ETL523 Activity #1 Sharing digital citizenship and DLE (Digital Learning Environment) ideas

This post is in answer to questions asked as part of ETL523, Module 1. 

1. What is your definition of digital citizenship? 

If you are a citizen, then you are a member of a community. In this case, it means a member of a world wide digital community and as such there are guidelines for your behaviour as part of that group. Digital citizenship means that a person behaves in a responsible, safe and ethical manner in the digital realm (Greenhow, 2010, para 3).

2. What is your stance on digital citizenship?

I think that one's view of digital citizenship has a range of different elements and that these elements are affected by cultural and social factors. What I mean by this is often what is considered responsible and safe in one context may not be accepted as such in another context. For example, during the webinar in which Julie Lindsay spoke, she talked to us about a group of Muslim students who had to be very careful how they interacted digitally as compared with students here. Another example, is the age of the student. That is, what is appropriate behaviour for a child over 13, is not considered safe for one under 13 years of age.

3. What should an informed, publicly engaged digital citizen look like?
If they are an informed, publicly engaged digital citizen then they should:

•  have a PLN that is constantly developing
•  be willing to experiment with different digital tools
•  be using tools  at home that  should be similar to the ones they use at work/school
•  be aware of maintaining a positive digital footprint
•  be curating information and contributing to the compilations and blogs of  others.

4. What direction are you (or your school) taking?

My school and I, I hope, are starting to be in sync. Our principal is very innovative and after the teachers and executive have attended the Future Schools Conference I think they are now starting to understand what I have been saying for a while about using the library and the digital tools in the school differently. 

I am hoping to survey the students and the teachers to find our what sort of digital citizens they really are and what I can do to assist them. 

I would like to see the  school reach out to each other and to the wider community by collaborating. There is a e-backpack developed by the department and each child has access to this. I will be experimenting with this and posting about this in the future.

Greenhow, C. (2010). New concept of citizenship for the digital age. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37(6), 24-25.

21st Century School Librarian

21st Century School Librarian
After reading this post it makes me realise what a huge couple of years we have in front of us as information professionals. I am submitting a budget at school which will appeal to the principal to give the library budget more money to buy more books in the areas of the cross curriculum priorities such as Asian and sustainability. We already  have a more than adequate number of books regarding aborigines.
This will be my first budget submission so I have drawn on the help of the members of the TL listserv. As always, they have been very generous with their assistance and advice, volunteering their own budget submissions to help me.

Reflection ETL 504 Teacher as Leader

For me the most useful part of this course was the Vision Statement. It had me looking ( as I continue to) at my library at school and thinking about what I could do with it. I have already implemented some of the changes, such as the cushions and the front facing books. Wow - what a difference that makes! So many of the books that are borrowed are the ones I have displayed on the shelves! So simple yet so effective.

EBSCOhost: The State and Futures of Educational Technologies

EBSCOhost: The State and Futures of Educational Technologies
This article has blown my mind about what being a 21st century TL can mean. Technology is changing how we teach, what we teach and where we teach. I will be interested how the DEC keeps up with safe cloud computing. How do we make it accessible to all? Maybe in the future the TL will be able to move around the school and the library will come with her in her pocket? Amazing and exciting!

Trash and Treasure Note Taking

This video provides an excellent description of how to use " Trash and Treasure Notetaking". It takes the viewer from the beginning when one has to locate the keywords in the question to how to use those keywords to find relevant information.

Opportunity for change

We have just written a new mission statement at my school, which emphasizes 21 century learning. After reading about strategic change, particularly Gibb's article (Gibbs, R. (2003) Reframing the role of the teacher-librarian: The case for collaboration and flexibility Scan 22(3) 4), I felt empowered by the idea of a flexible timetable. I have read about it before but never really grasped the idea properly. Now that we have this new mission statement I believe that it gives me an opportunity to start to discuss this with our new principal who should be starting by next term. The change in leadership I am hoping will give me a chance to change too.
I was thinking in preparation for their arrival I would survey the school community about their opinion, positive and negative, regarding the library program. This, I am hoping, would provide me with data to support the changes I would like to make.
(Forum entry - ETL 504 201230, Module 4 Innovation and Change, 17/04/12)

Graphic Organisers

This term I have been using venn diagrams with Stage 2 to compare and contrast their work on different religions. It has been amazing to see the depth of thinking that a simple graphic organiser can bring about. Who would of thought that the Dreamtime and Hinduism had so much in common!

One area that the children had difficulty with was understanding what the beliefs of the various religions meant. I suppose I will should have worked more closely with them on that.

I have also been teaching them about notetaking. We will delve into that more next term. They are starting to understand what I am talking about. I will give them some more exercises from The Thoughtful Researcher by Virginia Rankin. I used her approach during Term 1, 2012 and I found that it was easy to follow and that most of the children were making adequate notes by the end of the term. The teachers too have asked that we learn about notetaking next term again. I will give them some other exercises with different material. As they become more efficient we can start to learn about referencing and getting info from more than one source.

Thanks to Jame's teaching I am starting to really understand the role of a TL.