Thing 17: Digital Tattoo & Digital Citizenship (Take 2)

Hello Readers,

I am revisiting the topic of Digital Citizenship for 2 reasons: I am creating lessons on the topic for 9th & 10th graders, and because there is so much information out there that additional resources can now be added to my dossier.

First, I checked out an article link in Edutopia.org on the 9 elements/themes of digital citizenship (DC).  I liked it because it was a simple breakdown of the critical areas that educators & parents need to focus on.  http://digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html

The author of this article wrote a book on these 9 themes titled: Digital Citizenship in Schools & he is the creator of the website DigitalCitizenship.org.  His credentials are perfect for teaching this topic and the book is promoted through International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Going back to the original article, I found another excellent website on the topic of DC - Cyberwise.org.  This site posted an article on Digital Relationships & Teen Dating Apps.  I don't know why I hadn't come across this type of information before, but it makes sense that teens would have their own version of online dating...but of course the dangers to teens for such services is serious.  In fact, the article wrote about 3 separate cases of sexual assault in 2012 from one of the teen dating sites (Skout).  These dating apps provide teens with the freedom to take some risks, push boundaries, flirt and make contacts with strangers, try out a more mature dating platform, share personal information as well as their locations.  Teens that try out these apps are not thinking about the consequences of sharing this information or the dangers of meeting strangers who are often older men (predators).  I was surprised just how many dating apps were out there for 13 to 19 year old teens.  For most sites, they did not verify the age of the users.  One of the sites, "Hot Or Not" gives teens the message that dating is all about beauty, to teens who are already self-conscious about their body image.  Another site called "Meet Me" shared racy photos and mature content. "MYLOL" was rated as "Not Safe" by Common Sense Media.  Fortunately, there is parental monitoring software that can block the use of these apps and the amount of time that teens are on their devices (Surfie).  The link for this article is below.  I intend to include these dating apps in my discussions/lessons on internet safety.
http://www.cyberwise.org/single-post/2017/02/21/6-TEEN-HOOKUP-APPS-PARENTS-SHOULD-KNOW-ABOUT

Cyberwise.org was also a good site for other articles, videos and resources that educators and parents can use on the topic of DC.  The tab for Cyber Civics for schools and parents was especially good for downloadable lessons & resources.  You can follow them on FB or Twitter too - very interesting posts from my short exploration!

Lastly, teachers can always go to BrainPop for videos and short activities on the topic of DC.  Our district pays for this database, so usage counts and I think the students like it, even in high school.

Thing 35: Web Presence

I recently became the website administrator for my school and have been asked by the principal to make the website more attractive and engaging.  I am working with the districts technology staff to do this, but as long as I am focused on "web presence", I thought this Cool Tools lesson would be helpful.  I am limited to the School Wires website program, but I could ad links to other websites or blogs for teachers that are a bit more fun to work with.  The school website is not used often and many of the teachers are now using Google Classroom to post information for the students.  I have heard them comment that they don't need their teacher webpage anymore.  I hope to change some of those opinions with some examples of creative webpages with nice graphics, widgets, interactive forms, etc.

My favorite example of an excellent a blog/webpage is the Plymouth Regional High School Library, which is done on WordPress.  I must have spent over an hour just checking out all the neat features powered by all sorts of online technology.  I even learned something meant for students, such as the MLA template that is available in Google Docs; I will be directing my students to use this feature and will post this information on my own library webpage.  

The PRHS Library site is full of interesting and relevant information for reading and research, but the page is NOT crowded or wordy.  I think the librarian has managed this by using symbols in place of text with links to all the resources.  The webpage is also updated at least once or twice per week with fun facts or school news presented in a fun way with plenty of graphics and/or videos.  This is a nice way to keep your patrons coming back for new information.  Some other nice features are in presented in separate boxes with simple logos titled: Recommend A Book, Review A Book, Overdrive (eBooks), Kindle Collection (a Kindle account for the school), The Book Seer (awesome book title generator that I will add to my website), Your Next Read, and the amazing Book Club Website (Weebly webpage - nicely done), and PRHS Recommended Reading (every teacher posts their recommended book).  The banner by Library Thing with book covers was engaging and I liked the "Meet the Staff" pages - after reading about them, I would LOVE to meet them!!  If I created a page like this for myself, maybe some of the rest of the staff in my building would share a little more on their webpages!

Here is my About Me page that I just created; kinda simple at this point, but it does connect to my LinkedIn profile page:  https://about.me/diane.mohney

On the PRHS Library Website, there is a tab for research pages.  This section features a changing banner of beautiful book covers compliments of Library Thing.  I am not sure why this is on the research section, but it is attractive.  What I really like about this section, is the library calendar which uses a Google Form to get the details needed for teachers reserving space:

 Teachers can also see what is already schedule on the calendar.  Great tool for any library!

