The most interesting article I read was on how in the past, kids with social anxiety were helped because the need to be part of a group was stronger than the desire to avoid social interaction, so they were forced to fight their anxiety and hang out with other kids. But nowadays, kids can get the same feeling of being part of a group from social media and don’t have to actually interact with people, so their social anxiety never goes away. To fix this, they should just hang out with other people and stay away from social media.

Next topic is screen-time and wellness, I would argue that this topic is the one that affects real life more than any other. I know from experience that technology can be a bit addicting, screen-time can ruin a sleep schedule, which can lead to physical and mental effects, and prolonged use can be unhealthy.

We also hoped  that our students would not only learn self-regulation, but that they would adopt practices associated with “digital leadership” – in other words, using social media for good – a concept promoted by Jennifer Casa-Todd in her book, Social LEADia.

Our intention was that by providing information, resources, and guidelines to their parents, our students would internalize the information themselves.

The information gleaned from the poster presentations and discussions were then incorporated into parent letters that were distributed at back to school night. (Note:  I’m not particularly fond of projects ending in poster fairs, but in this case the poster fair was a means to the ultimate product, letters written to parents).

A few years ago we discovered and started using the resources provided by Common Sense Media at the beginning of the year to jumpstart the dialogue with our students. This resource has terrific age-appropriate resources and lessons. If you aren’t familiar with their website, I highly recommend it.

At my school, our staff also struggles to design the appropriate the balance between freedom and protection; it’s a cost-benefit analysis that sometimes feels impossible to nail.

It can be truly baffling and frustrating.

They're learning that empathy matters in a digital world. They're learning that technology can be used to showcase their talents to a wider audience. They're learning to make the web work for them. They're learning to discern, filter and organize the information they collect. They're learning that transparency and responsible sharing can only help them. They're excited about new challenges daily and learning in a collaborative environment where they are not told what to do, but instead are learning through the decisions they make themselves.

And for all of their hard work and content creation, I am giving every one of them an award; however most of them wouldn't accept it. My students get more excited about their reach and how others react to the content they created. They are excited about this post and how many new users will hopefully visit their website and comment on their video.

hey are discerning between credible and bogus information and understanding how to properly cite, organize and share their findings.

They're employing critical analysis and critical thinking by seeking out the answers to the questions they generate.

They collaborate with their teams, schedule weekly meetings with team leaders or project managers, and we meet as a class to assess the progress and address any questions or problems.

I remind them that this skill is imperative for their future no matter what path they choose.

they present and demonstrate their learning

facilitator and a resource for their learning. They do the rest.

teach digital literacy to a mixed group of high school students.

authoring their own learning,

power and patience employed during work process…

Construction is equal parts inspiration and perspiration.

but I believe that the word choice involved in identifying construction as opposed to creation is also of the utmost importance.

our understanding of construction and creation needs to be broad enough to allow for change in the future.

Working online is a fluid experience which calls for flexible learners.

The ideas and concepts in all of this work does overlap sometimes

while making it easy & flexible enough for teachers to make this work happen in their classrooms.

There are many variations as the project is student interest driven, and may last any amount of time. The design, focus, and length of the Internet Inquiry Project should be determined by your student learning objectives, as well as your own technological, pedagogical, and content area knowledge (TPACK) and objectives

. Another takeaway was that K-12 students don’t understand “credibility” and “relevance”…but they do understand words like “truthful” and “useful.”

One takeaway from this work was a focus on identifying and evaluating markers of credibility and relevance in online texts

Student engage in online content construction by synthesizing what they have learned and selecting the best digital text or tool before sharing this answer.

nd sift thr

The Drama Classroom: Action, Reflection, Transformation

At the beginning of a new year or a new unit, you always want to deter-mine the theatre skills your students al-ready possess.

You can demonstrate this in a straight-forward fashion by asking for four volunteers to come up on stage or to the front of the classroom. Position the four from stage left to stage right, spaced evenly across the stage, one lying on the ground, one sitting on the floor, one sitting in a chair, and one standing up. Then ask the student audience several questions: “To which person do you eyes automatically go and why?” “Who is in the strongest position on stage and why?” “Who seems to be the most important in this stage picture and why?” “Who is in the weakest position on stage and why?” “Who is the least important and why?” With students discussing and demon-strating their understanding of these body positions on stage, you are able to introduce the concepts of strong and weak stage positions, while simultane-ously assessing their understanding of the concepts as they contribute to the discussion. Depending on the clarity of their answers, you can either review and re-teach, or move on

With any pre-assessment, you also need to be mindful of the sequence of skills you are building in your students.

