Thing 11 - Digital Citizenship

First, some framework: I work with elementary students in a highly filtered environment, so many of the fun things I am learning here will not be accessible to my students. That's why Rhonda's Reflections blog on digital literacy resonated with me. Access is an important roadblock for us with so many sites blocked. And yet, it is so important to have access to teach.



Next, something to look into: Deep_web resources:"As much as I love Google, to depend entirely on Google is akin to our total dependence on Microsoft in the late 1980's and most of the 1990's. I believe that variety and diversity is an important part of the Internet. I have as an objective of mine to integrate more deep web resources into my classroom and teaching. " Vicki Davis in her Cool Cat Teacher blog on interview with Robert McLaughlin. That is probably for middle and/or high school students, but for me as a teacher as well to look into.



Finally, the lessons I teach: I did see the Digiteen project by Westwood schools on Woogi World which we like as well. It does a good job explaining safety, passwords, what to do if you run into something you don't like, etc... The kids like it,and our IT people are comfortable with it so we have access. I also use lessons from CyberBee on plagiarism, fair use, citations, web site evalutations, and Big 6 model research. I also have students get their Internet drivers license from pbs kids. usually as a review of etiquette lessons. I have the both sets of the ISTE standards posted above my desk to keep me on task when I am creating lessons in the library, as well as AASL's info literacy standards. Every year I try to incorporate more standards as I collaborate with teachers on different projects during the year, but I am doing fewer "library lessons" as time goes on, so some of this gets abbreviated and/or integrated into the projects. I am trying to find a scaffolded approach from grades 2-5 so that we just keep building on skill sets each year.