The workshops this past week have been an enlightening experience for me.  We had daily workshops for parents on using Moodle, Books for Teens and Tweens, Gaming, Online Homework Help, and Cyber bullying.  What a surprise to see how much our parents do not know!   The new digital age has added a new dimension to “learning.”  Today, we not only have to “teach” our students, but teach our parents and re-educate our whole community on the new digital learning tools and tricks.  One of my concerns is that, educators and parents, alike, tend to ignore the explosive use of technology in hopes that we can just move on “uninformed.”  The Internet is not going away, and the sooner we embrace this new learning tool, the quicker we will close the gap between the “digital natives and the digital immigrants.” (Mark Pretsky)  In an effort to educate our community, we will be planning another series of parent/teacher workshops that address Facebook, More Moodle, Social Networking, Internet Safety, Twitter, Youtube, and web based library resources.  My work for the holidays will be to line up this event.  Any thoughts, suggestions, or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

This post is a follow up to our faculty inservice meeting on Copyright – Fair Use.  Go to this site, Copyright for Educators, to learn more about the Copyright law and specific information relating to use of various materials.

• Talk to your students about Copyright – do this at the beginning of the year.
• Talk to your students about citing sources.
• Set an example, model …

Use this video:

Where are we going with technology? What are these new Web 2.0 resources? How do we handle the safety issues? When do we start integrating social networking with curriculum? Charting new territory is always an adventure to be approached with careful planning.  I have a tendency to jump in head first, I love an adventure and I hate instruction books.  However, in thinking about my approach to Web 2.0 teacher training and curriculum integration, there are some issues to be resolved. What do we hope to accomplish by incorporating Web 2.0 resources into our program, what are the pluses and the minuses, how do we ensure student safety, when can we provide our teachers with the training, and how can we integrate Web 2.0 as meaningful and productive resources for learning?  I’ve just learned about the Broadband Data Improvement Act, passed in October 2008, which states that any school receiving e-rate discounts are “required to educate their students about appropriate online behaviors with social networking and chat rooms.”  Wow! I thought those were totally off limits to our students- apparently not anymore!  Now, we are “required” to address and provide proper guidance for using these Web 2.0 resources.  So much to think about!  I often feel like the ethics committee, the technology instructor, the cheerleader, the trouble shooter, the coaxer, the instigator, the dare devil – I want to see my teachers start taking the lead in using some of this new technology. But, we do need a plan!

The following Voice Thread was created by a school district in NC to stimulate thought and direction as they began to establish their Vision for the future of technology. I found many of the quotes and comments very interesting and helpful.