Category Archives: Digital Lives

Digital Learning Day…Aren’t we beyond this in 2018?

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Today marks the seventh year the folks at Digital Learning Day are celebrating digital learning. As I wrote about this day four years ago, isn’t the term itself redundant, considering the Digital Age we live in where pretty much anything you want to know or learn can be found on the Internet? And when I consider all the effective ways my colleagues in Madison leverage technology to make our students’ learning experiences richer, more personalized, more authentic, at this point I have to wonder, Can we even afford to take the digital out of learning? 

To me, pretty much every day is digital learning day. But in the spirit of the occasion, I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight a digital tool that you may not be familiar with. It’s a powerful collaboration tool called Padlet, which is essentially a virtual bulletin board. It’s free, easy to use, and makes students’ thinking visible. So how does it work? Take, for example, the way Polson Health teacher Susan Quinn is using it in part of her 7th grade Drug Unit. In order to encourage her students to make healthy choices about drug and alcohol use, it was important for her to not just give her students information about drugs, but to get them to reflect on the basic human needs that drive all of our choices and the ways we can meet these needs in positive and negative ways. After teaching students about the emotional needs of Love & Belonging, Freedom, Fun, and Power, she’s having them use Padlet to brainstorm in groups the negative ways teens try to meet their emotional needs through drug and alcohol use, as well as all the positive alternatives through which they can meet their needs. For love & belonging, it could look something like this…

The thing I love about this tool is how it makes all students’ thinking visible, allowing the teacher to quickly address any misconceptions a student may have. To learn more about Padlet and how it get started with it, go to Padlet.com, sign in with your MPS Google account, and check out the video below. Happy digital learning!

 

Explore Perspectives and Limit Biases with These News Source Tools

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Since the dawn of 24/7 cable news some 30 years ago, the lines between fact and opinion in our news reporting have become increasingly blurred. The dawn of the Internet has amplified this effect, bringing with it many different perspectives across the political spectrum through which we digest our news. This can be a good thing as it has given previously marginalized voices a platform, but it has also facilitated the spread of “news reporting” that not only contains obvious biases, but outright falsehoods and flimsy conspiracy theories–actual fake news. Now that we have a president that has weaponized the term fake news for his own political gain, the very concept of reality can seem to be up for grabs. It’s no wonder the public’s faith in the news media is at an all-time low.

So how can we and our students better navigate the media landscape to detect bias and determine fact from fiction from opinion? Two news source tools that I’ve come across recently that are up to the task are AllSides.com and Read Across the Aisle. The former is a website that presents every news story with three articles: one that slants right, one that slants left, and one from the center. This is similar to KCRW’s excellent Left, Right, & Center podcast. Read Across the Aisle is a mobile app that aggregates current news articles from over 20 news sources across the political spectrum, ranging from HuffPo to FOX News, and it comes with a handy reading habits meter that tells how balanced your media diet is. As you can see at the bottom of the image to the right, I’m doing pretty well staying in the middle. The other cool thing about this app is that embedded in all of its articles is the research-backed BeeLine Reader the that displays color gradients that wrap from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This, according to the app’s website, facilitates visual tracking and enables the reader to focus on other aspects of reading, such as decoding and comprehension. Another great tool that Polson Library Media Specialist Dawn Fiorelli discovered recently is Factitious, a fun, interactive game designed a to test users’ ability to detect fake news from real.

If we’re to succeed in our collective goal of producing well informed media-literate citizens who will someday chart the course of our nation, these tools are vital. For every standard-bearing “rock-solid” piece of reporting, there is a revisionist counterpoint article that seeks to invalidate its claims, calling into question what is real. Even the sober-minded fact-checking sites we sometimes direct our students to, like FactCheck, Politifact, Snopes, and many more, have come under attack for being biased. The result can leave one feeling unmoored, head spinning, out of touch with objective truth. Who do I believe?! Or worse, we end up feeding our own confirmation biases by retreating to our respective media silos. To co-opt a term from our Tweeter-in-Chief, Sad! Hopefully, with some carefully designed learning activities that leverage some of the tools linked above, we, as educators, can reverse this unsettling trend and foster in our students a balanced media diet. Let me know if you’d like to explore the possibilities together. You know how to reach me.

