Educators inspire students to positively contribute to and responsibly participate in the digital world. Educators:

 

3a)  Create experiences for learners to make positive, socially responsible contributions and exhibit empathetic behavior online that build relationships and community.

 

The first day of school each year one of the first things I have the students do is answer a couple questions about themselves using their Chromebooks (we are a 1:1 school) on Google Classroom.  These questions/answers ensure a couple different things.  First, that they are indeed signed into the Classroom and know how to access it, but also that they are aware that I and the rest of the class can see exactly what they are putting out on the site for everyone to see.

 

I also was able to create discussions for my students in my CourseSites class via my Exploring CourseSites class this past summer.  Students here are able to read and respond to each other as if they were actually sitting next to each other.

 

3b)  Establish a learning culture that promotes curiosity and critical examination of online resources and fosters digital literacy and media fluency.

 

Being a 1:1 school, our students are all lucky enough to have a Chromebook.  As a department, we are constantly looking for ways to incorporate activities that help to teach the students how to properly research topics and learn how to work the internet outside of social media.  I have best been able to show this through my action research plan from my Technology Action Research class detailing how a flipped classroom can affect the learning culture of the classroom, as well as my work in the Exploring CourseSites class when I created a classroom site on CourseSites (Blackboard).  CourseSites itself acts more of an online learning community--similar to that of my Google Classroom but allowed me to do slightly more with it.

 

3c)  Mentor students in safe, legal and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property.

 

I love doing Twitter reviews before each test.  The students use Twitter so much, and it is so easy for me to tweet out a question during each commercial as I am watching TV and having them respond within a certain time frame.  I have a classroom twitter that I use and it actually works kind of cool in math; since you can't really tweet math equations, I have to ask students questions in ways that make them explain their answers in words which really guarantees that they know how to do the problems. 

 

3d)  Model and promote management of personal data and digital identity and protect student data privacy.

 

Most of the activities and information we use in our district we do through the students' ID number.  This allows students to remain anonymous, but also then allows the students to participate freely.  I also had discussions linked on my CourseSites page for students to participate in that spoke about proper ways to interact online and safety features for the course.