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October 20, 2018
by blogwalker
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#FallCUE 2018 – Some highlights and great resources

Fall CUE image, large version

I just returned from a jam-packed weekend at the 2018 Fall CUE Conference in Napa (California’s wine country). The challenge at any CUE Conference is trying to decide which of the many enticing sessions I should attend. I think I made some great choices.

Saturday Sessions

Empowering ELLs in the Google Age – I loved starting the conference with Abby Almerido‘s session. Although the focus was on ELLs, the speaking and listening activities were applicable to all students. If you check out her presentation, you can see that visual literacy – a must-have 21st century skill for all students – is at the heart of her work.

Using her slides, Abby challenged us to team with another person and:

  • View a fuzzy photo (slide 6), form an opinion, and provide 3 support statements as evidence.
  • View 4 images (slide 7) and come up with a common theme to connect theme. 

4 different images for students to find a common theme.

  • Come up with a question that invokes some tension (slide 9).
  • Consider the power of using moving images (slide 10).

Such simple, yet powerful, strategies to not only build speaking and listening skills but to also scaffold students into writing activities. Loved all the shared conversations from this session!

 

Painless Privacy: Empowering Educators to Safely Create Content  – If you are a classroom teacher, I recommend that you go through the entire presentation from Calif. Dept of Ed’s Geoff Belleau and Elizabeth Wisnia. I know how frustrating it can be for teachers to start a lesson, only to find that a website they wanted students to use is now being blocked, sometimes for inappropriate content, but often for student privacy issues – another 21st must-have skill.

Some issues and terminology we all need to be aware of:

  • Phishing and Whaling (slide 8) – “Whaling,” a new term for me, refers to scams that tackle organizations. “Ransomware,” which is usually generated based on click-bait, can quickly set off encryption all your personal data. A good reminder to back up your work!
  • Teens & Social Media report (slide 16) – From Common Sense – If you are looking for resources for a Parent Night, this is a great resource. I like the video because it includes both negatives and positives of social media.
  • Future Ready Schools (slide 18) – Kudos to the California Department of Education for developing the Future Ready Framework, a format for “thinking holistically about the challenges and possibilities of technology in K-12 spaces,” and sparking conversations on ways to enhance and maximize data privacy and technology efforts. I appreciated Geoff’s recommendation to not get overwhelmed by all 7 gears; instead, start off by choosing two gears to focus on. Framework implementation can be done at district and site levels.

Future Ready Schools 7 gears image

  • K-12 Cyber Incident Map (slide 19) – If you haven’t visited  https://k12cybersecure.com/map/, this is a wake up call! The map includes  “D Dos (Denial of Service) attacks” (red pins), which any teen can activate by paying a small fee to a 3rd party that is able to flood a school’s network and shut it down, for instance, so students will not have to take an online test scheduled for their next class period.
  • Think Like A Cat (slide 22) – If you haven’t already seen Common Sense’s excellent videos on student privacy, head back up to slides 36-38. Then check out the Think Like a Cat video, part of a PBS series, that shows how news can be manipulated.
  • Shorty Awards – The Best in Social Justice (slide 44) – Cannot wait to share out about this award, which “honors a program, project, or initiative that seeks to address and dismantle systemic structural and interpersonal inequities based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability status and any intersection(s) thereof.” A great tie-in to digital citizenship initiatives!

So glad I attended this session. Teaching students about the importance of protecting their online privacy is one of four themes my district focuses on for our #DigCit program. Love having all these resources in one place.

 

Lunch Break with PORTS – Can’t think of a better way to spend a tech conference lunch break than PORTS booth at Fall CUEwith the California Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students (PORTS) team. PORTS is  one of my favorite resources for bringing California’s parks into the classroom virtually. Although it’s a little hard to see the screen behind us in this photo, Ranger Ben Fenkell  and I are connecting live with Ranger Parker at La Purísima Mission State Historic Park (near Santa Barbara). This California Mission videoconference is one of the latest offerings in the growing PORTS options for bringing grade-level appropriate history, geography, science, and architecture virtual field trips into your classrooms – for free. And, of course, I have to boast a little that the 3rd grade Gold Rush videoconference on the PORTS landing page features an amazing teacher from my district, Cathe Petuya, and her students.

