Growing Up Online: Promoting Positivity in a Digital Citizenship Curriculum
ISTE 2019 Poster Presentation
Our students are growing up in a world where there is no difference between their online and offline identities. The 6th and 7th grade (and soon 8th grade) Digital Citizenship courses at Worcester Academy aim to help students understand how devices and social media impact their lives, how devices and social media can be used in positive ways, and how students are making decisions every day about their online identities.
The 6th grade course lays a foundation for Digital Citizenship, guiding students in thinking about who they are responsible to online, what habits they are forming with their devices, and how interactions online might be different from offline interactions. The 7th grade course focuses more on identity, with emphasis on what it means to be an upstander, what students choose to share online, and how words affect others. The 7th grade course also complements the English curriculum which teaches about bias by addressing information literacy topics like evaluating information online and recognizing fake news vs biased news vs satire.
In both grades, each class includes an interactive component which allows students to reflect on the day’s guiding question. For example, when 6th graders keep a media log of their device usage over a 24-hour period, they use the information they gathered to create an illustration. Seventh graders draw their digital footprint in order to have a visual representation of everything they do online.Â
In 7th grade, we spend several weeks focusing on kindness. When I asked students at the beginning of one class how many of them write thank you notes only a couple of hands went up. So we practiced writing thank yous to others in the class and writing down something they were thankful for that week. We also create a kindness wall of compliments students write each other. Each student writes a compliment to at least 3 other students and we post them for the class to read. This year, we used Post-It notes which were then hung in the 7th grade hallway throughout the year.
The goal of all of these lessons is to help students be aware of their actions, habits, and words whether online or offline. We rarely use technology in our Digital Citizenship classes which might seem counterintuitive. However, so many of these skills we are building are citizenship skills whether applied online or off.Â
Here is a complete outline of the 6th and 7th grade Digital Citizenship curriculum with guiding questions and brief descriptions of class activities.Â
The curriculum for both courses is informed by the following resources:
Digital Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble
Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership by Jennifer Casa-Todd
Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World by Devorah Heitner
Creating a Culture of Kindness in Middle School: 48 Character-Building Lessons to Foster Respect and Prevent Bullying by Naomi Drew and Christa Tinari
ConnectED Coast: Inspiring Professional Learning Day
Why get up early on a Saturday morning and drive 2 hours to Portland for a day of professional learning? Because educators in Maine are doing amazing work and I wanted some inspiration.
Hosted by the Maine school districts of Cape Elizabeth, South Portland, and Old Orchard Beach, ConnectED Coast was a free day of professional learning for teachers and librarians. While it wasn’t an edcamp-style conference, there were 8 edcamp sessions, decided the morning of the conference based on attendee wants/needs. The other sessions included featured speakers, workshops, student presentations, and a maker space.
The gorgeous South Portland High School Library where the Maker Space and other sessions were held.
“What Questions Drive our Technology in Schools?”
Mike Muir from the Maine Department of Education kicked off the morning by asking “What’s the value of technology in education? Where is the learning?” His 15-minute Coast Chat challenged attendees to think about their goals regarding technology in schools. Is the goal access or building deeper understanding? Are students learning basic skills or demonstrating their learning through the use of technology? As schools grapple with one-to-one implementation with laptops and devices, these are important questions to keep in mind. My favorite question he asked -- “What is the difference between a school leader/integrator that is tech focused versus learning focused?”
Who is telling your library’s story?
Jonathan Werner, Library & Instructional Technologist in Cape Elizabeth, was a featured speaker on the “21st Century Librar-E,” and he is telling his library’s story. I’ve heard/seen Jonathan talk about the transformation of his middle school library before, but it was great to hear it again! There is always something new to take away from his experiences. And his energy is infectious!
Jonathan started his talk with S.I.D.K.Y. -- Something I Didn’t Know Yesterday. What a great way to start a presentation! I will definitely use this with students. It’s a nice way for others to see librarians as humans and to see that we are constantly learning as they are.
The team at the Cape Elizabeth Middle School researched and visited other school libraries for three years before starting their school library’s renovation. They gathered information, listened, listened, and listened more to other librarians’ experiences. Learn more about the CEMS library transformation.
So, who is telling your library’s story? This has me thinking a lot about my library. Jonathan quoted Nikki Robertson as saying, “if you don’t tell your library’s story, someone else will tell it...and it won’t look anything like the story you want told!”
Visual Vocabulary Design
The featured speaker before lunch was Mike Lewis from Cohasset, Massachusetts, discussing Visual Vocabulary Design. Mike’s students create visual representations (via slides) and/or videos of vocabulary words. It’s a great way for students to communicate their understanding and learning. The slides are hung around the classroom for students to see throughout the year. As Mike demonstrated at the end of his talk, the visual representation also translates into a high rate of retention and recall. This summary is just not doing justice to the amazing work of Mike and his students. So, download Mike’s free, new iBook to see examples of student work and learn more about visual vocabulary design.
