What kind of information/resources are available for schools/caregivers on Cybersafety/Digital Citizenship?
There are plenty of resources available online but I can only recommend the ones I have used and looked at myself. Around 2009/10 I got involved in Superclubsplus with Sonya Van Schaijik at Newmarket Primary School so a lot of my knowledge extends from that experience.
Netsafe is one of the first places I would recommend any teacher or parent to head to for information. If you want to grow digital citizens who are cyberaware and cybersafe it should be your first port of call. They have a blog and are also on all kinds of social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. "NetSafe is an independent non-profit organisation that promotes confident, safe, and responsible use of online technologies..." (You can check out a list of their partners and their current work by clicking on that quote).
Netsafe have plenty of resources on their site and also links to other sites they are part of or recommend. One resource they have is The Netsafe Kit for schools which I would highly recommend for schools who are starting out on their cybersafety/digital citizenship journey. If you get in touch with NetSafe they will be able to put you in touch with someone who could come out and talk to your staff and/or school community about the importance of digital citizenship and cybersafety.
They have an awesome site called HectorsWorld which has fun activities/videos/songs etc. for kids aged 2-9 years old. It has a parent section where you can view information on everything from dealing with upsetting online content to safety buttons and webcam covers. There is a teacher section too which has lesson plans/story books/hand outs etc. Another site worth looking at is Cyberbullying, it offers information, advice and guidance for students, caregivers and schools.
I can highly recommend Superclubsplus (now Skooville here in New Zealand) as a safe place for children to be online (mediators are always online monitoring conversations/content etc.) to learn about how to be safe online. I haven't used the new Skooville but when we were using Superclubsplus the students had pages similar to a type of Myspace/Facebook page and progressed through badges to earn a cybersafey certificate. I can only assume that they still follow a similar social media format and have badges to work towards. If schools decide to get involved I would encourage teachers to get on board with students so that they can experience what the students are doing and how they progress through. I completed my Superclubsplus cybersafety certificate and super teacher award so that I had an idea of how the programme worked for my students (NZ Y3/4 at the time).
I saw an add on the TV the other day that Netsafe and The Parenting Place have teamed up with Vodafone. They have created a space online called Digi-Parenting. The site offers advice to parents on how to become more Digi-Savvy as well as including information on how to get help and keep their family safe online. This is perhaps another place you could recommend to parents who want to know more. They seem to have a lot of good suggestions and information worth having a read through.
Showing posts with label @vanschaijik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label @vanschaijik. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 August 2015
Monday, 20 July 2015
TeachMeetNZ 2015: Session 2
Agreeing to do a TeachMeetNZ is one thing, putting it together is a whole other level. When I first heard about Sonya Vanschaijik’s TeachMeetNZ Sessions I was keen to get involved but at the same time worried I didn’t have much to contribute. As I followed other people's journeys I realised a TeachMeetNZ session is much like a blog post, you just talk about what you know, what you’re doing or what you’ve done. The hard part is getting it to fit into 3mins!
I approached Sonya and said I was keen to get involved, she said there weren't many teachers sharing about gaming who actually game on a regular basis, and there is plenty people want to know. The trouble with gaming is that it’s like any other subject, it’s so broad there is no way to cover what everyone wants to hear in a short time. The reality is if you haven’t spent 20 hours playing a game you will never understand how it works or the benefits that exist. An hour will show you basic game play and you can make assumptions based on that, but 20 hours will give you a decent idea of how it plays and the types of skills you are using.
The TeachMeetNZ template that is provided via the TeachMeetNZ website is fantastic. It really helps you to organise your ideas and work out what ideas you want to present. Sonya also suggested creating a keyword image/definition diagram using a SOLO Describe Map (shout out to Pam Hook) to help me break down my ideas. She shared the one she created to help her define TeachMeetNZ, you can check it out on her blog. I found that as I added words and sentences it changed and evolved as I tried to align my thoughts and ideas. Even now I’m not entirely satisfied with it, I’m sure I will continue to refine it, as we all do and encourage our students to do with their work.
Once you have all your ideas in sync your next step is to condense condense condense. Its so hard to erase entire sentences from explanations because you feel like you are cutting out valuable information. But, at the end of the day that’s what is fantastic about TeachMeetNZ presentations, they are smorgosboard of bite sized education tidbits designed to make you hungry for more so you will seek out more information for yourself. After speaking to sonya I decided the best option was just to talk about how I got into ‘gaming’ and some of the impacts it had on me as a teacher/learner and how it affected my students as learners. Using the TeachMeetNZ template helped me iron out thoughts and ideas in a quick way and because I was talking about personal experience it was easy and quick to pull the presentation together. My router died on the night of practice so that left me feeling a little uneasy about the content but Sonya made some time for me the next day so I could have a practice and sort out any kinks.
We had an initial practice so everyone knew how to use Google Hangouts and check out the light at presentation time. Then mid week we had an evening session to check we knew how to share our presentations. A week later we had the dress rehearsal and then the TeachMeetNZ on the Saturday. The session ran smoothly on the day, with a timekeeper and twitter broadcaster on board as well as Sonya to run the show. Basically TeachMeetNZ runs like a well oiled machine and it is a fantastic thing to be a part of.
We had a fantastic line up of presenters who all had fascinating topics to talk about. I enjoyed my time spent listening to each of their sessions and learned something valuable from each. I had some interesting feedback from some teachers on a few of the points I made which was fantastic and I’m looking forward to talking more to teachers about what their students are participating in. I would like to see more of the positive sides of gaming being looked at (shout out to @peggysheehy) rather than the negatives that we see/hear about so often. I’m so pleased I took the leap and participated, thanks so much to the whole TeachMeetNZ team, and to my fellow presenters who all did amazing jobs.