 

Information Overload: Media Literacy When Fake News Is a Thing – I joined Scott Padley’s session, hoping to take away a few new thoughts and resources on teaching media literacy. And I did. It’s truly a challenge to pack such a dynamic, challenging topic into one hour, but Scott did. His Teaching Truth site and his slideshow, are both treasure troves and include:

  •  MIT’s research on fake news – a fascinating article and video with MIT’s findings that “fake news spreads further, faster than real news.”
  • Ladder of Inference – I had not seen this infographic before. Scott explained how it illustrates the thinking process that we go through, consciously or unconsciously, to move from a fact to a decision or action.

infographic to show progression of ideas that influence us.

  • Search Tips: “It’s all about algorithms which reinforce our biases.” Part of stepping out of our “filter bubbles” is to recognize how our Google search returns are quite possibly reinforcing our biases.

What could be better than attending Scott’s media literacy session? Having Scott join Kelly Mendoza and me for our Sunday morning session. 😊

Sunday Sessions

Adding to the awesomeness of the Fall CUE experience, I had the pleasure of teaming with Common Sense’s Kelly Mendoza for two sessions:

  • Thinking Critically About the (Fake) News – Here’s the link to our digital handout.
  • Can I Use That? Teaching Creative Commons, Copyright & Fair Use to the Remix Generation – digital handout

If you weren’t at Fall CUE, but will be attending Spring CUE in Palm Springs, we’ll be doing both sessions there. Please join us or stop by to say hello.

 

Make Digital Citizenship the Norm…Not the lesson –  Nicole Nadiz’s session title captures my #DigCitCommit for the 2018-19 school year. Nicole’s expertise and resources made for a highly interactive, thought-provoking hour, and some wonderful takeaways:

  • “Educating staff has to be part of the process of rolling out digital citizenship.” As co-director of my district’s digital citizenship program, I email and post regular updates to our school site #DigCit coordinators with new resources for them to use with students. With Nicole’s quote in mind, from now on, those emails will include tips and resources for site coordinators to include in staff meetings.
  • Collaboration in Common – I learned about the CiC resource last May while attending Sacramento’s first Media & Information Literacy Summit. With support from California’s Department of Education, CiC “allows teachers to discover and share resources and to connect with educators from across the state in virtual communities focused on the topics that matter most for teaching and learning.” I #DigCitCommit to being a regular visitor and contributor to CiC, and look forward to connecting with and learning from other California educators around media literacy topics.

I recently blogged about Nicole in my “Hacking” the Learning Standards post. Given that she also lives in the Sacramento area and that our paths seem to be crossing on a regular basis, I am fortunate for the face-to-face opportunities to learn from her. The good news is that anyone, anywhere can learn from Nicole by visiting her blog 3 Rs 4 Teachers: Promoting Rich, Relevant and Rigorous Teaching and Learning.

 

Sparknado – Ending my Fall CUE experience with Brandon Schut’s fast-paced, humor-infused session was a good call. Although the digital handout for his session is on a Google Site (one of my favorite tools), the session was all about Adobe Spark, Adobe’s fantastic tool for “transforming your ideas into stunning visual stories.” My big takeaway from this session was an advantage for students of Adobe Spark over Google Sites: the built-in image library includes the Creative Commons citations, which are automatically added when you embed an image. And the citations will also be listed at the bottom of a Spark page.

Images shows credit to the photographer is automatically generated when you embed an image in Adobe Spark.

Although Google Sites are automatically filtered to find images licensed as CC0 or Public Domain, which means attribution to the creator is not required, creators most likely appreciate the recognition – and you eliminate possible copyright questions your readers might have. Although you can track down attribution information on images found in a Google search or insert, having the credits already populated in accordance with Creative Commons’ recommendation for “ideal attribution” is a time saver.

