Digital Citizenship

I think it is great that there is a free curriculum online that you can use to teach digital citizenship. Three main ideas I can stress to my students are how to deal with cyberbullying by becoming an Upstander, how to effectively find the information they are looking for with keyword searches, and teaching them how to use other people's work without plagiarizing it. I can include the cyberbullying talk into our class meetings that we have at the end of the day on Fridays. The lessons on keyword searches and  plagiarism could be integrated into lesson on how to do research.

My latest adventure has been Twitter chats. I had a hard time figuring it out at first, but once I did I really enjoyed reading all of the different comments from various people. The first Twitter chat I did I just read the conversation and liked a few posts. However, I wanted to try again and actually post a tweet. So, I joined another chat and actually got a comment posted!! I am still a little confused about how it all works. I saw the questions in the beginning of the chat but then didn't always see them again throughout the chat. I find it hard to join the conversation when the question is not right there. I think it is being posted throughout the chat and I am just missing it because the pace is so fast. I need more practice. I like how people post tips sometimes and have checked a few out and really enjoyed what they had to say. I hope I can find the time to continue to come back to Twitter to explore all of the great conversations and resources that are provided.

After reading an article for my class called Preparing Students for the 21st Century: How can teachers incorporate new technologies into elementary classrooms, I came across the idea of using WebQuests. I have heard of WebQuests before but have never done one in my classroom. I am planning on doing a webquest with my third graders in a couple of weeks when we are learning about Recycling. Here is the link http://people.emich.edu/smasty/green/task.html.I like this WebQuest because students can click on different links to learn about recycling and then share their learning by creating a skit, comic, or brochure. I did check the links and a couple of them do not work, but I think they will be able to find enough information from the other websites to complete the assignment.