Lastly, I really like the 48 LibGuides that were created for the Research Pages.  The Libguides Home page is nicely organized with four main subject areas (Math, ELA, Social Studies, and Technology).  The Libguides themselves are easy to navigate with just the right amount of information.  I love creating Libguides and plan to create some new ones that are designed as simply as those on the PRHS site.

I did check out the Google Sites to see if I might want to try creating one, but I didn't see too many examples that I really liked.  The Staples Library was one of the best with visually attractive images/photos/vidoes, a few symbaloo charts (always fun), and a "New Fiction" gadget that I liked.  I thought the images and videos on some of the Google Sites took too long to load - some didn't load at all, so I guess I was not impressed.

I save the Free Technology for Teachers webpage to my technology bookmarks - looks like a useful source.    

Thing 14: News Literacy

News literacy is, by far, the most important topic to me right now! The false information proliferated before and after the 2016 election in the U.S. has highlighted the need for every citizen to know fact from fiction.  One has to ask why people believe so much of this obvious misinformation...at least it seems obvious to me.  I listen to public radio and read trustworthy news articles from major newspapers, like the NY Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, etc.  Of course there still could have been some bias from these organizations too, but from my long experience reading, listening, and viewing the news (self-confessed news junkie), I believe I am using reliable resources.

This topic is also quite timely for me as teachers and librarians are being asked by the school superintendent to teach digital citizenship for "Safer Internet Day" on February 7th.  The Center for Missing and Exploited Children has already visited our school to talk about digital footprints, cyber-bullying, online privacy and other online behaviors, so the topic of news literacy still needs attention.  This topic may not seem as relevant at first, but when you think about the fact that everyone adds content to the internet, it is important to know if the information is real, before using or sharing it.  My news literacy lesson will be for a Politics in Government - Economics class.

Thing 14 had so much interesting content; it could take me the rest of the week to explore all the articles, videos, lessons, and related links.  The first great resource that read and plan to use was the Stanford History Education Group Report on evaluating information with middle school, high school and college level students.  The report revealed a serious lack of awareness and ability to distinguish fake or biased information over objective verifiable information.  This report had a few lessons in it that I plan to use with my students as they were simple, but not easy - even my colleagues were duped.  

A quote from the Stanford report stated: 

Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us
smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our                       awareness of this problem and our educational response to it.  At present, we worry that         democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to               spread and flourish.

This is a bold, but true statement on the importance of students and citizens everywhere to understand how to evaluate the information that they find online and be able to use critical thinking skills to determine a balanced accurate perspective on important issues.

I hope to make this easier by posting the list of fact-checking websites by Daryl Paranada on my library catalog home page.  I direct students to this page for databases and other important links for research, so I hope they will remember to use these sites when needed.  I knew of Snopes.com and FactCheck.org, but I added 4 more.  I may also create a lesson with real and fake news reports that can be verified using these sites.  

I really like the TedEd video titled "How to Choose Your News" by Damon Brown.  This could be shown to students at the beginning of the lesson for some background on news literacy.

The Center for News Literacy provides several lesson templates although some of the news and YouTube links did not work.

I read numerous articles that helped me to understand the more subtle ways that misinformation is proliferating and why.  Such as the article from Newsela titled Websites that Publish Fake News Make Money and Suffer No Consequences" by Los Angeles Times.  Fake news put out by ad networks makes money that helps support websites.  Viewers are much more likely to click on an item that catches their attention with crazy headlines and exciting images.  There is no regulation on this type of advertising, but recently Google and Facebook have banned some fake news sites.  Still, not all will be stopped.

Lastly, I don't think I found this article in CoolTools, but I will share it.  It is from EasyBib Blog and it's titled "10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article" by Michele Kirschenbaum:

http://www.easybib.com/guides/10-ways-to-spot-a-fake-news-article/

Thing 5: Curation Tools

I have never considered myself a curator until now.  It makes sense that as a librarian, I am collecting information, not just in print materials, and cataloging it into different subject areas.  I have bookmarked many great resources in Google Chrome by hitting the star on the toolbar and saving them into private folders, but I have not considered the value of sharing my digital collections.  Social networking allows us to share all sorts of great information, so why not curate my collections with sharing in mind.  Social bookmarking allows us to expand our knowledge and resources through a variety of bookmarking sites such as Diigo, Delicious and Pinterest.  Assigning tags to our content lets anyone using these sites find resources by the subject(s) tags.  The tags also help us organize and find our own resources.  We also are likely to find other librarians and educational colleagues through this online community, so that's an added bonus.  Lastly, my cloud-based bookmarks can be accessed anywhere, which is pretty handy!