I think Greg Eiler’s Tweet and gif (below) will give you a bit of window into Brandon’s energy and dynamic presenting style.

 

A huge thank you to the CUE staff for putting together an outstanding event. As you can see from my post, the Saturday/Sunday event was well worth the trip to Napa. Thank you also for providing delicious box lunches both days (along with a coffee stand/truck that even sold kombucha). The lunch breaks were a perfect opportunity continue conversations sparked by the Fall CUE 2018 innovative presenters.

Apparently, it’s not to soon to start the countdown to Fall CUE 2019, as the logo is already being widely shared. See you there.

Fall CUE logo

Digital Citizenship in Action

October 1, 2018
by blogwalker
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“Hacking the Learning Standards” with #DigCit Connections

 

“Stop thinking about digital citizenship as a stand-alone technology topic and begin thinking about it as an essential component of a well-rounded humanities curriculum.” Kristen Mattson, Digital Citizenship in Action

A top priority of my day-time job is co-directing my district’s Digital Citizenship program. Last week a teacher at one of our elementary sites reached out with concerns about a recent string of events, ranging from cyberbullying to even an attempted hack into some of their canned curriculum programs. As the computer resource teacher (CRT), he is the single staff member tasked with teaching digital citizenship, the norm for most of our elementary schools.

Yes, that would be teaching “digital citizenship as a stand-alone technology topic.” My co-director, Kathleen Watt, and I are constantly rethinking best practices to help teachers embed digital citizenship into the core curriculum in ways that go beyond stand-alone or one-and-done approaches and that bring students into an on-going conversation and commitment to practice good citizenship in person and online.

We often share (tweet, blog, text, email) #digcit tips from Kristen Mattson, pulling from her wonderful ISTE publication Digital Citizenship in Action – Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities. So I was delighted this week to receive the fall edition of ISTE’s quarterly magazine, Empowered Learner, in which Dr. Mattson’s article “Embed digital citizenship in all subjects” is the featured spotlight article. The article is a reminder and wake-up call to start “hacking learning standards to create opportunities to weave digital citizenship education into content area classes.” This process is exactly what Kathleen and I needed to help our elementary teacher.

Adding to the process, Saturday morning I received an email notification that Nicole Nadiz had posted new content to my Collaboration in Common feed: Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Digital Citizenship. I love this Google Doc! It’s a road map to “hacking learning standards.” Nicole has paired CCSS with Model School Library Standards (MSLS) and Common Sense Education. It took all of 3 minutes to add Common Sense Digital Citizenship connections to the Teacher Notes of our ART of Reading Laterally lesson. One down, three to go (The Forbidden Treasure, On Coming to America, I’m Not Leaving).

Whether it’s your own curriculum or district-adopted curriculum, having Nicole Nadiz’s document really speeds up the process for making the digital citizenship connections for whatever Common Core ELA Standards are listed in a lesson. Please note that Nicole has also invited educators to add their lesson samples via this Google Form. I just submitted The Art of Reading Laterally.

“Helping students explore the fine line between our technology and our humanity can be the work of every educator if we’re willing to be creative in the ways we think about curriculum and the ways we think about digital citizenship.” Kristen Mattson

#digcitcommit

 

May 28, 2018
by blogwalker
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Media & Information Literacy Summit – My top takeaways

A highlight of my week was attending the California Department of Education’s first Media & Information Literacy Summit here in Sacramento.  Below are my top takeaways from a very full day of excellent keynotes, panel discussions, and a resource fair.