Unfortunately, I had to leave at lunch time and missed Dan Ryder’s Improv Mindset session. Looking at the tweets from that session, it looked pretty awesome!
Overall, this was an amazing day of professional learning! See the schedule and access session materials through the Connected Coast Google Schedule.
Hour of Code, Math Maker Week, and More Book Speed Dating
December was busy in the Worcester Academy Library! The library hosted 38 middle and upper school classes during Hour of Code Week. Approximately 95% of our student body completed the Hour of Code.
As students finished their Hour of Code on Friday morning, they tried out their new coding skills on our Sphero and Ollie robots.
Pre-Algebra Maker Week
Following Hour of Code Week, the library collaborated with 7th and 8th grade Pre-Algebra classes on a “Maker Week.” Each class came to the library 2-3 times to work on a set of math-based challenges using our Lego wall, Makey Makeys, and Sphero and Ollie robots. These challenges were connected to math concepts students had just learned and upcoming concepts they will be working on in the next half of the school year.
Finding the volume of creations on the Lego wall.Â
Playing a Catching Prime Numbers game using a Makey Makey.
Programming Ollie to move through a maze.
More Book Speed Dating
The library also hosted 10th grade English classes and 7th grade English classes for more book speed dating activities. This was a great way for students to find and select books to read over their winter break.
The 7th grade classes were so excited about the activities. After the first class, the English teacher and I made some adjustments to the activity and decided to talk about how we choose books, what we look for on the cover, inside the dust jacket, etc. We also expanded the amount of time to choose a book from 30 seconds to 45 seconds and the time to read from 4 minutes to 4.5 minutes based on student feedback.
I brought sticky notes for students to use to “claim” a book if they wanted to check it out. This allowed me to use the same bins of books for all 4 classes without replenishing bins between classes, 3 of which were back-to-back-to-back. Out of about 50 books in the bins, only 4 did not have a sticky note at the end of all the classes. In fact, we now have a long hold list for several books!
The book speed dating activities have been valuable in letting me see and hear what students are interested in reading. It’s a great way to inform collection development.
Selecting books to check out -- they wanted them all!
Book Speed Dating to Encourage Independent Reading
Our English department chair recently returned from the NCTE conference excited to begin independent reading in her high school English classes. The week of Thanksgiving she came to me and asked if I could do some booktalks for her classes in December. Since our classes are 65-75 minutes long, we decided to do 15 minutes of booktalking and then a book speed dating activity with her students. What a success!
I was inspired by the book speed dating activity my friend Tiffany Whitehead has written about on her blog, The Mighty Little Librarian. Following her model, students had 30 seconds to select a book from bins on their tables, four minutes to read, then 30 seconds to rate the book. Each student has a reading/writing journal, and they use the back page to write down book titles they might want to read. As I booktalked and as we went through the speed dating rounds, students wrote down titles they are interested in reading. The goal of the class was for students to find one book to check out.
Since we have been in the process of genrefying our fiction collection, making sure that I had a variety of genres for students to choose from was so easy. I also tried to select a balance of books with male/female protagonists and multicultural representation.
The first class had 10 students, so I had 3 bins of books (6-8 books per bin) plus 8 books that I booktalked. The second class had 13 students, so I added 2 additional bins of books and replenished the bins from the first class. I also had backup books to booktalk for the second class in case ones from the first class got checked out (which they did).
For each round of speed dating, we rotated the bins between tables so students had a new selection to choose from. We did four rounds in each class. At the end, we had each student tell the class their selection and why they chose the book. This was a great way to see and hear what students in our upper school are interested in reading.Â
Feedback from students was positive as they said this activity helped them find books to read they might not have picked up otherwise. All 23 students that participated checked out a book! A few even mentioned they had never checked out a book from our school library (they are juniors!). And they now have a list of 3 or 4 additional titles they might be interested in reading listed in the back of their reading/writing journals.
Teaching Pre-Algebra with Robots: A Collaboration between a Math Teacher and Librarian
Do you want to see students collaborating and teaching each other? With the help of 4 new robots in the Worcester Academy Library, Mr. Smith and I crafted a lesson for his Pre-Algebra students to review and demonstrate their learning during the first month of school.
First, we each took 2 robots and explored their movements and apps in order to brainstorm ways we could use them in the classroom. We decided to use the Tickle app to teach about positive and negative integers and the number line.