So, I set up an account with Diigo a long time ago, but haven't made much use of it, despite the occasional email with from the Diigo in Education group.  I think I needed to have a few groups that fit my needs, like Teacher-librarians!!!  If Joyce Valenza is posting, it will be very useful!  In addition, I joined the Cool Tools for Schools & Google in Education groups  I also went ahead and added Heather, Buffy and Shannon to people I follow, so I think Diigo will be a good source for me now.  I added the bookmarklet to my toolbar, so I can quickly put useful digital content in to my Diigo library.

Flipboard is not new to me but I love it and use it often on my iPhone, so I added the examples that Polly posted to explore at my leisure.

Pinterest is GREAT and I have used it many times for library displays, storytime lessons and related crafts, library skills lessons, etc.  Here is a collection of pins that I put together to help librarians promote Banned Book Week:  Banned Book Week Pinterest Board 

Since I needed to explore a new curation tool, I have created an account with Symbaloo and currently have a board that will be added to my school library website for digital resources.  I believe the graphic symbols on a webpage will be much more inviting and user-friendly to my students.  It is not easy to get them to bypass a quick Google search for information, but if they can access all the best sites on a single page, it is more likely to be used.  They will also see other resources that will help them find related subjects of interest.  The link to my new Symbaloo Webmix is:  SWW Library Resources

Thanks for the great curation resources and the inspiration to revisit forgotten curation tools. 

Thing 16: Digital Tattoo & Digital Citizenship

Getting started on this subject was difficult with all the information I read and reviewed!  I like the way Thing 16 starts with the "Mind Reader" - a great video that features gullible young people from different backgrounds in an exotic foreign location (Brussels) that have plenty of personal information online, but don't realize it.  It would be a fun way to start a lesson with students on digital footprints.  Thing 16 also provided a plethora of lessons on the subject of digital literacy (citizenship, footprints).  I found myself bookmarking EVERYTHING into a folder on my computer for this subject. I was not aware that there was a week designated for awareness on the topic in October  (Digital Citizenship Week).  With lessons/videos from Common Sense Media - Education, iKeep Safe/Google, Cyberwise, Teachinctrl.org (InCtrl), Digizen, and the Teaching Channel, it would be easy to put some lessons together to raise awareness of the issue and teach digital literacy during Digital Citizens Week.  I could also find posters to display through some of these sites or Pinterest (I now have a DC board on my account).  Really, ideas are everywhere; thanks to Cool Tools for Schools, I have a wonderful set of resources to start with & will likely find many more.

Digital citizenship, copyright, plagarism, etc, can be had topics to get students excited about.  I have heard numerous times how dry the topics can be.  Students think they know how to behave on their "digital playground", but until they witness a hurtful or punishing consequence, they will ignore this topic.  This is where I plan to have multimedia lessons that are interactive.  One lesson that I watched through Teaching Channel could help engage students with a hands-on lesson Understanding the Impact of Digital Footprints. First the students go online and google the classroom teacher, who maintains a professional digital footprint as a good example. Then students are asked to investigate two people online for a job position and determine which one was honest and more reliable.  They need to make inferences to decide some factors, but collect evidence to back up why they chose one candidate over another based on profiles found on the internet.  This type of lesson could be very interesting and make a lasting impact on students.

One of the sources highlighted a book that may be useful to have on the shelves of the school library: lol...OMG by Matt Ivester.  This book is in our public library and I will check it out in the future as well as others that may be a little more up-to-date.

Lastly, I was interested in the article on sexism in the gaming industry with bullying or "doxxing" of female game designers who comment on the industry.  The term doxxing means to expose someone's true identity online (full name and address).  Most people do not want to have personal information online for safety reasons.  If you want to have your background information removed from the general public, you can contact various databrokers such as Pipl, Spokeo, Whitepages, etc.  Time-consuming, but likely worth it!