Opening Comments: Jennifer Howerter, California Department of Education (CDE) – Jennifer started by going over a few definitions that would be central to our summit conversations:

  • Media Literacy – “The ability to encode and decode the symbols transmitted via media and the ability to synthesize, analyze and produce mediated messages.”  NAMLE
  • Digital Literacy – “Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” ALA
  • Digital Citizenship – “Being kind, respectful and responsible, and participating in activities that make the world a better place.” ISTE
  • Information Literacy – I like this broad definition, which was new to me, from ALA:

Information literacy forms the basis for lifelong learning. It is common to all disciplines, to all learning environments, and to all levels of education. It enables learners to master content and extend their investigations, become more self-directed, and assume greater control over their own learning. An information literate individual is able to:

  • Determine the extent of information needed
  • Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
  • Evaluate information and its sources critically
  • Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
  • Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
  • Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally”

Welcome – Deputy Superintendent Tom Adams, CDE – Deputy Superintendent Adams opened by asking “Has the Internet changed the role of the teacher?” He referenced Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg’s findings that “we can’t assume fluency with media unless we ensure skills of healthy skeptics,” and also included several of Wineburg’s thought-provoking questions and statements:

“Since 2016, with the barrage of information and instruments for sending the information, do we want pre-selected information? Or do we want to individualize our own? We’re in a new context for educators. Students don’t lack media skills, they just need to add to the toolkit. With the California Standards, all core subject matter requires an inquiry-based approach.”

A Superintendent’s Perspective – Encinitas Superintendent Tim Baird, Encinitas Union School District – Loved Tim Baird’s opening quote:

Great journeys all start with driving questions,” … followed by his opening questions “What if we shifted from emphasis on teaching to emphasis on learning? What if we allowed students to Acquire, Analyze, Apply. Rather than start with content, start with process skills….Learning comes first – ahead of teaching. AAA leads to student dreams.”

Baird ended his keynote with a reminder that Media/Information Literacy is a basic human right, referencing UNESCO’s Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy in critical times.

From the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) .

For the Love of Learning – Director of Literacies, Outreach, and Libraries Glen Warren, Encinitas Union School District – I’ve met Glen Warren several times in the last few years, thanks to Jane Lofton’s invitations to attend the Librarian’s Dinner at the annual Spring CUE Conference. But until Wednesday’s Summit, I had never heard Glen present. Oh, my, he is an amazing speaker, who combines insights into changes needed in education with a wonderful sense of humor. I love laughing while learning!

If you are looking for YouTube examples of satire to include in a Media and Information Literacy unit, Glen shared a few: Blockbuster Offers Glimpse Of Movie Renting Past and New Sony Nose Buds Allow Users to Blast Different Smells into Nostrils.

Right off the bat, Glen had us thinking about the difference between telling student to “Go search that vs. Go research that!” His model for ramping up students’ research skills is A E I O U (see graphic below):

AEIOU graphic from Glen Warren.

Luckily for Summit attendees, in the afternoon, Glen stepped on the stage for a second presentation: Curious Skeptics Formulating Questions.

Image in Public Domain – From Wikimedia Commons

I couldn’t find the same shopping cart image Glen used to symbolize “shopping hungry,” which I know (all too well) is never a good idea. But sending students out on the Internet without a list of questions is an equally bad idea. By jump starting the search/research process with an initial list of questions, students start with an intent. I love some of these well-known phrases Glen had us rethinking:

  • Claim, Evidence, Reasoning – it’s the mantra. But how about we start with some good reasoning.  Response to Intervention (high brow) – change to Response to Inspiration.
  • Essential Question > Essential Student Questions
  • Begin with the end mind > Begin with the endless in mind

In short, “we are killing students’ capacity to ask questions.” This issue is not limited to K-12, as illustrated in the video Glen showed of Stanford students sharing why they don’t like to ask questions. (If I can find this video, I’ll come back and include it in this post.) 

We also looked at the UC Davis research on how curiosity helps learning and memory.

We need to start teaching and encouraging students to ask questions, a skill that is included across the Common Core Standards (i.e, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.K.3), NGSS (Asking questions and defining problems in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple descriptive questions,
Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood.), the Model School Library Standards for California Public Schools, and the California English Language Arts Framework  (Students should have many opportunities to
creatively respond to texts, produce texts, develop and deliver presentations, and engage in research
to explore their own questions.)

