Teaching Digital Citizenship Starts with Empathy

In my last post I commented that the challenge of teaching cyber citizen students to be good digital citizens is helping them create space, a moment of reflection, between stimulus and response. Teaching them to be mindful. We need to help our students to approach every digital interaction with the same caution that they might employ when they hear the buzz of a tattoo needle. Building empathy is the key to helping students hit the pause button rather than acting (or posting) on impulse.

I have long been a fan of the This I Believe series. When I was a social studies teacher I used these essays as models of personal essays and helped students deconstruct the stylistic and rhetorical devices employed by the authors of these essays. By carefully selecting models, I was providing my students with essay exemplars, for sure, but also with models of good judgment and lessons about being part of a community. One of my favorite This I Believes is "Be Cool to the Pizza Dude" by Sarah Adams. I can almost recite her essay from memory.

Adams' essay is making an appearance in the digital citizenship lesson we are delivering next week. After we listen to the NPR recording of Adams reading her essay. Students are going to talk about her four principles that underpin her belief in coolness to the pizza dude: "Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in humility and forgiveness.... in empathy.... in honor and it reminds me to honor honest work.... [and] in equality." We are going to ask them to consider not just her principles, but the examples she uses to explain and explore her principles and discuss which ones matter to them.

Next we are going to explain the concept of mindfulness and point out that it is embedded in Adams' discussion of her relationhip with the pizza dude and ask students what strategies they do or can employ when they are interacting with someone (actually or digitally) to be mindful, be "cool". This question is a lead into having them break into small groups and access the community guidelines for Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat and identify where in those companies standards they can find Adams' principles.

Now we can bring it back to our school. Posted in every classroom and elsewhere throughout our building are the schools core values and beliefs.

All members in the... community engage in a collaborative, learning partnership that empowers... graduates to inquire, interpret, and communicate in and across disciplines using a variety of media. We share common beliefs and values that guide all community members in demonstrating civic and personal engagement, both in and out of the classroom. We strive for academic excellence and personal development through a safe and supportive school climate.

Students will compare this statement with the tenets published by the social media companies and, again, Adams. They will collect their thoughts on a set of Google slides which can be printed and posted in the actual classroom and posted as community agreements in the teachers' Google classrooms.

Your CyberSelf: Teaching Digital Citizenship

Lately I have been asked a lot about teaching digital citizenship: how to do it and how to know the students are exhibiting it. My answer is usually that teaching digital citizenship -- a focus of my role as a library media specialist -- is very much like teaching citizenship -- the focus of my previous role as a social studies, in particular American Government, teacher. In my prior role I could teach students the ins and outs of the democratic process, the importance of having a voice in the decision making process, and the history of people fighting for suffrage... but I couldn't make them vote. And now, I can teach my students the importance of being a good citizen in the digital world, but how can I make them be one?

A former colleague and now the head of school at one of my previous schools devoted her doctoral work to studying mindfulness and how increased mindfulness by a learning community improves the school climate and enhances student learning and achievement. @JbhsPin often quotes Viktor E. Frankl's statement: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response." Digital citizenship hinges on creating or expanding that space.

If you are my age you remember the days of walking down the hallway at school and shoving a note through the vents in a friend's locker. Some people shoved unkind notes through locker vents. But, more often than not, I believe, the time it took to walk the halls of the school and find the target locker created that space between the stimulus that prompted the writing of an unkind message and the response of slipping it through the vents of the recipient's locker. I think, if Frankl is to be believed, that hallway walk created the space necessary for better angels to prevail in many cases. What makes today different is the immediacy with which a response to a stimulus can be created and disseminated. A challenge of digital citizenship education is to prompt students to be mindful, to breathe before posting, to reflect on their response before sending their response, to consider whether that response is something they want to be permanently etched into their digital profile.