Google Keep: A powerful note-taking app that keeps getting better

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As we challenge our students with more performance-based assessments that require a process of taking the necessary steps to reach learning goals, have you noticed that a lot of our students struggle with determining what those steps are and staying on course? The kind of self-direction required to stay with a challenging problem, or build new knowledge and skills, doesn’t come naturally to us. As humans, we’re prone to distraction and instant gratification…especially in our adolescent years. This is where we need strategies and tools to keep us on track, and often a good note-taking application is just the tool we need. Google Keep is one of many digital note-taking apps out there (along with iOS Notes, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Simplenote, etc.) that started off pretty small, but has gotten more powerful with each update. Notes in Keep look like virtual sticky notes with all the usual features you see in most note-taking apps, such as bullets, to-do lists, color options, etc., but because it’s part of G Suite’s core suite of apps for education, we can rest assured that students’ privacy is protected. And like all G Suite apps, collaboration on Keep notes is a snap. In other words, it’s a great tool for pairs or groups of students (or teachers) to collect notes collaboratively for any project. Additionally, the app now features tight integration with Google Docs, so you can import items right from your notes directly into a Google Doc by dragging and dropping.

To access Google Keep on a laptop or desktop computer, you can launch it from the Google app launcher , or go to keep.google.com.

And like all G Suite products, it has an easy-to-use mobile app and is could-based, meaning your notes are synced across all of your devices on Google’s servers.

If you’re looking for a third-party endorsement, here’s what DHHS Library Media Specialist J’aime Ottaviano and DHHS Tech Para Jake Siciliano both had to say about Keep when I asked them if they used it: “Oh, yeah…Google Keep is amazing.”

Here’s a quick rundown of how Google Keep works. Check it out…

 

Managing Digital Distractions in School

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©Shutterstock.com/Syda Productions

How do we build habits in our classrooms around digital devices so that they don’t become distractions that get in the way of teaching and learning? The easy solution is to ban them, but that takes a powerful learning tool out of your students’ hands. According to Edutopia’s “Digital Tools and Distraction in School,” it’s important for teachers to teach students how to manage their attention with their devices and explain what multitasking is doing to their ability to effectively complete their work. I’ve conducted assemblies at Polson where I’ve addressed self-management in these terms, offering tips to keep distractions at bay, and I plan on continuing to address this issue. But I need your help in getting this message to resonate with kids. Check out the article above, and feel free to comment below on how you’re setting the tone at the start of the new school year to limit digital distractions in your classroom, without banning devices altogether.

Addictive Tech By Design

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As educators in the Digital Age, we have no choice but to put our students in front of screens to do meaningful, authentic work. Of course, not all meaningful learning experiences necessitate screens — in fact, some work is better done without screens– but in order for students to gather the most current information, synthesize it, construct meaning out of it, and reach an authentic audience with their conclusions, screens connected to the Internet are often a must.

However, in light of this reality, it is vital that educators, students, and parents understand the addictive nature of modern technologies, especially those that keep us tethered to our screens. This podcast from NPR’s Fresh Air sheds light on they way modern technologies affect our attention spans, the way we interact socially, and our brain chemistry.

This is not to say that we need to back off on screen time in school. As long as the technology we choose is the best tool for the learning at hand, we should keep doing what we’re doing. But as educators, we can certainly take this information to heart and share it with the larger learning community.

A More Balanced Tech Diet

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This report from EdWeek confirms what I’ve always believed: While they are powerful learning tools, smartphones and tablets are addictive little devices, and we need to monitor our use of them. But the biggest takeaway for me: The need for a balanced tech diet. Our students need “media mentors” both at school and home. Simply restricting their use of technology doesn’t work and instead leads to more problematic behaviors.

Image by adactio, on Flickr

As for the educational use of these addictive devices, here’s another great read from The Atlantic about how incorporating purposeful smartphone use into classroom activity can be especially challenging, specifically with underachieving students. The article concludes…

So, is the best learning environment one that’s free from digital distractions for struggling learners—a refuge from the constant barrage of information? Or should schools adapt to the realities of a hyper-connected world in which the vast majority of students carry access to almost-infinite information in their pockets? Or is there a middle ground? … there is no simple answer.

Please stop doing this…

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Now that just about everyone has a video camera with them all the time in the form of a cell phone, there’s a new scourge plaguing us all and it has nothing to do with privacy…it’s called VVS, short for Vertical Video Syndrome. This entertaining PSA about VVS explains why it’s a problem and one of my personal pet peeves…

But listen, I’m no purist. I totally understand why VVS occurs in certain instances. When you need to quickly capture a moment that may be gone forever, one requiring eye-witness proof perhaps, it’s natural to quickly grab your phone, get to the camera app as quickly as possible, and just start filming. And the most natural way to do this is to simply hold the phone the way you do for just about everything–vertically. Or maybe you intend for the video to be seen only on another smartphone, and the image actually calls for portrait mode (like a headshot). In these instances, VVS is fine acceptable. But when you’re filming students, a school function, or a model lesson and there is no urgency, please keep this in mind, whether you’re using a phone or an iPad…

VVS

An Antiquated Rule of Proper Typing and What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades

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It’s the last day of school for teachers and students, so I thought I’d end the year with some light (summer!) reading.