With any pre-assessment, you also need to be mindful of the sequence of skills you are building in your students.

You can demonstrate this in a straight-forward fashion by asking for four volunteers to come up on stage or to the front of the classroom. Position the four from stage left to stage right, spaced evenly across the stage, one lying on the ground, one sitting on the floor, one sitting in a chair, and one standing up. Then ask the student audience several questions: “To which person do you eyes automatically go and why?” “Who is in the strongest position on stage and why?” “Who seems to be the most important in this stage picture and why?” “Who is in the weakest position on stage and why?” “Who is the least important and why?” With students discussing and demon-strating their understanding of these body positions on stage, you are able to introduce the concepts of strong and weak stage positions, while simultane-ously assessing their understanding of the concepts as they contribute to the discussion. Depending on the clarity of their answers, you can either review and re-teach, or move on

Beginning with the end in mind prevents curriculum from becoming a collection of random lessons, and it helps create the assessment founda-tion from which the skills and knowl-edge of students can be measured

If you were doing a unit based on that standard and wanted to “begin with the end in mind,” you might ask your students to create a scene with a beginning, middle, and end that shows distinct characters in conflict. This goal is observable, measurable, and attain-able.

We borrow our first step from Stephen Covey, who wrote the popular self-help book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey’s second habit is to “Begin with the end in mind.”

We’re going to go a step further and offer a framework for the-atre teachers who want to incorporate authentic assessment into their theatre classes.

All collaborative learning is done in a group (of at least two people), but not all group work is inherently collaborative! The trick is to structure the activity in a way that makes students work together to be successful.

Conduct continuous quality improvement. Immediately after an activity, jot down notes on how long it took, what worked, and what could be improved on for the next time

Jigsaw Delegates Hollywood Squares Movable mind maps Trade-n-post

Create or modify activities to ensure collaboration. Be sure to structure the activities foster mutual dependence, match them to the course outcomes, and ensure that learning can be individually assessed

I share the data and anecdotal evidence at the start of the semester with incoming students because there are always a few who are nonbelievers or think collaborative learning is childish, and I have found it necessary to sell it to them

All experienced an increase of at least two full letter grades the subsequent time.

I then compared those averages to the averages after I implemented collaboratively structured activities and found the average scores improved 3–8 percent over lecture alone.

Collaborative Learning Group Work Group effort required “Divide and Conquer” mentality Learners accountable to each other More free-riders Social skills are improved Minimal interaction required Helping and sharing is expected Helping and sharing is minimal Emphasis on process and product Emphasis on product only

however, if a collaborative activity is designed well, it can be reused or tweaked for a future semester, which is a time-saver in the long term.

Some may consider this time commitment a drawback to using collaborative learning;

The key is to structure the activities collaboratively so that learners are mutually dependent on each other yet are held individually accountable. This eliminates the free-riders (students who try to coast based on the group’s performance).

Activities are used to teach the competencies of the course, and students assume responsibility for their learning, and they earn their own grades based on their performances on an assessment of the competencies.

I do not give group grades.

Group work is also reported to be a way to incorporate different perspectives, experiences, knowledge, and skill sets, but in my experience, the same could be said for collaborative learning.

Initially, I found that when students were placed in groups, they didn’t necessarily work together. What I discovered was that the activities needed to be structured collaboratively to promote learning.

“Activities may differ considerably, but focus on students’ exploration or application of the course material, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it.”

Group work is often described as a good way to improve productivity by delegating tasks. However, this gives rise to what I refer to as the “divide and conquer” mentality (students who complete only a portion of the workload and then share answers with their group).

In collaborative classrooms, the lecturing/listening/note-taking process may not disappear entirely, but it lives alongside other processes that are based in students' discussion and active work with the course material."

In the collaborative learning environment, the learners are challenged both socially and emotionally as they listen to different perspectives, and are required to articulate and defend their ideas. In so doing, the learners begin to create their own unique conceptual frameworks and not rely solely on an expert's or a text's framework. Thus, in a collaborative learning setting, learners have the opportunity to converse with peers, present and defend ideas, exchange diverse beliefs, question other conceptual frameworks, and be actively engaged.

