Tech Tip Tuesday
04/27/2021
- Trevor Muir: Soft Skills
- Tim Wilhelmus: Digital Citizenship
- eLearning Lab PD schedule through May with live links
- Sam Kary: A Goals First Approach to Integrating Tech Strategically in Your Classroom
Trevor Muir: Stop Calling Them Soft Skills
You can also check him out On Demand: https://keepindianalearning.org/events/stop-calling-them-soft-skills/
Check out Tim Wilhelmus's blog post on Keep Indiana Learning
April 21, 2021
- It’s about citizenship. We don’t seem to struggle to find ways to teach citizenship generally inside our classrooms. We all care that students behave in ways that represent them well and keep them safe. These expectations are equally relevant in the digital spaces we share.
- Digital citizenship should have an aspirational focus. It shouldn’t be all about the “don’ts” and the “thou shalt nots.” Instead, we should focus on the positive definitions of who we want to be in the online world. How can we all make the digital world better? How can we all be heroes?
- It’s also about relationships. Our students need to know that we care about them in every space they inhabit, and they need to know that we want to share experiences with them in their digital worlds.
- Our students need our help thinking about their digital footprint. Because their brains aren’t fully developed yet, our students can’t fully comprehend the impact of their online actions on their future selves. We need to teach them norms for a civilized digital world, and we need to model wise, kind, and safe behavior online.
- The cat is already out of the bag. Our students are online whether we go there with them or not. In a word that has gone from pencil and paper to digital tools, and from private and personal to public and published, our students deserve adults who can feel comfortable helping them to navigate a new world.
- Technology is neither good nor bad. Technology is an amplifier. Each technology offers opportunities and dangers related to how they are used. That said, technology has the power to amplify existing behaviors for all of us. Creative people can be more creative. Distractible students can become more distracted. Teachers who struggle with classroom management will struggle more when technology is introduced.
- Kids are going to tell lots of stories about themselves. Technology lets them do that even more easily. They won’t be telling those stories by themselves, and they won’t know the whole story they are telling. Also, they won’t ever be able to control the way their audience responds to their stories. But our kids do care if they are good people, so they need to know that we will be there to help them recover, if their stories ever go bad.
- We need to talk honestly with our students about the digital world as a community, and it truly takes all of us to have this conversation- students, parents, educators, and our communities. Unless we gather to establish shared expectations and do the work to maintain social norms online, our students will grow up with too many negative examples. No matter how uncomfortable this makes us, we need to have “the talk.”
- This conversation has to be ongoing. It is never enough to teach digital citizenship at the beginning of the school year, and expect that the lesson has been learned. Students learn skills by practicing them repeatedly in authentic moments.
- Kids generally act their age, so we need to understand that their online behaviors will generally track with their analog behaviors. Bullying tends to start around 4th grade. Cyberbullying does as well. The digital citizenship we teach should align to the developmental stages of our kids.
- Adults need to be in the digital spaces that our students inhabit. That doesn’t mean we need to be their friends or always in their interactions. Instead, we need to be the adults in the room, the monitors on the playground, someone they can turn to when they need support.
- We don’t need to panic or overreact. It’s okay to give kids the space they need to make and recover from their own mistakes. If we are a constant controlling presence for our students, if our reaction is always to shut down kids in digital spaces, we create an adversarial relationship.
- Finally, digital citizenship is a giant topic that is constantly evolving. It’s okay to ask our colleagues for help. It’s okay to look for quality resources to support this work. It’s okay to change our point of view. We’re all learning this together.
For more resources and support, check out these links:
IN eLearning Lab Schedule through May
Tue Apr 27, 2021
3pm - 3:30pm Edpuzzle
Video call: https://meet.google.com/zet-owwj-yvy
Phone number: tel:+1-470-735-5856 PIN: 262203380
Wed Apr 28, 2021
8:30am - 9am Flipgrid Gridpals
Video call: https://meet.google.com/mrh-ytpd-mwz
Phone number: tel:+1-860-689-7486 PIN: 606416237
Thu Apr 29, 2021
4pm - 4:30pm Edpuzzle
Video call: https://meet.google.com/ond-nviy-svc
Phone number: tel:+1-219-488-9340 PIN: 530265426
Tue May 4, 2021
3pm - 3:30pm Face It! Instructional Videos Featuring You
Video call: https://meet.google.com/fsi-pzdn-xox
Phone number: tel:+1-337-766-0237 PIN: 567185431
Wed May 5, 2021
3pm - 3:30pm Reflecting on Student Learning with Jamboard
Video call: https://meet.google.com/msx-xuoe-yuu
Phone number: tel:+1-470-729-1524 PIN: 384458491
Thu May 6, 2021
4pm - 4:30pm Reflecting on Student Learning with Jamboard
Video call: https://meet.google.com/msx-xuoe-yuu
Phone number: tel:+1-470-729-1524 PIN: 384458491
Tue May 11, 2021
3pm - 3:30pm What Your Tech Department Wants You to Know
Video call: https://meet.google.com/ycg-vrdf-vdu
Phone number: tel:+1-252-394-8926 PIN: 632243995
Wed May 12, 2021
8:30am - 9am Collaborative Engagement with Google Forms
Video call: https://meet.google.com/dxo-smmt-xug
Phone number: tel:+1-216-525-9521 PIN: 397224647
3pm - 3:30pm Collaborative Engagement with Google Forms
Video call: https://meet.google.com/fsb-qgjw-eny
Phone number: tel:+1-336-914-1134 PIN: 255292102
Thu May 13, 2021
8:30am - 9am Communication Organization: Our Top Inbox Tips
Video call: https://meet.google.com/jgf-rxsh-xht
Phone number: tel:+1-631-522-4308 PIN: 432357614
Tue May 18, 2021
3pm - 3:30pm Revise and Organize: Google Drive
Video call: https://meet.google.com/npe-cboe-zfb
Phone number: tel:+1-857-452-1309 PIN: 255111438
Wed May 19, 2021
4pm - 4:30pm Communication Organization: Our Top Inbox Tips
Video call: https://meet.google.com/kyf-csev-vub
Phone number: tel:+1-650-684-7312 PIN: 276460589
Thu May 20, 2021
4pm - 4:30pm Rehumanizing Education: SEL Practices to Try
Video call: https://meet.google.com/smw-hpsm-eqb
Phone number: tel:+1-405-349-3089 PIN: 732369370
Tue May 25, 2021
4pm - 4:30pm The Little Things
Video call: https://meet.google.com/tcg-xbgm-ozy
Phone number: tel:+1-803-566-7061 PIN: 524168442
Wed May 26, 2021
3pm - 3:30pm Communication Organization: Our Top Inbox Tips
Video call: https://meet.google.com/cjj-cqjb-yif
Phone number: tel:+1-209-650-0178 PIN: 595618840
Sam Kary and The New EdTech Classroom: Part 2
It all starts with the 4 Cs for 21st century learning:
Critical Thinking
Collaboration
Communication
Creativity
Intentionally using technology to build skills in the 4 Cs will have a transformative impact on both you and your students.
Have you ever wondered how to choose the right tech programs to use with students?
Do you want to use technology in meaningful ways, but aren’t quite sure where to start?
Here’s the first step to addressing that:
