10th
Digital Citizenship at IFL Conference
Marty Park is a member of the Kentucky Educational Technology System and a former CIO in a Kentucky public school district. Yesterday, at the Innovations for Learning conference in Fayette County (KY), he presented on digital citizenship and how schools can create an environment that fosters great digital citizens. Some of the highlights are listed below.
- Change versus Improvement - Be willing to be committed to something for improvement’s sake and not just being involved to change. Technology shouldn’t be shoved into the learning environment but rather utilized where appropriate and relevant. Proper use always being a part of the learning process.
- Tools students use and how they use them can effectively be included in daily instruction to accommodate instructional production and creativity. Also, giving students some freedom as to which tools they use can accommodate interest of some students who have previously not show interest.
- Talked of the need to change our processes to be ready for the “always-connected” student. There will always come a time where we can’t block and control every piece of technology that we don’t want or that we don’t understand and being able to teach in an environment where accepting these types of technology can be beneficial.
- Spoke of Cloud Computing… what it is, how students are using it, the devices that they can use to connect… and even some examples of cloud computing that we are using now.
- Spoke about more dense dispersion of computing devices.
- talked about some of the devices
- talked about Acceptable Use Policy and the value or lack thereof and related it to digital citizenship.
The room was a mix of teachers, school-level administrators and district administrators with varying levels of technology proficiency present. There were interesting examples shared of students using technology to not only present mastery but also to just simply open a student up to being excited about learning.
Technology being another tool in a teachers toolbox… and a powerful one… there must be discussion about digital citizenship and the proper use of technology by students and teachers.
Thanks Marty… and I hope I didn’t add too many of my own thoughts here.