I highly recommend you head over to the TeachMeetNZ wiki and see when the next session is: http://teachmeetnz.wikispaces.com/home. It’s rare that you can get professional learning development while sitting in your PJs at home. If you missed our session you can check it out on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivMvWr5-c5o. There is a fantastic playlist on youtube available of all the previous TeachMeetNZs that have happened as well. If you’re feeling brave you could also get in contact with Sonya+/@vanschaijik and sign up to participate in a session.
EdTechTeam New Zealand North GAFE Summit
#gafesummit Albany, Auckland, NZ has been my life last few days. With tweachers tweeting up a storm sharing all the valuable learning and amazing presenters, if you have any teachers on twitter or Google+ who have attended I'm sure it's been hard to miss.
We picked up our presenter badges, I was disappointed to learn the GAFE badges were not coming and that we wouldn't be using them as presenters. I was really looking forward to seeing how adults (esp. teachers) react to the physical and virtual badge system. Our day started with the keynote and Waveney winning Andy the enormous Android plush toy. Then we all filed off to our first breakouts.
Google and The iPad: A Friendship Made in the Cloud - Holly Clark
Holly talked a lot about the connections that can be made between an iPad and cloud based tools. Most apps will let you save your pictures/videos/creations to some form of cloud, be it dropbox/drive/icloud etc. She believes Google Docs on the iPad is key to collaboration. Google is only any use to you if you are collaborating though (and remember that they are constantly updating things, twice a day). The top 5 apps she recommends are Explain Everything, Socrative, Book Creator, Google Classroom and Drive. Everything you create on an iPad can be sent to Drive using the add or sharowarrow hieroglyphics.
Connecting the dots: Using Hapara - Teacher Dashboard - Anna Spier
A fascinating look into Hapara which is a dashboard for teachers to oversee Google Docs being used by their students in Google Apps for Education accounts. She explained how she started out with her digital classroom and introduced how she got her class started with Google Drive. I was interested mainly in what Hapara is and how she was using it. I really enjoyed the student/teacher feedback aspect. Highly recommend that anyone who is keen to know more gets in touch her her via her blog or twitter (@missspeir).
Getting Down to Earth With Google Earth and Maps - Wes Warner
Google Earth is not currently working on Chromebooks at the moment. What an amazing session this one was. Wes shared a few different things that you can do using Google Earth/Maps. He showed us how to bring up the Apollo Space Missions to share with students, the bring up all kinds of film/photos and information. You can explore the whole moon on your own if you want. He showed us ways to track climate change, and even a whole lot of historical places you can visit and view photos of. You can add different layers and 2D becomes 3D with layers. You can even create Google Tours https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/. Highly recommend checking out Wes Warners work and the amazing things he does with Google Earth/Maps (@I_teach_ict).
Day Two off with a Bang
Yesterday I filled in a form for NewEraIT, I was told they would be giving out two chromebooks this morning. I told everyone I was pretty excited to get a new chromebook for my new GAFE Summit chrome bag, I even called out to my flatmate as I left in the morning that I would see her in the evening with my new chrome book. Never in a million years did I actually think I would win one! I was a little nervous about the keynote running late and having enough time to get set up for my session so my mind was preoccupied but when NewEraIT appeared at the front I was still in full jest mode about it being mine. When my name was called I was so excited! A brand new chromebook and it was all mine! It will be put to good use.
Gearing your staff up for working with Google Apps - Natasha Walden
I was really happy with my session and how it ran. I managed to get round to almost everyone before the session started to see where they were at with GAFE in their schools and what they were hoping to get out of the session. I got some fantastic feed back on how helpful the session was and the resources that I shared. I was happy with the session because I managed to get it finished in under 40mins so that we had time for questions and the badge challenge. That meant that people had time to digest what I had said and run through what they might have questions about. Thanks so much to Waves/Anna/Sonya for supporting me and for everyone who attended. I'm so happy that there were no hiccups and that resources created can be resources shared. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions @missnwalden.
I love the idea of badges as learning pathways. Waveney shared her journey with the Newmarket Primary School leadership programme. She shared the leadership passport she created and explained how it worked. Then she shared the digital badges she had created to go along side the passport. She shared some student examples and showed how she created her badges, the highs and the lows. I loved the digital pad I got for attending her session. I highly recommend that anyone who is keen to know more gets in touch her her via her blog or twitter (@wavesbryant).
Using HTML on your Google Site - Karen Belt and Matt Goodwin
These two amazing PRTs shared various ways you can change your google site using HTML without having any prior knowledge of it. They talked about how you need to plan our your site first so that you know where you are heading. When using HTML you come across Tags - these occur within the brackets - the closing tag always has a slash - there are exceptions - e.g. br (line break) doesn't have a closing tag. If you want to learn more about HTML you can check out a site they created: https://sites.google.com/a/ptengland.school.nz/htmlexamples/home
Video is the new text, a Q & A session with Sonya. - Sonya Van Schaijik
A fantastic session about YouTube with the wonderful Sonya. It was a very hands on session which I loved, we looked at how to get our custom URL and how important it is to get to your 500 subscribers. After claiming custom URLs we also looked at creating channel art and how to add a subscribe button. I highly recommend that anyone who is keen to know more gets in touch her her via her blog or twitter (@vanschaijik).
Overall it was a fantastic summit and I'm looking forward to the next one.
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