This past week has been crazy busy! At school, I am preparing for upcoming report cards and benchmarking students. At home, my family and I are busy preparing for the arrival of our newest little addition set to arrive in just under two months. Oh and throw a snowstorm and some sketchy driving commutes in there as well – it was quite the week!
In addition, for this course, I have reflected on our presentation from Dr. Ribble and digital citizenship. In particular what that means for myself, my Grade 2/3 students and my own kids. To give you a quick recap, for my major project, I chose to look into both Edmodo as a tool that I would use in my classroom over the next two months before my maternity leave, as well as utilize and connect with other educators through Twitter.
I began the process of starting up an Edmodo account and adding my students to the platform, but I quickly realized that the program was not going to be a good fit for my students and I. First, I realized that the program would act much like Seesaw, a program that I have already set up in my classroom, but have not utilized much this year. Second, with so many student absences at this time with Covid, illnesses, the cold weather and buses not running, I felt introducing a “new” program to my students would be an added challenge to students and families. So… after much reflection I have decided to tweak the direction of my major project a bit and follow the adage “keep it simple and focus on what matters!”
Since I already have Seesaw set up and my students are familiar with it, I will be using Seesaw to teach my students about digital citizenship through learning activities, student reflections, student comments and collaboration. To get started, I am following the curriculum and video lessons on the Common Sense Education website – particularly the lessons and curriculum under the Digital Footprint and Identity section. Kara, Katherine, Jill and Leah B. mentioned this resource in their video this week and it has some really great information to get educators started in teaching digital citizenship. I found this curriculum outline particularly helpful. It also connects with Dr. Ribble’s Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship which I will touch on shortly.
Seesaw Learning
To start us off on our learning, I have created a lesson called “We the Digital Citizens.” Students watched the digital citizen video, recorded their reflection and also drew pictures to show their learning describing how they can be a good digital citizen. In future lessons, students will be taught to engage in learning with other students by commenting on their work, and collaborating on activities together. The commenting and collaboration part of Seesaw are both activities that I have never done before using the app, so I am excited to see where this project goes!
My project will touch on a number of the nine elements of digital citizenship outlined by Mike Ribble including Digital Etiquette, Digital Literacy, Communication, Security and Rights and Responsibilities.
The main goal of this project is to teach my students about digital citizenship and how we can learn, connect and interact together in a positive way. I am excited to learn alongside them as I navigate the settings and nuances of using Seesaw in this way.
I’m super interested to see what you come up with using SeeSaw. I know that our division used it a lot in the past, but since moving to EDSBY we have changed directions. I never had used SeeSaw as I teach in the Middle Years so we use Google Classroom, but I always hear how much people loved it/hated it and it’s really neat to see how people can use it effectively and efficiently in their teaching practice. Your project sounds really interesting! Can’t wait to see more.
Hi Rae. I’ve used Seesaw in the past and really liked it as a quick means to send info and pics to my students’ parents. I never did use it persay with my students, though I imagine it would be a great tool.
This is going to sound silly, but I never considered actually incorporating my major project into teaching digital literacy in my classroom – what a great idea! haha
I’m glad our group was able to introduce you to Common Sense Media. It seems like a great resource to help teach about digital literacy. Good luck with your project!
I love that you’re using SeeSaw with your littles to engage in this DigCit work! It is such a user-friendly platform (for teachers, students, and parents) and I miss it dearly! Many teachers in my division used to use it but since the pandemic, we have been mandated in which platforms we can/can’t use to try and keep things similar across the division. I can’t wait to hear more about what you do to encourage students to support each other and collaborate on the app. You and your students are in for a lot of fun learning together! All the best as you continue your Major Project journey (and prepare for the arrival of your new family member)!
Thanks for sharing Rae. Isn’t that the truth about getting into something new, having things you need to get done, a time-line, and an app or platform isn’t as user-friendly as you need it to be in the moment. Good call by going to what you know works and using your time to learn its intricacies. From both an educator and parents perspective, I think a division mandate (maybe mandate is a n aggressive word), rather divisions encouraging the use of a select list of platforms that have been a- tried, tested, reviewed, and summarized by educators AND b- PAID time is provided for teachers to actually learn how to use the platform effectively would be ideal. Having too many platforms for parents to learn to navigate along with their kids throughout the years might be time consuming and energy draining taking the focus off of students achieving outcomes. Of course this is a non issue for parents that are not involved in their child’s education.