Internet Safety & Cyberbullying

This past June I had the opportunity to do a presentation on Internet Safety for a group of parents at a PTA-Family Involvement Network Conference in Riverside, CA. I took the approach of sharing things that a parent (rather than a teacher) could do to keep their child safe on the Internet.

After doing some research that included websites by Common Sense Media and the FBI, I was able to create some slides with pertinent information to share with the parents at this conference. Every parent wants their children to be safe and responsible while they are online. In general, the best first step is to have a conversation with you child to help them understand the seriousness of Internet safety, and to arm them with some strategies for dealing with potential issues. Here are a few things that parents can share with their children:

• Stress the importance of following established family rules about when and where to use the Internet. They should only be online when adults are around to provide supervision. They should also be required to share any account passwords with their parents.
• Remind them to be polite and respectful as they deal with others in online environments. They do not want to accidentally solicit any problems through their own behavior. 
• Teach them how to understand the rules of particular websites they want to use. They should know what is not appropriate and how to report the inappropriate behaviors of others. 
• Review the red flag of being asked for personal information - particularly names, addresses, phone numbers, age, email addresses, and even school names. Children should know that they can be found by strangers just by giving their name and the name of their school.
• Teach children never to send pictures of themselves or anyone else in their family to someone they have never met.
• Finally, it is not always easy to define "inappropriate" behavior. Teach your children with words that they will immediately understand. They should immediately tell a trusted adult if anything "mean" or "creepy" happens while they are online.

I also created an infographic about Cyberbullying. The parents seemed to appreciate the infographic, so I am including it here: Standing Up to Cyberbullying.

Created with easel.ly

Video in the Classroom

References

Collett, Jessica L. and Kathleen M. O’Neill. 2006. “Sometimes less is more effective: Applying educational research to the use of popular video in the sociology classroom.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, Canada.

Fadel, C., & Lemke, C. (2006). Technology in schools: What the research says: A report from the Metiri Group, commissioned by Cisco Systems. Retrieved from http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/TechnologyinSchoolsReport.pdf

NTTI. (2004). Tips for Using Instructional Video and Public Television Programming in the Classroom.

http://www.brptv.com/html/edserv/ntti/nttipdf/02media.pdf

Basic Suite of Software

According to Roblyer (2016), the "basic suite" of software tools includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation application. When I started teaching, in 1985, my school had one computer. That computer sat on the secretary's desk for the sole purpose of typing  letters for the principal. It was 1992 before I had a computer in my classroom with the Microsoft Office suite of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For the next fifteen years, Microsoft Office dominated my use of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations in my work and for my personal use.

That dominance was disrupted in 2007 when Google Apps were made available. Google Apps were made available for free, and that was hard to understand after having to pay so much for the Office products over the years. However, more than the $0 price tag, it was the ease of collaboration that made the Google tools so attractive for the classroom. Having students be able to collaborate in real time on a spreadsheet, or a word processing document, or on the slides of a presentation really changed the way a teacher could use this "basic suite" in the classroom.

Image licensed by Presenter Media

Writers write. We know that the more often students write, the better they become at writing. Among the advantages to using a word processing application is that students write more often, they will edit and revise more often, and they can more easily share what they have written with authentic audiences.

For me, the biggest advantage of spreadsheets is that they allow students to manipulate data. For example, a teacher could tell students to look at a chart of data about the solar system - size, distance from the sun, rotation, revolution, etc. Or that teacher could have students go online to research each of those data points and put them into a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is compiled, the students could then sort by each of the fields. Doing this will foster making connections that they might otherwise have missed by just reading a chart.

The power of presentation slides comes from learning to use the combination of text and graphics, along with your voice, to convey meaning beyond what could just be written. When students start using presentation applications as more than just a projection of their written report, they will be communicating in ways that could not be done without the presentation application.

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching (7th Ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Relative Advantage of Instructional Software

The purpose of this post is to conduct a brief overview of the five main categories of instructional software and to discuss the relative advantage of using instructional software. According to Roblyer (2016), the five main categories of instructional software include: drill and practice, tutorial, simulations, instructional games, and problem solving. In my opinion, there is a lot of overlap between these categories. However, there is also some generally agreed upon differentiation between them.

Drill & Practice:
The drill and practice category typically includes software that allows students to practice concepts learned in class. A teacher can use this type of software as a pre-assessment, or as practice and reinforcement, or as a required or choice activity. One example that I had a very positive experience with is Quizlet. My son used that program to create flashcards and track his progress as he studied for exams at his trade school. A very different example of this category is WolframAlpha. This website allows students to input math equations and then see the answer.

Tutorials:
The tutorial category includes software and websites that allow students to take control of the time, place, and pace of their learning. Typically, tutorials are built with videos or animations that explain certain concepts and how to operationalize them. The Khan Academy may be the best know math tutorial site on earth. Although it started out as a collection of math help videos. This tutorial site now teachers math, science, computer programming, history, art, and economics. A much different type of tutorial site is Gooru Learning. Gooru allows teachers to curate collections of online resources targeting a particular concept. Then students can work through the collections at their own pace. It is also worth noting that, while YouTube is not truly a tutorial site, it does contain the largest collection of tutorial videos on the Internet.

Simulations:
Simulations differ from the previous categories in that they introduce the idea of choice into the learning experience. Typically, simulations allow students to make choices of what problems to solve or tasks to complete. A great example of a math-related simulation site is Geogebra. This site allows students to create representations of equations and other mathematical concepts while giving students the opportunity to experience and manipulate math in ways that they could not otherwise do. Desmos is another math exploration/simulation site. Desmos allows students to do powerful data analysis and modeling in a simulations platform.

Instructional Games:
I would consider many of the instructional software and websites that fall into the other four categories as frequently involving games or some level of gamification. That makes this particular category very broad. That said, I know of many elementary schools in Riverside County that use BrainGenie and/or Funbrain for math games. Students are engaged by the games, even if most games lean more toward drill and practice than toward problem solving.

Problem-Solving:
The problem-solving category of instructional software is the most intriguing to me. Good problem-solving software includes opportunities for students to practice a variety of skills such as: metacognition, observing, recalling, sequencing, analyzing, organizing, inferring, predicting, making analogies, and formulating ideas (Roblyer, 2016). One of the districts I work with has made a big investment in working with Dreambox. This problem-solving game environment focuses on elementary and middle school math. The teachers really like it because it allows for individualization and it has pretty powerful data analytics. Algodoo is one that I have not seen in use, but have heard many good things about. The non-profit organization, Common Sense Media, rates Algodoo very high in quality and in learning potential.

Relative Advantages:
The relative advantages of using instructional software are many. However, they depend on the category of software (Roblyer, 2016). For example, drill and practice software typically have the advantages of providing immediate feedback, increasing motivation, and saving teacher time. Tutorial software is recognized for having the important advantage of being a self-paced learning experience. Simulation software includes the advantages of compressing time, slowing processes, increasing engagement, saving funds, repeating with variations, and observing complex processes. Instructional games have the advantages of increasing engagement, and working on some non-cognitive skills. Finally, problem-solving software provides the advantages of visualizing mathematical processes, increasing interest and motivation, and making connections to real life situations.

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching (7th Ed.). Allyn & Bacon.