting stuff

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  15. “What are specific ethical issues you see kids struggling when they use digital media?”

    Mr. Gardner pointed out several ethical issues including identity, privacy, and trustworthiness. It appears that besides the enormous responsibility of being a participant in the digital world, a young person will have to first understand what they should or should not do when using digital information.

    When the internet first started to become more widely used, well meaning school administrators touted that part of the responsibility of the parent was to monitor their child’s use of the internet. Now, with so much information being revealed daily and being made easily accessible, it seems to be unreasonable for parents to thoroughly maintain constant authority over a child’s internet activity when they are browsing. Now, I believe the focus has shifted to teaching children how to be responsible with their internet use. This would include using their time wisely and distinguishing between what is real and what isn’t. They have to understand that they will be leaving a digital footprint forever and must make honest selections when surfing the net. They have to be diligent not to defame another person and to know what that means. Finally, they will need to be able to express themselves clearly and intelligently. The problem is that these are very mature responsibilities and I’m not sure all young students will be able to prioritize at such young ages.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. In today’s world where information is carried around in our pockets and at our fingertips at any given second it definitely a relatively unexplored and shaky territory for the evolution of teaching and learning. Things are always changing and we are always adapting to those changes and it is clear that education is on the brink of a massive change in this technological age. What remains to be seen is just how those adaptations will form. Since students can now more or less get any answer they want at almost all times where does that leave us as teachers? Do we continue to feed them information that they already have access to or do we change things and become facilitators and encourage new discoveries and learning on top of already existing information. I think that is where the adaptation will arise, in encouraging our students to disregard the old and embrace the new but understand that the old should not be forgotten and also find the balance in teaching them that with the encouraging they find new information.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  17. Monica, I agree with your point of view about schools to implement classes specifically for students to teach the ethics of technology, similar to how Loudoun County Public Schools have age- appropriate family education program called “Family Life Education (FLE)” for grade K-10.

    I also believe that although today’s kids are tech savvy but they don’t know what are the ethics of technology. They are fearless to share everything to the world via social networking sites, various Instant Messengers, and many other digital media. Most of them are unaware of how much information they should share digitally and how to protect themselves and respect privacy of others.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  18. What are specific ethical issues you see kids struggling when they use digital media?

    According to Howard Garden, five ethical issues are-
    Sense of identity
    Sense of privacy
    Sense of ownership-authorship
    Trustworthiness and credibility
    What it means to participate in a community

    I believe, that up to certain extent, ethical issues are seen in today’s kids from use of digital media; most importantly what I see is that kids are losing sense of self identity. Self-identity, that tells about the uniqueness of an individual and play an important role in shaping individual personality and physical attributes, seems to be getting ignored, as kids are posing themselves with all sort of identities, like posing them as celebrities, with crazy names or nick names, with crazy self-pictures etc.

    When digital media didn’t exist in this world, self-identities were carved by parents, schools, friends, and community where they lived, and extra co-curricular activities the individual participated in. Such an environment had provided kids with a sense of identity that they could see themselves and portrait who they are and what they want to be. Now things have changed and kids are spending a lot of their time on internet, texting friends and posting messages on social networking sites and are getting exposed to numerous kind of stuff. No doubt the digital medias have provided today’s kids an opportunity to communicate with their peers but at the same time face-to-face interaction has reduced dramatically.

    I feel that the young kids are unaware of what identity means; they think that whatever makes them look cool is the best identity to adopt. The kids wanted to pose an identity where they are ‘liked’ or ‘followed’ on the digital media by the digital community and their peers, and when that doesn’t happen, an individual may be bullied online, it may lead to social and emotional stress or other health concerns. I’m still trying to figure out how kids define ‘cool’.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  19. We are faced we ethical issues all the time. I think the ethical issues that would concern me most are the sense of identity and trustworthiness. As it relates to identity, we are influenced by the world around us and to a much stronger degree when we are young. The internet has given us the power to access information and people with ease. Consequently things like cyberbullying come up as a concern for me. Words are powerful and sometime kids can be really cruel.

    Also trust and credibility are important issues that kids will face. As said before, information is so quick, if I can’t get it, I’ll google it. A couple of years ago, a student was taking a county test at my school. He used the internet to answer some of the questions. When asked why he did what he did, he replied, “I wasn’t told that I couldn’t use it.” In another situation a book was going to be published with poems and a student who had difficulty writing one, went home and found a poem from online to claim as his poem. When asked how he came up with the idea, “he said he wrote it.” Anyway the teacher discovered that the poem was not his and it was removed from the book.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment