Image courtesy of: http://www.core-ed.org/sites/core-ed.org/files/Real-world-digital-world.jpg
In my other course, LLED 462 School Library Resource Centre Programs, we are required to choose an essential question as cornerstone for all of our assignments. My question is "How can we ensure our students are 21st century learners?" In the first assignment for this course, the Reading Review, I chose a similar lens to center my research on, which was digital citizenship and media/information literacy. As I continued in both courses along these similar pathways, I was wondering how I could incoporate this focus into my Final Vision project. Since much of my coursework in both classes has been about collecting and curating for my teacher-librarian toolkit, whether it's an online educational tool or an article about advocacy for the library, I started to think that it would be really handy to have a space for everything about teaching digital citizenship all in one place that others can access as well. There is a TON of stuff out there, but how on earth would you go about creating an actual unit with it? What stuff do you focus on? And for which grade level? And will this actually work with Ms./Mr. __________'s class? I know that I share these questions with other colleagues in my district (and some in this course!) It can be overwhelming to say the least, as these topics are so important to teach our students.
Image courtesy of: http://jacquimurray.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/dig-cit-topics.jpg
I've been using Delicious a lot to keep track of my links (and it's been great to have different filters), but I don't find all that conducive to collaborating. (Maybe I'm missing something!) In LLED 462, I was introduced to Symbaloo which is basically a more visual version of Delicious and Diigo- as a visual person (and avid Apple product user :P), I liked the idea of arranging different types of links by category (called webmixes) on different tabs. While you can share your webmixes with others quite easily on Symbaloo, I still wasn't sure if this was the best way to do it.
In this initial stage, I'm leaning toward creating a Wiki (I feel like it's an oldie but a goodie in terms of platforms) with a collection of resources for teaching digital citizenship, perhaps organized by grade level and topic. I also want to make the Wiki shareable so that other TLs can contribute their resources, as well as share their experiences- I think that this is the key for me here, in that there seems to be a myriad of stuff out there, but does it actually fly in the real world? As TLs I feel like we are naturally flexible and often have to adapt something to suit a class/student/teacher/school to make it work. In that sense, I'm wondering if a different platform would work better, such as Blogger, where commenting is so easy to do. I've used Wikispaces before, and there are also a few wikis in our district created by and for TLs in elementary and secondary. However, I am hoping to create something specifically for digital citizenship as, unlike teaching Dewey decimal system or how to use the library catalogue, this subject changes all the time and there seems to be always something new to check out. In that sense, I hope to make this more of a living document that can be added to and modified as trends come and go... and hopefully one that can reflect the new curriculum.
In case anyone is interested, here are the links to the two wikis mentioned above.
Tech4TLs Wiki (Secondary)
T-LShare Wiki (Elementary)
To be continued!
A great first brainstorm around your potential vision. I think this topic and this goal are perfect for this final assignment and you discussion around the appropriate format and tool is very useful to flesh out. I agree that it is important to build in some inter-activity and community building as a function of this digital space and this tips the discussion more into the blog-like territory, although the wiki does also provide an opportunity for community collaboration. Thinking about your potential audience and group should provide some insight into this decision. What format/tool would they be more likely to feel comfortable with and contribute too? I look forward in following along the evolution of your final vision!
ReplyDeleteI have been wondering about your other blog posts regarding digital citizenship - have those been for your other course? I've read some of those posts as well and have really gotten a lot out them! :)
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking similarly about using a visual tool of some sort to organize resources into categories. I was thinking about developing a Pinterest account that organizes my resources into a visual that would then connect the person to a blog post link where I would expand on the resource or something like that. Your idea for using Symbaloo sounds very similar.
Great topic - awesome guiding question. Makes me wish I'd thought of it! ;)
I'm SO happy you're doing a digital citizenship, I think this is so useful and very necessary for our position as TLs. The questions you're asking yourself are the same questions I think all of us ask ourselves or have asked ourselves about this same topic -- I can't wait to see how to put this all together into your final project, for sure I know it'll be useful and awesome.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to viewing your final project! Digital citizenship is a topic that not only TLs are investigating, but also classroom teachers. It is exciting that you're going to put all resources together in one shared location, so that people could get access to the resources, moreover, they could share their resources with others.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have quite a number of resources that I have accumulated throughout my study towards the TL diploma. They're scattered all around, online or in my laptop. Your idea of creating a wiki is terrific! I could learn from your final project, and hopefully I could organize and share my resources the way that you have modelled. Thank you.