In a nutshell, at every grade level, students need to be asking questions – and we need to be teaching them how to hone this critical literacy skill. Glen referenced the book Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions, published by the Right Question Institute (R?I) The R?I team has developed a method called the Question Formulation Technique (QTF). QTF steps include:

  1. Establish a question focus
  2. Brainstorm 20 questions
  3. Identify closed-ended or open-ended questions
  4. Prioritize your list

Bottom line: “If students are allowed to develop their own questions, they are more likely to be engaged in finding the answers.” Such a simple, powerful strategy to teaching and learning – and probably my top takeaway from the summit.

California Global Education Project (Subject Matter Project) – Executive Director Emily M. Schell, Ed. D., San Diego State – As a longtime, proud member of the California Writing Project, one of nine Subject Matter Projects across state, I was delighted that Emily Schell would be presenting (in place of Dr. Monica Bulger). She drew the audience in from the start by sharing a story of her own son’s learning and career journey, and then presented a compelling case for the need to promote media and information literacy as a pathway to “global competence.”

Emily Schell #MAILS2018 Keynote. Image from @christhejourno

Emily reminded us of the important work done by:

Emily’s work with the California Global Education Project (formerly known as the California International Studies Program) builds on the work I am currently doing with digital citizenship initiatives. I am excited to connect with the CGEP group and learn more about their global citizenship projects.

Panel Discussions

The summit included three panel presentations, each with different members, with a different set of questions to address. Below is a sampling of questions and responses:

Question: How do we help students work through hyper-partisan media?
Response: From Chris Nichols – NPR created Politifact California as a response. “Trust, but verify” (even when referring to NPR).

Question: How should we be rethinking schools?
Responses: Establish a credential program for administrators that includes information literacy. CHANGE CREDENTIALING PROGRAMS! Teaching thinking should be at the top. Capstone projects should be included at every grade level. Embed research across the curriculum – so no kids miss out.

Question: How does media/info literacy support student engagement and empowerment?
Responses: Media literacy can help bring awareness to a variety of health issues. Kids need to analyze information they’re finding online; they need to be “health literate.” A Health Framework will be released in 2019. Suicide prevention and mental health issues will be included. Check out the Directing Change contest, a venue for kids to create and share Public Service Announcements (PSAs) about critical health topics.

Question: How can we help students understand bias in media?
Response: Tara Woodall – Have students google a current event (e.g., Colin Kaepernick). How is the same event depicted in different headlines? Here’s where connotation comes into play. Writing shouldn’t be a formula. Ethical use of information, such as following citation rules, happens naturally when students can carry it into their own writing. Tip: Team up writing teachers with statistics teachers.

Resource Fair Breakout Sessions

Common Sense

Sue Thotz, Common Sense

It’s always a treat to join Common Sense’s Sue Thotz (Senior Program Manager, Education) at any event. Here’s a link to Sue’s Summit presentation: News and Media Literacy with Common Sense, which is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the amazing – and free – resources Common Sense provides for teachers, students, and parents on current topics connected to digital citizenship.

As co-director of my district’s Digital Citizenship program, I deeply appreciate always having Common Sense’s timely, content-rich lessons and resources to share with teachers. And did I mention that both Kathleen Watt (my #DigCit co-director) and I are both Common Sense Certified – as is our district. 🙂

KQED
Like Common Sense, KQED also has a long history of providing resources to engage students (aimed at secondary students) in current topics, via KQED Learn, such as those listed below:

  • Go Above the Noise – Students watch a video and read an accompanying article. A great example is ”Free Speech” vs. “Hate Speech”
  • Deeper Dive (from Go Above the Noise) – Explore and then reflect. Students are able to share with other students within the KQED community. 

Copyright & Creativity for Ethical Digital Citizens
Although they were not included in the schedule, two representatives from Copyrightandcreativity.org (AKA iKeepSafe) were in the audience and available during the breakout sessions, with a handout that provides a justification for teaching copyright: “In short, because students today are creators and publishers – so they need to understand the basic ground rules around creative work.” Check out the website for an excellent set of lessons, starting with kindergarten through high school, including a set of videos for secondary students.

