This is the second part in a three part post about my ACEC 2010 presentation. Part 1 looked at our work with staff. This section will look at the key elements of what we want to achieve with our students. Two broad categories we will be looking at here are Digital Citizenship and Digital Literacy.
These are two areas that we use to help break down what it is we want to achieve with our entire ICT program. The digital citizenship links closely to our school mission statement. Here I will share the goal for our students to understand the power of social networks as learning networks as well as some of the lessons we have learnt along the way. This links closely to our filtering policy and how we aim to educate our students rather than blocking them. This is a massive area of school culture that we are still working through and will probably continue to work though for a long time. At the core of this; is to make sure that we have an educational approach to filtering and access. We want our students to learn to make good decisions about their online interactions. Here I will share an overview of our students access policies and our thinking behind filtering and access. I will also be demonstrating an example of the issues we have faced with students doing the wrong thing online and how we handled these situations. These issues do arise from time to time as we do allow access to social networking, youtube, and other sites traditionally blocked by schools.
Digital Literacy is the area we see linking our curriculum and how we give our students 21st century skills. Here I will look at three key skills I have used in my own classroom and have been working with our staff to develop further. I want my students to be able to create, collaborate and critique. These are skills we see as key to our students succeeding in the 21st century. The idea that they become creators of information, they have the ability to collaborate in a variety of ways and the ability to critique and discern information.
This section will also focus on how we have included our students in the whole process of preparing for this program. Students involved in committees, students training teachers and creating learning resource for teachers. We do not see our students as the “Digital Natives” and us the “Digital Immigrants.” Our students are simply more experienced with digital technologies than some of our teachers. Therefore, they are of value to the whole process. I will also share some examples of how our students are taking the role of teacher.