Devices
This week we met Gerhard who talked to us about cyber safety. This was the session of tying together of the kaupapa.
Manaiakalani have a strong drive to use positive language. For example, we don't talk about cyber bullying, we would use the words cyber smart. This is a proactive measure that Manaiakalani use. In the ideal world, we need to use it across the school so that everyone is on the same page.
Why is it important to be cyber smart?
We have a responsibility to equip our kids with the skills to be cybersmart. We want our learners to be at home in a digital world and of course it is for their safety.
The idea is to Empower student voice through digital citizenship. The Cybersmart curriculum is broken into 10 parts. Smart learners, Smart Footprint, Smart Relationships, Smart Media, Smart Surfing, Smart legal, Smart Money, Smart Values, Smart Teachers and Smart Parents
Smart Learning Needs to be a whole school focus.
We introduce (or revisit) the 3 categories most fundamental to daily digital lives EVERY year:
Term 1- Learners ( Learn)
Term 2 Footprint (create)
Term 3- Relationships ( Share)
Being cybersmart empowers learners to connect when their learning is visible and ubiquitous.
Empowering “Confident,connected,actively involved,lifelong learners.”
Ubiquitous When earning is accessible ( A4) - anytime,anywhere, any pace, anyone. Being cybersmart empowers our learners to harness technology in smart and clever ways.
Connected- empowering young people to engage in online behaviour and thinking that elevates positive actions.
Visible- whenever and wherever we share on line its personal.
The other important aspect is the whanau aspect which empowers parents by partnering with them to connect with their child’s learning. We need to engage families and in so doing, we are empowering them.
Part of being cybersmart is being careful and mindful when commenting on people's Blogs. Ensure the comments are Positive ( compliment author), Helpful (add more info ask a question) and finally Thoughtful - does the blog remind me of something similar? How did I connect to it?
Cybersmart learning at its best is when it is embedded into an existing educational programme. Young people learn that every time they connect, collaborate and share online, it combines to create their digital footprint. We need it to make them and their families feel proud.
Some of the other things we covered were Hapara Teacher Dashboard. This is a fairly new concept to me as currently we are not using it in the Hub. I found it interesting how we can track our children's learning etc. It was interesting discussing some of the things that we should be mindful of when using this tool. One of those things is ensuring you have the time set to school hours so that you are not able to monitor the children while they are at home.
IPad's- We looked at Explain Everything which was good to see a little deeper in to what the capabilities are for this app. It is amazing and very child friendly.
Chromebooks- We used a chromebook which was good because it allowed us to see what it is like for the children who are working on these all day. I have had some time recently using a chromebook as my Mac was getting fixed. I think the kids are pretty lucky to have such a great device to work with. We did some challenges that were helpful and provided us with lots of shortcuts and tricks.
Screencastify- This was a great refresher from when I did Mindlab. Below is a screencastify I made today.