PS.  I did google myself and fortunately, I am not concerned about my own digital footprint - probably because I do make the effort to remain positive and professional with posts, pictures and personal information.

http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/Kids/Get%20the%20facts/Digital%20footprint.aspx

Thing 19: Social Reading & Book Stuff

It made sense that this lesson started with Goodreads; it has been my number one resource for cataloging my books and reading book reviews for years.  I started out with Library Thing for cataloging my books, but gravitated to Goodreads, which seemed more user-friendly (particularly for mobile devices.  Anyway, when I read about the Goodreads widget, I was happy to add it to this blog and I plan to add it to my school library webpage too.  I have showed my students this site numerous times, especially when they want to know what book comes next in a series; all they need to do is find the author profile and scroll down to the books written by him or her.  I check reviews for numerous reasons, but I really love it for perspective - seeing both the positive and negative comments helps me moderate discussions in both adult and teen book clubs. There are so many different ways to interpret a story and share other related information (similar books, movies, authors, places, historical events, etc.).  Goodreads is bookmarked on my laptop, and desktop; I also use the Goodreads app on my iPhone.

Libary Reads was a new site to me and I have bookmarked it into my "Book Reviews" folder with the intention of checking it for new titles.  The top ten titles looked really interesting and in the future, I would love to contribute to this social recommendation site.  Now I just need more time to read!

I have opened an account with Net Galley for advance reading of new titles, but I have an issue with the fact that I have 2 kindle accounts and I am trying to correct that with Amazon.  Net Galley needs the address of the device(s) I plan to use.  I hope to talk with them again tomorrow when my little-used kindle is fully charged.  I use the kindle app most of the time on my smartphone or my iPad and apparently I inadvertently opened a second account.  It will be good to get this straightened out!  To be honest, I really prefer paper books, but I know how important it is to stay on top of current technology and use eBooks too.  The Book Bub was a great resource for discounted eBooks and after signing up for an account, I receive daily emails with the really good pricing deals - this will encourage me to get back into the eBooks!

I have an Overdrive account, but I've used it mostly to get audio books onto my phone ('love audio!).  Downloading books is easy, but I tend to forget about them and they expire before I finish them.  If I could renew the eBooks, I may be more likely to borrow them.  For now, borrowing eBooks just doesn't work for me.  I do recommend them to others though.

I started a new folder in my bookmarks for Spartan Guides, which was so fully loaded with useful library information, that it will take me some time to sort out the things that I can use.  Thanks for posting - love LibGuides!

Common Sense Media is a wonderful site, but it is geared towards parents, teachers and librarians that have children under 14 years of age.  As a high school librarian, the reviews and ratings on books and movies were pretty limited.  Still, I liked the variety of "best of" lists for titles.  I did use this site when I worked with younger students and the app worked really well (although it does take up a lot of storage space on your phone).  

Thing 15, Web Presence

After reviewing the many options for a web presence, I realize school library websites CAN be great! Currently I have my own school website and have administrative rights to update or change the School Wires website, but the layout and design are very boring (no templates to choose from).  We just don't have a lot of options for more than the basics, so I like the idea of using a Blogger, Wordpress, or Weebly webpage.  I have experience using all three web formats:  multiple blogs on blogger, one blog on Word Press and I have a nice poetry website on Weebly that I created for a library science project; the link is below:
Pulse Poetry

The website example from Cool Tools that I liked best was done by the Castilleja School Library - an exemplary Word Press blog used as a school website!!  I would be happy to add a few of the nice features on my own library website.  I may start a Pinterest board for my school library collection and add it to the webpage as a visual book cover display of our collection.  Great way to promote circulation!!

Another good website was the Staples Library Learning Commons.  I like the user-friendly, simple layout with multiple tabs, lots of information - yet not too much.  This is partially the result of the web designer using Symbaloo to organize many sites into an attractive box with symbols for each one.  The grid format for Tech Tools, Student Showcase and Finding a book works well for containing a lot of material on one page without a cluttered look.  Nice!

I work in a school that is using Google Classroom as a stand-in for teacher websites (even though they can have a School Wires webpage).  So, it would make sense to introduce the Google Sites webpage option to teachers and students.  I like the Club Site template and will share it with the club advisors.  It is much more attractive than just a Google Classroom for student clubs!

The Rochester School Library System has LibGuides available to teachers for the second year now and although it could be used as a school website, I still think of it a an ideal program for topical, subject specific webpages.  I love the mobile friendly option, reusable pages, and having the LibGuide Community available for ideas when I need to create a guide.  Lastly, I was happy to see my own Industrial Revolution LibGuide used as an example for other Cool Tools participants : )

The last thing I will share for Thing 15 is a few of my Smore online fliers.  I printed them and used them on a bulletin board, but the concept of online promotional fliers is great for our digital world.  Sadly, Smore.com only allows you to create 5 fliers for free and then you have to pay for the service.  I would not need it enough at this time to pay for it, but you never know...

Smore Poster - February Reading Challenge

Smore Poster - April is National Poetry Month

Here is a poster I made from a free site for making posters - Canva
Poetry Month with Canva Design