Information Literacy Toolkit – Summit coordinator Jennifer Howerter took the stage again to share CDE’s newly released Media & Info Lit Toolkit: Collaborate in Common, “a free online toolkit filled with resources and current research that teachers, administrators, and parents can use to help support their efforts to advance media and information literacy and the implementation of California’s standards and frameworks.” I definitely plan to spend some time exploring this site and adding to the content.

What’s Next? Media Literacy in our Nation and the World – Tessa Jolls – The closing keynote speaker was Tessa Jolls (President, Center for Media Literacy). Tessa summarized beautifully both the importance of media literacy and the message I will integrate into future workshops:

Media literacy – It’s not a new subject to teach – but a new way to teach all subjects. It is a call to action!”

I’m very glad to have had the opportunity to attend the California Department of Education’s first Media and Information Literacy Summit. I appreciate CDE’s recognition that, increasingly, media and information literacy are critical skills in an age of misinformation. In reflecting on the expertise and energy of the speakers and panelists, the introduction to the Model School Library Standards, and the “Curious Septic” theme, start to finish, the Summit was well worth the $20 registration fee (which even included a box lunch). I am already looking forward to attending the 2019 Media and Information Literacy Summit.

Hope to see you there!

February 12, 2018
by blogwalker
2 Comments

From “hate speech” to “dangerous speech”

Sometimes it is bad things that move teaching and supporting digital citizenship from a one-and-done assembly or an advisory period checklist into meaningful classroom discussions.

I have mentioned in previous blog posts that I coordinate, along with colleague Kathleen Watt, our district’s digital citizenship program. For 10+ years we’ve started each school year by asking our site coordinators to submit their proposed annual Digital Citizenship Implementation Plans and requiring by the end of the school year that every principal sign a form verifying that digital citizenship has been taught at his/her site.

To assist our schools, we post resources to our digital citizenship website, with an invitation for sites to develop a plan that works best for their school’s culture and needs. Although all sites have a plan in place, few are currently integrating digital citizenship into classroom curriculum. Designating an average of three lessons per grade level, covered separately (via assemblies, advisory, etc.) from the core curriculum tends to be the norm.

Every year, Common Sense Education’s lesson Breaking Down Hate Speech is one of our top recommendations for our high schools. The short (30 second) video included in the lesson quickly makes visible the broad reach of hate and the thin line between bystander and upstander.

We always point out that this lesson can easily be integrated into a social studies unit on propaganda, for instance, helping students make powerful connections between “then and there” to “here and now.”

As a district, we are still healing from the wounds of last month’s racist viral video  created and shared by two of our high school students. In response, we are suggesting that school sites visit/revisit Breaking Down Hate Speech – and, if needed, consider adding a resource Carl Wilkens recently sent me: The Dangerous Speech Project. Susan Benesh’s 6-minute video (below) visually explains the similarities, differences, and complexities in comparing “hate speech” to “dangerous speech” and provides 5 signs that will help you determine when speech is dangerous.

I know that the most powerful model for bringing about positive school-wide changes (face-to-face and online) to any school is students teaching students. And, of course, a supportive staff is also important. I hope to be back soon to showcase examples of students crossing the line from bystander to upstander and being change  agents at their schools and all the communities to which they belong. I would also love to share how teachers across grade levels and subject areas are weaving in the topic of confronting online hate.

As always, you are warmly invited to contribute to this conversation by leaving a comment.

December 28, 2017
by blogwalker
0 comments

We should choose to teach copyright …

We should choose to teach copyright not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because the goal of understanding copyright will serve to measure the best of student energies, skills, and citizenship.” Tara Woodall

I somehow managed to miss Tara Woodall’s article The Right Stuff – Teaching Kids about Copyright when Common Sense posted it back in July. But thanks to a re-tweet from Common Sense, the article came my way in December. I have read it, bookmarked it, tweeted it, and days later, keep circling back to Tara’s quote.