It was with mindfulness as our guide that we created the first in our three-lesson digital citizenship series. We began with "Permanence." And we will teach it through the metaphor of a tattoo. Students are going to be asked to design a tattoo for themselves, something that, if they could, they would go out this afternoon and get inked. They might start by looking at the work of a famous tattoo artist like Bang Bang. They don't have to share their design; this tattoo could be anywhere on their body so it doesn't have to be something the world will see. Next, they will be asked to design a new tattoo, one that will be visible every day. And they will be asked to compare the two designs and reflect on their similarities and differences. We will culminate with a discussion of tattoo removal... what happens if ten years from now you don't want that tattoo anymore? What can you do? Of course, it is possible to remove a tattoo, but that process is painful and leaves scars. Thus, the metaphor for the students' digital presence comes full circle: always post assuming the world will see what you say; know that you may take down a post that is hurtful, but the damage can not be undone; think before you post of the ramifications of what you say; and when you post, do so with the intention of productively contributing to a dialogue.

Now, if time allowed, I would love to make a video of my new colleagues who have tattoos talking about what they have, when they got inked, why they chose their design, and whether they ever have regretted it. Personally I have four tattoos. My daughter calls them watermarks. I got each at a significant time in my life and each marks a milestone in my life and growth. I think I can say the same about my digital tattoos. Maybe it is because I remember the days of dropping notes instead of sending snapchats. I consciously remove my hands from a device when I begin to feel heated about something. The challenge of teaching cyber citizen students to be good digital citizens is creating that space, that moment of reflection. We need to teach them to approach every digital interaction with the same caution that they might employ when they hear the buzz of the tattoo needle.

More on our other lessons, Privacy and Productivity, in future posts.

Tomorrow starts a new year!

I have moved to a new district and tomorrow is the start of the new school year. I have worked quite a bit this summer in preparation for our ready access learning initiative. The elementary and middle schools are rolling out a 1:1 Chromebook program and the high school is going BYOD. Much of our work this summer has focused on creating digital citizenship bootcamps for all of the students, designing a new web presence for the school district, curating and piloting a digital tool set applicable at each of the grade levels, as well as planning professional development for the faculty.

And throughout this process, I have been thinking in infographics. Here are a couple I have made for my new role in my new school.

This is to introduce our learning commons to the community:

Embedded in this infographic are two more I have made. One is about our research model; the other will hang in our innovation space. It is about the design cycle.

I have ordered a poster version of the first infographic. If it comes out well, we are thinking of ordering one for each classroom... a little reminder to teachers and students of all the ways the learning commons can enhance their inquiry!

Happy new year, everyone!

Creating a Vision to Guide 21st Century Teaching and Learning

Without a definitive vision statement and mission schools lack a guide for decision making. How do we know if what we are doing is working if we don't first have a statement of purpose against which to measure the outcome of our efforts? The library is a vital component to the development of a school’s vision because the library faculty are:

• Co-teachers with the whole faculty
• Curriculum development partners
• Professional development facilitators
• Resource curators
• Information literacy instructors

As more and more schools invest in and adopt 1:1 or BYOD initiatives, a rationale for those programs -- something more than “so we can teach with technology” -- is essential to progressive pedagogy and transformative teaching and learning. Of her own epiphany regarding the meaningful, purposeful integration of technology into learning opportunities, Jennie Magiera said, “I would have to be willing to depart from what I had always done or always taught. I needed to create a blueprint for a fresh classroom design with the power of my new tools in mind. By setting aside my preconceived notions of how my classroom ‘should’ look, sound, and feel, I was able to transform my practice from the ground up.” There are educators like Magiera reinventing themselves as part of maintaining the relevance of their pedagogy in a dynamic technological world. But this world requires whole schools, whole systems, to undertake this renaissance not as random individuals but as systems. Most teachers can explain their rationale for why they do what they do. Systems need a purpose (which is much more than a rationale), and educators need support and continual learning opportunities to evolve in pursuit of that purpose.

When the leaders of a technology implementation initiative are asked to evaluate the effectiveness of a new device roll-out, what should be the instrument of measure? Well, I think, the vision statement. The investment of time, finances, and human power in the tech initiative should have been made as a step toward fulfilling the mission, achieving the vision. So the vision is the measure of how well the initiative is going.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but don't save the examination for the deathbed. We want students to be reflective learners and we, too, must be reflective practitioners. And schools and districts must be reflective planners. Act with purpose: common, examined purpose in order to transform classrooms into the constantly evolving learning spaces 21st Century students (and teachers) need.