We came up with a plan and tested several expressions. Since Sphero and Ollie can change colors, we used green to indicate movement in the positive direction and red to indicate negative. We programmed basic movement to the right, then movement to the left. Each expression became more complicated as we progressed.
When on tile floor, Sphero can roll around and not move in a straight line, so we used Hot Wheels tracks to keep the movement straight.
For the lesson, we began by asking students to silently observe Sphero’s movement. We didn’t tell them what it was doing or what the lesson was about. We grouped students and, after the first demonstrations of movement in the positive and negative directions, we asked them to go to the whiteboards and write their observations.
At this point, one class figured out that we were demonstrating movement on the number line. The other two classes needed another demonstration and a little discussion.
We then demonstrated a more complicated expression of -3+7+2-1. Using the turn command in Tickle, we moved Sphero 3 paces to the left, then turned it 180 degrees to move 7 paces to the right. Using the wait command, we placed a 3 second pause after the 7 paces before moving Sphero again 2 paces to the right. Then Sphero turned 180 degrees to the left and moved back 1 pace.
A great discussion grew out of this demonstration when one student was solving for an answer while others were focused on the expression. We then demonstrated subtracting a negative integer. Using the turn feature and changing the color to red, we indicated subtraction by turning the robot left but not moving it. Then we turned it right again, changing the color to green and moving in the positive direction.
Following our 15-minute demonstration, we gave each group an iPad with the Tickle app already installed. We asked students to craft an expression, then program either Sphero or Ollie to demonstrate that expression. We provided a brief overview of the Tickle app (most of our students participated in the Hour of Code last year). Students had about 40 minutes to complete the activity (class periods are 75 minutes).
Most groups spent the first 5 minutes just exploring the app and robot. The jump command was extremely popular. Mr. Smith and I circulated among the 4 groups, helping out and providing guidance when necessary.Â
Each group demonstrated their expressions with Sphero or Ollie during the last 15 minutes of class. Every group had something to demonstrate. A couple of groups had technical difficulties and had to make some edits and re-try their demonstration. Overall, students were engaged, focused, and demonstrated what they had learned about positive and negative integers.
A few lessons we learned:
Sphero can only be connected to one device at a time. Be sure to forget the connection or turn off bluetooth after each class so that the teachers can connect to Sphero for the next class.
After back-to-back classes (about 2.5 hours), Sphero was losing its charge. If possible, plan time between classes to recharge.
Thanks to Pete Smith for the videos. Photo credits Jennifer Hanson and Pete Smith.
When I was hired as the Director of Library Services at Worcester Academy this summer, I had 6 weeks to set up a makerspace and begin to transform the library into an innovative learning space. There is a big and awesome vision for this library, and I quickly got to work deciding what to do in July and August.
The school serves grades 6-12 and enrolls around 600 students. The main floor of the library is an open space for collaboration, study, classes, and hanging out. There is also a second floor, a downstairs area where all of the stacks are located and where students can study at carrels. The main floor was my focus for the summer.
I decided to do the following before school started:
Create a Lego wall
Paint the tops of 4 tables with whiteboard paint
Paint a section of the wall with whiteboard paint
Hang new posters
Repurpose shelves for maker materials
Rearrange furniture to create more collaborative work areas and add casters to the table legs to make them easier to move.
My boss, the CIO, and I headed off to Home Depot to buy supplies. About $300 later I had 4 cans of dry erase paint, Liquid Nails to glue the Lego wall, casters, and a few other supplies.
The Lego wall went on a bulletin board. We pulled the wood dividers out and created a roughly 4x8 Lego wall.
Liquid Nails worked great! As I placed the baseplates to the wall, I added a Lego between plates to make sure they were lined up. It also helped keep plates from popping off.
The wall had a weekend to dry. We waited a few more days before removing the Legos used to keep plates aligned. Then, the wall was ready for students.
The Lego wall is the first thing students see when they walk in the doors of the library. The first few days of school went by and no one really paid attention to the wall. On the 3rd morning of school, I pulled the Lego containers onto the shelf in front of the wall and took the lids off. Within a couple of hours, students were building.
Throughout the first month of school, they have continued to build. I love Mario, Bowser, and Pac-Man!
One of the best surprises was walking into the library one day this week to see a group of 6th graders adding to the wall.
The Lego wall has been incredibly popular and is almost full. We started with about 5,000 Legos and the buckets are almost empty! So, it’s time to begin pulling some creations off the wall to make room for new ideas. Since it’s October, I’m going to buy more orange, black, and white Legos for some seasonal-themed building.
More to come on the whiteboard tables and walls...
Thanks to Pete Smith for the photos of the 6th graders at the Lego wall. All other photos by Jennifer Hanson.
