Digital Citizenship - Not only the School's Job to Teach

Ultimately all educators have a common goal for their students: to teach them to use the curriculum in the “real world”. But what is the real world?

As I see it, this is when students will be forced into decision making circumstances, affecting their life and well being, without the aid of a parent, teacher or other adult to guide them.

The decisions we adults faced in the past are not even close to what today’s students are exposed to. Students today have all the benefits of technology, but with these benefits comes great responsibility: aka Digital Citizenship.

And school isn’t the only place the topic can come up. So many habits and characteristics are learned from home. I always refer to the idea of saving money in Personal Finance. How often and how much a student saves starts long before there is any school lesson about it. There are birthday and holiday gifts of money that open the door of opportunity for parents to teach their children about the importance of money, saving and spending.

The first time your child used a piece of technology, whether it was a family device or one of their very own, did the topic of do’s and don’ts occur? I’m sure it did. DON’T get it wet. DO ask for help using it. Be careful NOT to drop it. DON’T use after 9 PM. And on and on. While these are great rules and each child should learn to take of and respect their device, where does the Digital Citizenship conversation come in? Who tells a child what to do when they come across an inappropriate website or pop-up window? Is your child able to distinguish between what is true and not true on the internet? When does a child realize that Facebook posts and Tweets can be permanent footprints, even if they have deleted it?  When a college is Googling them to determine admittance to their school, or a prospective employer is checking them out for possible employment, is a little too late.

My hope is that digital citizenship becomes a topic of discussion at home the first time technology reaches a child’s hand. There will never be a time in the life of today’s students that they will not be exposed to technology. It is continually changing. As new websites, apps and devices are developed, the conversation should occur, again and again and again. As a parent, I want my children to always be safe, but I know I can’t always be with them. Knowledge is power. Knowing my students, and my own kids, have the knowledge to make good decisions regarding digital citizenship helps me know they will be safe.

SpeakIt! Loud and Clear!!

One of the special needs teachers in my building came to see me today looking for options of software that would read text to her students. She showed me a few things she had found, but each was, of course, a purchase that needed to be made. Now consider that she has a few Android tablet devices in her room for student use, and multiply that purchase price by the number of devices. Dang!!

Once again, Google to the rescue. Since she came to visit I've been playing around with the SpeakIt! extension. What do I like best about it? Students select the text they want read back to them and simply click the extension in the bar and the reader begins. I like this much better than options I've seen that just read the entire page. If a students needs to hear a paragraph, or set of instructions, multiple times, IT'S POSSIBLE!

And the voice you hear almost sounds like a real person! The pronunciation is a little different on a few words, but for the most part students are going to get the information read back to them in a clear, precise, pleasant voice.

Now the cherry on top of the sundae: have you ever checked out the Bookshare website? This same teacher shared it with me. It is an accessible online library for people with special needs and it allows you to look up your book by title, author or ISBN. How great is that?

And if keeps getting better... This assistive technology that Google is providing us in the school, is also something parents or students could download and use at home! Is it Christmas today, or what!

I am a Shareaholic!

So many of you know that I am constantly sharing things on Twitter and Google+. My ultimate purpose? To get the best stuff out there for the staff in my district to see, in the hopes that a few things will spark their interest and get them using technology more.

I have been using bit.ly as my primary source for shortening the URL and sharing, but recognizing the fact that I am a Shareaholic (Hello, my name is Holly, and I have a sharing addiction) I've moved to using the Shareaholic extension in Chrome.

Now all I have to do is bring up the page I want to share and click the icon above that's next to the URL window in my browser. With a couple of clicks I have my information shared to my Twitter accounting and Google+.

AND if you really wanted to be tech-savy, you can set up keyboard shortcuts to use with Shareaholic to share your information! There is just no end to the cool extensions in Google. (Do you think there is a program out there for Google-a-holics? I might need it!)

Happy Sharing!