Magiera, Jennie. Courageous Edventures: Navigating Obstacles to Discover Classroom Innovation. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin, 2016.

On Every Student Having a Device in Class

To teachers who wants students to put their computers away:

Insisting that students learn new information in the way that you do and in the way that you did when you were in school is doing both them and you a disservice… It does students a disservice because you are assuming that they learn as you do. They do not. Their brains are wired differently than yours. Forcing them to learn like you do results in their disinterest and cognitive disengagement. Those two factors ultimately lead to their behavioral disengagement. Consider that students might not be as distracted by technology as they are by its absence.

Teaching students as you were taught also does you a disservice because you are frustrated when you ask your students a question, and they can’t answer it. And you say to yourself (and to them) but I taught you this. You read about it in your textbook. You took a quiz on it. How do you not know it?  The answer: because you taught the way you think you learn. And that is not the way a digital brain learns. Your brain likely won’t rewire, but you need to embrace their wiring and deliver instruction that meets their brains where they are. It is time to stop resisting instructing digitial students in the digital age by saying “this is not how the world works.” because it is how the world works. Increasingly so. Consider these factors:

• At Yale Medical Group all patients take a wellness and mindfulness survey upon checking in for an appointment. Patients are handed a tablet and asked to complete the survey. The medical team uses that data to gauge trends in patient wellness. Yale is not limiting screen time. Not only do their patients need facility with the device and the survey tool, the employees need to know who access,manipulate, and interpret the information generated by the patients.
• SSI, a global market research company, conducts company wide meetings by asking all employees, no matter where they are in the world, to log into an interactive digital presentation. It is the corporate version of an in-class nearpod presentation. The CEO does not worry that some employees might wrestle with ADD and struggle to attend. The expectation is that employees attend: digitally and cognitively.
• Print media is dying having been disrupted by digital media. There are pros and cons to this change. Both are important to education. First, the pro: those media outlets that offered quality journalism when print proliferated have harnessed digital tools to create phenomenal interactive displays of data and simulations of current events. They are tremendous tools for understanding the world, teaching resources and models for students of how to create their own content. And the con: poor quality journalism has now abounded in the digital ecosphere. Which is why it is crucial that students, with our coaching, navigate those murky waters in order to decipher reliable from unreliable, fact from opinion, accurate from misleading.

We need to stop teaching students to be passive recipients of information. That is how the world used to work. That is now how the world works anymore. What we teach doesn’t have to change; how we teach it does.

Library Literacy Badges

A few things to know about our library:

• We have TechXperts, students who provide tech support for staff and students.
• We are working on a program for "Maker Majors" in our makerspace.
• We also have changed to NoodleTools this year.

Many of our conversations during the day are dominated by these three initiatives. How to grow the programs and how to wean 1300 students and 130 teachers off EasyBib and teach them to use (and appreciate?) a new system. As we, Michelle and I, continue to curate tutorial resources and load them to the help section of our library website, Michelle suggested badges. And that got me thinking... There are so many domains of information literacy: we can set up a hierarchy of badges for each domain and align them with our curriculum. Off the top of my head I came up with:

• Google Power Users
• Citation Czars
• Database Doyens
• Reading Prodigies
• Maker Majors
• TechXperts

Each one can have strands for inquiry, communication, collaboration, innovation, critical thinking, creativity, literature appreciation, computational thinking, and digital citizenship. Needless to say, these elements of information literacy are key components in our schools 21st Century Learning Expectations:

• Analytical and Creative Problem Solving
• Reflective learning
• Effective Communication
• Healthy Life Choices
• Responsible, Productive Work and Collaboration
• Respect
• Community Contribution

Certainly as we continue to co-teach with teachers in the various disciplines the foundational skills for each badge category are being established. As students move through four years of high school they will have the experiences and practice necessary to demonstrate mastery in all of these areas before they graduate. That, after all, is the point of our curriculum and our outreach into as many classes as possible. But the badging system would be a new way to honor the growth, the grit, and the necessity of developing information literacy skills.