Connect.ed & the importance of digital citizenship

Part of the learning path for week 8 was completing online courses on Connect.ed, in regards to digital citizenship.  Connect.ed is an online professional development program run as a part of the government’s CyberSmart initiative.  There are four self-paced modules covering a range of digital citizenship issues.  (You can see my certificate of completion here – cybersmart certificate.)

I felt pretty confident completing the modules.  I knew a lot of the jargon and had at least a basic understanding of the issues being presented.  However, there were two main points that kept running through my mind:

1. how does this apply to my early childhood setting, and
2. how do I deal with the responsibility I have when issues are arising outside of school hours?

A lot of the issues were based on online communications, cyber-bullying and such.  I honestly don’t think these should be issues I face in the early years (prep/yr 1).  However this doesn’t mean that I think the issues aren’t important to myself or my students.  Rather I wondered how could I effectively help prepare my students for such future issues, and how could I support my school in a whole-school sense of dealing with digital citizenship.  The Australian Curriculum states that my year 1 students should be working towards being able to recognise intellectual property, apply digital information security practices, apply personal security protocols, and identify the impacts of ICT in society (for more details on these expectations click here).  This is a side of ICT lessons and integration I hadn’t given much thought too.  New challenge – how can include this side of ICT in my planning on prac?  What questions can I ask or information can I explicitly teach?  (On prac I wont have much of an opportunity to contribute to the whole school approach but this is definitely something for me to reflect on and discuss with my mentor.)

The other point that stuck with me was the idea of school responsibility when incidents occur outside of school hours.  There was even discussion of legal issues and possibility of parents suing.  This kind of scared me.  I want to embrace technology in my teaching.  I fear that this legal side to the responsibility of the school will put fear into advisory boards/ people high up and technology will be seen as too big a risk.  I have seen too many stories in the news of physical activity being banned for OHS reasons and don’t want to see the same happen to technology (well anymore than it may already be happening).  How do we stop this fear?  How do we, as a school, combat online bullying happening outside of school? (I certainly don’t want my students becoming a tragic story on the news!) I think ICT policies in schools, expectations, and the connect between teachers and students is important to building a positive digital side to the school community.  I loved the idea of school ICT leaders.  I think having positive role models for my younger students is extremely important, and this is still the case in terms of ICT use.  I also agree that all parties (parents, students, teachers, community, etc) need to be involved in policy development.  I think my role is to be a positive model for embracing technology for learning.  Again this is a big issue that I will reflect on more and discuss with my mentor.

Prior to this course I had totally underestimated the importance of digital citizenship, but now I’m thinking it’s right at the top of the ICT priority list.

Turning lemons in to lemonade

So I have still been feeling pretty nervous about prac.  To help I thought I would get organised and start my checklists.  Sara’s blog has given me some good inspiration – both from her post about checklists and her post about what she has already achieved prior to starting prac (posts called “Google suite”  and “Checklist for things to get done before prac begins“).

First priority on my checklist was to get in touch with my school.  I was also hoping to arrange to go in and meet my mentor teacher next week.  Unfortunately the head of the school was unable to fit in my induction meeting during school hours, so I arranged to meet her after school next Thursday, with no guarantee of meeting my mentor teacher.  My nerves began to rise again at not having the opportunity to meet my mentor and the class prior to starting prac.  But as I said in my last post I’m determined to make these challenges into positive experiences – you know the whole making lemonade out of lemons…..

   by  Creature Comforts 

I had my mentor’s email address and decided to email her immediately, letting her know I would be at the school next week (in hopes of her planning to meet me also) and to ask for some information about the class.  I’m so glad I did!  She was so friendly and supportive even within the confines of an email conversation.  She is going to make sure she meets me next week and give me photos of the class with their names.

I am fortunate to be working with a small class size, no learning difficulties to deal with and fairly good ICT at my finger tips.  She also gave me a good run down of the learning the class will be covering over the three weeks, including some specific ICT based opportunities for me to plan/teach.  The science focus even matches the areas I worked on for assignment 2!  I have already been able to look for information and resources.  For example: for science they base their lessons on Primary Connections units.  I was lucky enough for Google to lead me to a PDF copy of the unit – School yard Safari.

So now I’m feeling much better about going into prac. I feel like I’ll be able to be a lot more prepared than I originally thought. I can get to know the Australian Curriculum info for each subject area and have a good look for resources.  I tell you, I let out one huge sigh of relief today 🙂

EDC3100 The next phase – practical experience

This course involves going on practical experience for 3 weeks.  This in itself was a nerve racking thought for me.  You see I haven’t been on prac for 3 years as I took time off to have a baby.  The only thing that was easing my mind was that we were possibly going back to our last site (which I absolutely loved!).

 

Well I have been anxiously waiting to find out where I have been placed, and placements were released today.  I have not been assigned to my old site 😦  I’m feeling a lot of pressure going in to the prac now, as I have to get myself into 3rd year level after so much time off.  The school I have been assigned to I would expect to have extremely high standards.  Whilst this makes me nervous, I am trying to think positively about the challenge I will face.  The one up-side is that being a private school, I’m expecting a lot more ICT available to me than what was at the small rural state school I attended for my last prac.

 

Time to get stuck in and get myself prepared.  And go meet my new mentors at the school.  Wish me luck – as I do to all my fellow EDC3100ers!