Thing 11: Digital Tattoo and Digital Citizenship

As I look at tools, resources, and information on the topic of Digital Citizenship, my biggest takeaway in developing my own strategy is that I was to instruct from the perspective of empowering students rather than a perspective of fear.  I found many of the lessons focused on "staying safe", presenting the assumption that being online is dangerous.  While it is important for us to teach students where they may encounter dangers, I think we will have a more effective impact if we lead from a more proactive approach, focusing on opportunities to engage in positive and empathetic behaviors online as they develop as digital citizens, just as they develop as citizens in the larger sense. 
I appreciated the definition of Digital Citizenship presented by Common Sense media, "empowering your students with skills to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly online, allowing them to connect and collaborate in meaningful ways" ("How to Teach Digital Citizenship Through Blogging").  In an effort to follow this mindset, our Director of Instructional Technology and I developed and delivered a carousel of learning activities on Digital Citizenship for our 7th grade students.  We framed their sessions with Essential Questions framed within these three categories from Common Sense media: Digital Footprint, Relationships and Communication, and Cyberbullying.  Students rotated through 3 stations, all designed with a different content and instructional focus.  Our session on cyberbullying was presented through scenario cards and small group discussion and role playing. The session on developing your digital footprint was an individual exploration of online tools accessed through this Google Site.  Finally, the session on Relationships and Communication was a large group presentation facilitated by our safety officer. 
Our reflection time after these sessions was critical, as students engaged in these activities with a mix of seriousness and mischief.  We were able to provide opportunity for a group reflection, focused on their role in creating their community online, and then challenging them to each make individual commitments to grow in at least one specific area.  We collected their commitment, or "Promise" cards, and plan to give these back to them in 6-9 months for a follow up on how they are doing towards this goal.
One thing that we felt strongly about after running these sessions was the challenge of it being a stand alone, one time activity.  We are hoping to build from this place towards and ongoing, monthly series of learning experiences that can be embedded in a more authentic way. 

Thing 8: Digital Curation

I have been really inspired by the AASL Standards (Library) to incorporate curation intentionally into my instructional practices (Shared Foundation IV: Curate).  Curation is something that I have always done as part of my library resource sharing, but building it into student learning strategies to Empower them as learners is something new for me (ISTE standard I. Empowered Learner).  This year I incorporated curation into my Research Seminar class as one of their learning objectives.  Students had to think critically as digital citizens to evaluate web sources and collaboratively curate a list (ISTE Standard II. Digital Citizen). They are required to consider relevance and reliability of source content, and defend the usefulness of these sources to our intended purpose.
Research Seminar has a blended learning structure, which I organize around student generated questions about the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.  As they gathered sources, students contributed to shared collections, such as this one on "Clean Water", within our school libraries Destiny Collection.  This was both a new learning activity and new tool, and a great learning process for both myself and the students.  Some things worked well and others need to be adjusted after reflection. 
In looking at additional tools available, I explored Wakelet, which I really liked.  This digital curation tool allows you to easily gather all different types of sources and displays them in a visually appealing format.  There are so many applications for these curation tools within the library curriculum, and resource sharing for faculty.  I may utilize this tool with Research Seminar students next year, rather than Destiny Collections, because of the visual appeal and ease of access.  It generates a link to invite collaborators, which I could share through Google Classroom, streamlining that process for collaborative curation.  This would benefit students who struggled this year with the sign in process for Destiny Collections.  The visual format of Wakelet also lends itself to embedding content into a website, so I could share these resources beyond the context of the classroom.  Below you can see what that format looks like, which would be very functional, not only for student access to resources, but also sharing instructional tools and professional articles with teachers and faculty.  In the past I have created Smore Newsletters to share with colleagues, but I may try Wakelet as an alternative, because I can continue to curate topics and consistently share those resources.