First, this article from Slate on why we should never, ever use two spaces at the end of a sentence while typing, and how that tradition we were all taught was just the result of the limitations of the technology we had to deal with until the latter part of the 20th century.

Next, a fascinating read from The Times on what we lose as learners as handwriting fades and more emphasis is placed on keyboarding. This one definitely challenged some of my thinking as someone who espouses the teaching of keyboarding at the lower grade levels. Yet, despite some of the findings in this one, I still believe we need to begin basic keyboarding no later than 2nd grade. It’s not an either/or type of thing.

Helping Students Manage Their Digital Lives

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Source: http://www.avatargeneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/studying-mobile.jpg

Now that we live in a world where much of the educational content we and our students access, consume, and create is digital, we are increasingly accessing this content on the same devices we use for entertainment and to make social connections.  These devices can be used to enlighten us intellectually,  enrich our lives socially, or to simply entertain us with games and other forms of media. While these mobile learning devices allow us to do school and homework whenever, wherever, what happens when the more social aspects of these devices present distractions and get in the way of learning? As this article on Edutopia points out, all too often our students multitask, jumping from their school work to the hard-to-resist temptation of social media–a practice that has been scientifically proven to negatively impact learning. Is it up to us, as educators, to teach kids to delay gratification on their mobile devices? Would this fall under the 21st Century Capacity of Self-Direction? After reading the article, I would argue, yes, on both counts. Check out the Edutopia link above to see what we can do to help our students manage their digital lives.

Digital Learning Day…Just Think…

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Some reflections on digital learning:

paws_dldToday is the 3rd annual Digital Learning Day. Actually, it was yesterday, but we were snowed in, so let’s pretend it’s today. Seeing that winter weather has wreaked havoc on the best laid lesson plans this week, rather than encourage you to try incorporating a new digital learning tool you’ve never used before into a lesson, I thought I’d make a different suggestion as a way to celebrate Digital Learning Day. And it’s easy. Just…think about digital learning.

That’s right, just think about it.

Think about how the term itself is redundant, considering the Digital Age we live in, where pretty much anything you want to know, like right now, can be found on the Internet. If it’s information that other people on the planet are curious about, this information has been posted and is probably being talked about right now in cyberspace.

Among other things, many not so good, the Internet is a place for learning, containing incredible troves of information…you just have to know how and where to search for it. A self-directed learner with the proper guidance could teach himself just about anything, if he cares enough to set his mind to it.

The Internet is also a place for fluid communication and real-time collaboration where geographic distance is irrelevant. As long as two parties each have a decent broadband connection and a computer, they can do business together. Heck, they could start and maintain a business together. Several people on different continents could address a problem together from their various perspectives and develop creative solutions they wouldn’t have thought of on their own. Or, they could simply learn together.

The Internet’s also got a lot of spurious content, not to mention some missing pieces and loads of bias. It was once naively thought that the Internet would actually make us all smarter…people would have unfettered access to information, we’d seek the truth and the truth would prevail. Ha! Instead, special interests reign and exploit our dumb, human tendency to want so badly for the world to be uncomplicated and reflect our own viewpoints that we receive important information about the world around us through a complacent fog of confirmation bias. As such, it is now more important than ever for us to think critically as a habit of mind.

And once you’ve thought of all this, think about how the jobs your students will be competing for in the not-too-distant future will likely demand that they be self-directed yet collaborate with colleagues in virtual spaces, curate and critically evaluate content from the Web, synthesize this content, and create new products or novel solutions to big problems. Then think about how you might help your students become more adept at navigating the Web as a vital learning tool by tweaking a unit of study to foster these skills and make it a little more inquiry-based, a little more student-centered.

Besides the Internet, we have great tools at our disposal like Finalsite, Google Apps for Education, and of course Wi-Fi. Just think about how you might leverage these tools for learning. Then hit me up with an email if you’d like to talk about some of your ideas. I am always happy to sit down with teachers and help them design technology-enhanced learning experiences. It’s my favorite part of what I do.

Happy digital learning!

Update: Since I originally published this post, I came across a great article by New York Times columnist David Brooks on the skills most needed in what he calls the Computer Age. I wanted to share it here as it really speaks to many of the points of my original post.