Learning flourishes in a social environment where conversation between learners takes place. During this intellectual gymnastics, the learner creates a framework and meaning to the discourse.

knowledge to a framework of prior knowledge. Learning requires a challenge that opens the door for the learner to actively engage his/her peers, and to process and synthesize information rather than simply memorize and regurgitate it.

Learning is an active process whereby students assimilate the information and relate this new knowledge to a framework of prior knowledge.

"Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among

Connected learning environments link learning in school, home and community because learners achieve best when their learning is reinforced and supported in multiple settings.

s economic and political opportunity

The potential of cross-generational learning and connection unfolds when centered on common goals.

Research has repeatedly shown that when the topic is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes. Connected learning views interests and passions that are developed in a social context as essential elements.

In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people fluidly contribute, share and give feedback. Powered with possibilities made available by today’s social media, this peer culture can produce learning that’s engaging and powerful.

2. Production Centered

“For more than a century, educators have strived to customize education to the learner. Connected Learning leverages the advances of the digital age to make that dream a reality — connecting academics to interests, learners to inspiring peers and mentors, and educational goals to the higher order skills the new economy rewards.

In math and English, teachers cede the floor to students so they can teach one another. In math class, students are given challenging class problems that encourage them to seek ideas and advice from their group members.

e teacher selects one student to be the moderator and another to be the discussion tracker who records the flow of the conversations. The moderator can look at the discussion tracker’s notes and see which students he should invite to chime i

he teacher also gives out a group-collaboration grade for each unit, which is worth 10 percent of a

Because the group work is intentionally more difficult, this process keeps individual students accountable for full participation in group work.

In English, the discussions are open-ended, allowing for multiple right answers.

a Harkness tab

let students teach one another, and encourage students to be in tune with one another.

focus on the process,

teachers must be willing to “cede the floor” to the students.

t. Moreover, it allows teachers, researchers, and teacher educators to move beyond oversimplified approaches that treat technology as an “add-on” instead to focus again, and in a more ecological way, upon the connections among technology, content, and pedagogy as they play out in classroom contexts.

Teachers need to master more than the subject matter they teach; they must also have a deep understanding of the manner in which the subject matter (or the kinds of representations that can be constructed) can be changed by the application of particular technologies.

The choice of technologies affords and constrains the types of content ideas that can be taught. Likewise, certain content decisions can limit the types of technologies that can be used.

Progress in fields as diverse as medicine, history, archeology, and physics have coincided with the development of new technologies that afford the representation and manipulation of data in new and fruitful ways.

, integration efforts should be creatively designed or structured for particular subject matter ideas in specific classroom contexts

Many approaches to teachers’ professional development offer a one-size-fits-all approach to technology integration when, in fact, teachers operate in diverse contexts of teaching and learning.

Furthermore, teachers have often been provided with inadequate training for this task.

Many teachers earned degrees at a time when educational technology was at a very different stage of development than it is today. It is, thus, not surprising that they do not consider themselves sufficiently prepared to use technology in the classroom and often do not appreciate its value or relevance to teaching and learning.

Understanding how these affordances and constraints of specific technologies influence what teachers do in their classrooms is not straightforward and may require rethinking teacher education and teacher professional development

Rather, particular technologies have their own propensities, potentials, affordances, and constraints that make them more suitable for certain tasks than other

Over time, these technologies achieve a transparency of perception (Bruce & Hogan, 1998); they become commonplace and, in most cases, are not even considered to be technologies. Digital technologies—such as computers, handheld devices, and software applications—by contrast, are protean (usable in many different ways; Papert, 1980); unstable (rapidly changing); and opaque (the inner workings are hidden from users; Turkle, 1995).O

Teaching with technology is complicated further considering the challenges newer technologies present to teachers. In our work, the word technology applies equally to analog and digital, as well as new and old, technologies. As a matter of practical significance, however, most of the technologies under consideration in current literature are newer and digital and have some inherent properties that make applying them in straightforward ways difficult.

onnected Camps is a benefit corporation that offers virtual summer camps and afterschool programs in the game of Minecraft. High school and college Minecraft experts are trained to teach younger kids coding, engineering, game design, and digital citizenship. The programs mine the enthusiasm that kids have for the most popular game of all time, by building connections with mentors who share their interest and help them level up in high-tech skills. http://connectedcamps.com/

Quest to Learn is a unique middle and high school in New York City that was founded by game designers and educators and embodies a game-based approach to teaching and learning. Quest to Learn connects young people’s interests in gaming to academic achievement through collaborative challenges and problem solving. http://www.q2l.org/

learning rather than distraction.