Tweeting Tara Woodall's post

The challenge to teach copyright and fair use, even though “it’s not easy,” resonates with me on many levels. I started weaving copyright into my workshop agendas about 10 years ago, making sure to remind teachers of legal constraints when adding images found on the Internet to blogs, wikis, VoiceThreads, or whatever program I was teaching.

Initially, I shared Hall Davidson’s chart. Fair use was not part of my agenda. But I let go of Hall’s chart in 2011, after attending an amazing 3-hour  ISTE workshop facilitated by Renee Hobbs. Renee’s Copyright Clarity session provided me with a window into “how fair use supports digital learning.” I left the session with a commitment to develop workshops for my district and region on copyright and fair use and to embed the resources into a digital citizenship toolkit.

As a co-director of my district’s digital citizenship initiative, I’ve had the good fortune to team with Kathleen Watt. Ironically, as we were developing Can I Use That? A Guide to Creative Commons, schools and districts across the country were copying Kathleen’s digital citizenship graphic – without giving credit. Oh, yes, a teachable moment: Oh no they didn’t:


Although we continue to post and add resources to our digital citizenship blog, copyright has taken a bit of a back seat due to a continual abundance of cyberbullying issues and the current rise of fake news. Even Google’s newly released Be Internet Awesome program focuses on confronting fake news, protecting privacy, and combating bullying, and omits teaching students about their intellectual property rights and responsibilities.

Not since the March 2017 CUE Conference have I facilitated a workshop on copyright. I’ve had a lot of things on my plate (mainly the roll out of a new student information system!), but it’s time to start submitting proposals again. Tara Woodall’s post is a call to action and a reminder that, as rapidly as technology changes, digital ethics are timeless. An understanding of copyright “will serve to measure the best of student energies, skills, and citizenship.”

 

February 13, 2017
by blogwalker
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Teaching about Intellectual Property – #HyperDoc style

I love the many ways teachers in my district – and probably your district too – are guiding student-centered conversations  about building positive digital footprints, protecting online privacy, and confronting cyberbullying. A shout out to Common Sense Media, iKeepSafe, and Netsmartz for the wealth of free resources and lessons you provide to schools on these key digital citizenship topics.

There is a fourth digital citizenship topic that many teachers are increasingly recognizing the need to address: intellectual property. By 5th grade, most students have been warned about the consequences of plagiarism, a conversation that is typically repeated throughout their middle and high school days. While plagiarism is certainly an important topic, in a digital age, copyright,  fair use, and Creative Commons also need to be included in the conversations.  Given how easy it has become to download, copy, remix, and upload online content, students need to have an understanding of both their intellectual property rights and responsibilities.

Elk Grove USD’s 4 digital citizenship themes – BY NC SA

As a co-director of my district’s Digital Citizenship initiative and co-curator of the Digital ID project, I am always seeking teacher-friendly/student-friendly resources on intellectual property. I also facilitate district-wide and national workshops ( e.g., CUE and ISTE) to help teachers understand that copyright is different from plagiarism and that fair use and Creative Commons are also options for our students.

Digital ID Project’s 4 digital citizenship foci – BY NC SA

Based on questions from workshop participants, two years ago I created Can I Use That? A Guide for Teaching about Creative Commons. I always review the guide prior to a workshop to check if I need to update any information or add new resources.  This year, in preparation for the March CUE Conference, I’m adding a #HyperDocs* lesson that invites students to delve into copyright, flex their fair use muscles, and license their own creations via Creative Commons. So here it is: Can I Use That? Exploring Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons.

Hope you can join me and the fabulous Jane Lofton for our CUE Can I Use That? session (Saturday, 8:00)! If you have questions about the lesson or suggestions for updates to the Guide, please respond with a comment or contact me @GailDesler.

*#HperDocs is a term invented by @LHighfill.

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