Digital Resources

When it comes to technology use at school, the “Acceptable Use Policy” is something that you probably don’t even think about except at the beginning of the school year when it is required for you and your child to sign. With luck, that is the last you ever see of it, unless your child is cited for a violation of the policy. To avoid this from happening, it is important your child clearly understands the expectations. While schools and administrators need to clearly communicate technology policies with students and parents, an article in the District Administration magazine online points out that acceptable use policies often can come across as intimidating instead of helpful. The author recommends that schools need to focus the policies on opportunity rather than just punishment, and that parents need to read these policies and work with schools to make sure everyone is on the same page in helping students safely learn how to navigate the online world.

YouTube has announced criteria for how it will allocate $100 million to producers of children's content, an initiative it announced in September. The programming targeted to ages 3-8 is meant to “drive outcomes associated with the following character strengths: courage, compassion, communication, gratitude, curiosity, humility, teamwork, integrity, perseverance, self-control, empathy and creativity”, and can be live-action or animated. The announcement was made following YouTube getting slapped with a record US$170-million settlement from the US Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General for allegedly collecting personal information from children without parental consent.

The current media and technology landscape means kids are no longer confined to just learning in the classroom. Sure, kids have always been able to learn outside the classroom via books and other life experiences, but today’s technology allows children to learn in a multitude of new ways. Looking at that change, Project Tomorrow runs a survey called Speak Up, polling hundreds of thousands of sixth graders and adults about learning trends, and makes the local data available to individual districts. Here are a few takeaways:

• For students today, there is very little distinction between school learning versus what they do on their own at home or on their digital device(s). They feel the learning experience is happening all the time. It is also found they have a healthy balance of using print materials versus first-person materials, and having opportunities to engage with people as well as with digital tools. The media is often quick to say kids today just want to put their nose in their phone and don’t want to interact with people, but the survey found that is more of a symptom seen in Millennials rather than in this current generation. 
• Students want to co-learn with their teachers and parents. Because they are so used to looking up information online, they are not looking to the teacher or a parent to be an expert in everything. It is common practice to go home and look up information they received at school – partly for accuracy and partly to learn more about a topic. Parents should understand that and not be offended by kids looking for verification of what they say.
• Students today are also good at authenticating resources. Surveyors were told by students that kids never use a dot com, they don't trust dot coms; that dot orgs are okay; a dot edu is the best; and you shouldn't really even trust the dot govs.

As National Public Radio (NPR) has announced a second year of its Student Podcast Challenge, grand-prize winners of the first contest reflected in a recent NPR article on how they were affected by the process of creating their winning podcasts. High-school winners in Tennessee say working on their podcast gave them confidence and helped them discover previously unknown passions. The NPR Student Podcast Challenge is open to students in two categories: grades five through eight and grades nine through 12. The official rules, entry guidelines, training tips and resources for teachers and students can be found on the contest's homepage. The site also has lots of support and advice for teachers and students, starting with this video about making good sound from Don Gonyea, a veteran NPR correspondent who has filed stories from all over the world.

Did you go to class today? How about the library? Some colleges are finding this information about their students by adding a mobile app and short-range phone sensors to track students around campus. Using networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access points, the app can track attendance and even calculate "risk scores" for academic success based on how frequently students visit the library. Critics say this kind of intrusion into students’ lives represents a new low in invading student privacy on a massive scale, but this style of surveillance has become just another fact of life for many Americans. Many apps and programs involve cameras, sensors or microphones that measure people’s activity and whereabouts with striking precision. This tracking of everyday living allows trends to be analyzed for any number of purposes.

Google for Education has introduced a feature called Originality Reports that allows teachers and students to scan their work for plagiarism. As the feature scans work for commonalities among billions of webpages and millions of books, it highlights text that may need additional sourcing.

Research remains inconclusive on whether all screen time - and in all quantities - is harmful to children. Nick Allen, director of the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon, points out that digital technology actually has "significant benefits, " such as connecting people of like interests and outlooks.

For parents struggling with how much screen time is OK for their children, try asking your kids: ‘What are you doing on there? What makes you feel good? What makes you feel bad?’ ” says Michaeline Jensen, of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She was an author of a study in August that showed on days when teenagers use more technology, they were no more likely to report problems like depressive symptoms or inattention than on days when they used less. The study concludes, “Findings from this EMA study do not support the narrative that young adolescents’ digital technology usage is associated with elevated mental-health symptoms.”

Does your child have a geography or history project involving maps? With Google Earth’s new tools, users can affix place markers, lines and shapes over a map template, and then attach custom text, images and videos to those locations. For school projects, the tools can also organize multiple maps or Google Earth camera shots into a narrative that can be shared and presented in class. Social studies teacher Josh Williams, who writes about using the tools with students on a migration project, says the tools help engage students in active learning rather than being passive in the classroom.

Oregon high-school social studies teacher Patrick Griffin uses Western States Center's ‘Confronting White Nationalism in Schools’, an online tool kit to help counter white nationalism, offensive stereotypes and racist messages from hate groups. In an interview transcript from NPR, Lindsay Schubiner, one of the kit's co-authors, says the need for this type of material is growing, as neo-Nazi websites are targeting children as young as 11. The toolkit helps teachers discuss different scenarios and provide greater context, while helping students feel safe to engage in these conversations.

A middle-school physical education teacher in Illinois has adopted Otus, a data management and communication platform, to transform his physical education teaching and learning. Jon Szychlinski says students record their peers performing activities, just like professional athletes, and those recordings are uploaded to the platform. Students can then study their footage to improve their performance. The data tracking also has another practical side. It has eliminated dead time in Szychlinski’s small gym, where there’s not enough space for every student to participate at the same time. Now, even when kids are waiting to play, they can reflect on how to improve their form, their performance and ultimately, their overall health.