Connected learners have a web of relationships and organizations that support their learning, beyond the formal educational pipeline.

connected learning puts progressive, experiential, and learner-centered approaches

Consider the ways professionals work within their chosen disciplines—conducting investigations in science, writing for different purposes (to inform, persuade, or entertain) to real audiences, interpreting events and primary source documents in history, applying mathematics to solve real-world problems, researching, critiquing books and movies, and debating issues of social and economic policy

"For any subject taught in primary school, we might ask [is it] worth an adult's knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult" (p. 52). A negative or ambiguous answer means the "material is cluttering up the curriculum."

We would say that student learning is incomplete if the unit or course concluded without mastery of these essentials.

we sharpen our choices by specifying important knowledge

Clearly, we cannot address all areas; thus, the largest ring identifies knowledge that students should find worth being familiar with. During the unit or course, what do we want students to hear, read, view, research, or otherwise encounter?

Broad-brush knowledge, assessed through traditional quiz or test questions,

he term enduring refers to the big ideas, the important understandings, that we want students to "get inside of" and retain after they've forgotten many of the details. F

helps them to clarify their goals but also results in a more sharply defined teaching and learning target, so that students perform better knowing their goal.

We are advocating the reverse: One starts with the end—the desired results (goals or standards)—and then derives the curriculum from the evidence of learning (performances) called for by the standard and the teaching needed to equip students to perform. T

will understand the nature of prejudice,

we also consider the needs of our students when designing learning experiences

Clearly, students are our primary clients,

we must “mobilize educators, policymakers, and others to address this threat to democracy.

we should also be engaging them in discussions about how they should react when presented with a new source and what kinds of questions to be asking (going beyond “who wrote this?” for example, to “who’s behind this URL?”). The most important aspect for educators to embrace is that every text used in a classroom is constructed, so we must be aware of not only the authors’ biases, but of our own.

what is real from what is fake, be aware of the hazy lines between entertainment and news, and be adept at applying these skills to the mountain of information we are constantly exposed to.

I’ve found it helpful to focus on what the National Association for Media Literacy in Education defines as “the core principles of media literacy education.” Essentially, this is as close as we have to a set of standards for media literacy.

is a powerful call to action for all educators, not just those of us in media-focused classrooms: media literacy must be valued and taught right alongside the traditional reading, writing, and listening standards.

“Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the internet can be summed up in one word: bleak,” the report reads. In other words, my students are far from the only ones taking the internet’s word for it.

“Fake news” is everywhere, and unfortunately we have not prepared our students, parents, and teachers to fully understand the risks of this new and increasingly influential type of media.

create a dialogue based on inaccuracies

We were quickly able to debunk the killer clown story, but it’s not always so easy to help students tell fact from fiction.

Media Literacy Education affirms that people use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages.

Media Literacy Education recognizes that media are a part of culture and function as agents of socialization.

Media Literacy Education builds and reinforces skills for learners of all ages.

The purpose of media literacy education is to help individuals of all ages develop the habits of inquiry and skills of expression that they need to be critical thinkers, effective communicators and active citizens in today’s world.

Digital literacy is not about the skills of using technologies, but how we use our judgment to maintain awareness of what we are reading and writing, why we are doing it, and whom we are addressing.

powerful authors block alternative viewpoints.

It means opening dialogue about why we write in public, to what end, and for whose benefit.

I avoid putting my students in high-risk situations, but this does not mean avoiding teaching digital literacy.

Do our students recognize the ways in which Facebook’s privacy settings continually shift without user permission, and what posting a photo today might mean for their future employment opportunities?

When they tweet to people from another country in another time zone, what kind of context do they need to consider?

Instead of teaching how to use a hashtag and how to tweet and retweet, I give my students meaningful tasks to help their learning

Who puts themselves at risk when they do so?

Digital skills focus on what and how. Digital literacy focuses on why, when, who, and for whom.

Digital literacies are not solely about technical proficiency but about the issues, norms, and habits of mind surrounding technologies used for a particular purpose.

Knowing how to read, write, and participate in the digital world has become the 4th basic foundational skill next to the three Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic

Examples of these skills include collaboration, communication, creativity, and problem-solving.

open access to the skills and know-how needed to use the web to improve their lives, careers, and organizations.

eb remains a healthy open and public resource fo