Author: fordj

Digital citizenship is the extension of traditional citizenship into the use of technology and digital platforms. This includes knowledge and skills in many specific areas that can be summarized as safety, property, etiquette, and perceived personality. This requires students to have a wide variety of skills and knowledge including security/privacy, rights and responsibilities, law, health and welfare, technological fluency, social skills, commerce, and equitable access (Brace, 2020). Digital citizenship is a very complicated issue as it ties together so many different life skills and values, but it can be summarized as leading a healthy and constructive digital life.

Digital citizenship is important to learn and practice as increasing portions of our lives are spent online, particularly with the global pandemic that requires us to socially interact online rather than in person. Learning digital citizenship is also an important part of learning general citizenship as it is an extension of the same concept, if one can learn to interact with others in person then it is a natural progression to then learn how to interact with others through digital media. Historically one of the facets of digital citizenship that has been most poorly learned is the reality that, just as in face to face interactions, there is always someone on the receiving end of all comments. In person this is easy to observe as the reaction of the recipient is immediately observed, however in an online setting the audience is much larger and often not considered.

For this particular issue Spiegler (2015) provides five ways for educators to address what she calls “cyberhate”. When encountered do not support or reinforce the hate, report it, support the targets, speak out against it, and engage in activism. One of the most effective ways of teaching digital citizenship is to put students in active decision-making scenarios in a formative assessment setting to give context to issues and to give practice in dealing with contentious situations. A digital game-based learning environment was developed to explore this possibility (Tapinagkae Et. Al, 2020). It was used to effectively teach digital citizenship behaviours and promoted their motivations and online emotional perceptions. I believe it is important to continue to implement and explore possible ways to instill values of digital citizenship in students as it is becoming increasingly important to leading a healthy life.

 

Brace, A. (2020, March 23). The Podcast Playback: The “9 Elements of Digital    Citizenship” Edition. Retrieved November 15, 2020, from https://edtechendeavours.com/2020/02/12/the-podcast-playback-the-9-elements-of-digital-citizenship-edition/

Spiegler, J. (2015, October 07). Tool or Weapon? Addressing Cyberhate in the Classroom. Retrieved November 15, 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tool-weapon-addressing-cyberhate-classroom-jinnie-spiegler

Tapingkae, P., Panjaburee, P., Hwang, G., &; Srisawasdi, N. (2020). Effects of a formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach on students’ digital citizenship behaviours, learning motivations, and perceptions. Computers &; Education, 159, 103998. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103998

The University of Victoria education program hosted an edcamp on November 6^th which was my first experience with this type of event. There were students from UVic as well as faculty, local educators, and the UNBC education program first years. Unfortunately, this edcamp was hosted online as an in person edcamp is currently not possible, however some of the advantages of this format were still evident. I very much enjoyed this learning environment which was very casual and comfortable allowing for easy participation in discussion. Having experts on a topic in a group discussion allows the participants to not only benefit from their experience but also be comfortable enough to share unique and new ideas. This allows for a good hybrid between experience and youthful enthusiasm to be shared in discussion allowing fresh ideas to be tempered by experience.

The edcamp format was also enjoyable in that it allows the participants to spent as much or as little time discussing a particular topic as they want. If a discussion is interesting to them, they can continue to participate for the entire session if desired, or if the discussion moves to a topic the find less interesting, they can move on to a new group. I found that this format encourages very natural and organic choice of topics and discussion path, and rather than forcing the topic through a set discussion, as in a presented PowerPoint lecture, it allows the group as a whole to choose the direction of thoughts. One disadvantage because of this is that there can be no true predetermined take home message presented as in traditional ProD sessions, but instead the key points of the session are whatever the participants found most important.

At this particular edcamp most of my time was spent in a discussion room talking about the use of personal electronic devices in classrooms. The open style of discussion was quite useful for this topic as it allowed the conversation to touch many topics that I may not have otherwise thought about. This included various classroom methods that teachers use to manage personal device use, possible classroom uses of technology, some of the drawbacks of using personal devices, legislation around phone confiscation, the psychology around personal device usage, and many more topics. I found this session highly interesting and could have spent all afternoon discussing it in this format, and look forward to any future opportunities to participate in edcamps.

Learning progressions are an important part of understanding how learners develop skills and knowledge. They are the fundamental way that we build upon past skills to move towards more difficult and complicated ideas like building upon ones knowledge of letters to build words, words to build sentences, sentences to build paragraphs, and paragraphs to build stories and essays. How a teacher decides to teach a certain topic will depend on a variety of factors. With the example of science, a teacher may be teaching genetics to grade 10 students and look to the BC curriculum to start to decide what knowledge to focus on developing such as DNA structure and function. The teacher will have to determine if their students have knowledge of general cell types and functions and cellular reproduction to have the framework for examining how DNA is replicated. The teacher may also want to keep in mind where the material they are teaching is leading to, such as mutation and its impact on natural selection.

In most or possibly even all cases classrooms will have students that are at various points along a learning progression and will require creative methods to keep students moving forward. Some students will also require less scaffolding and will also require creative approached to keep challenging them.  In both cases teachers need to be able to know and read their students to know when help or additional challenges may be required. Just as it is important to know students it is also important to know what pieces make up a learning progression as it is important to know what pieces a student may not have, and need to work on, in order to grasp the desired topic.

The idea of learning progressions can be visualized as an ever-growing tree’s trunk and branches where the trunk constitutes the most basic skills and ideas such as numbers and letters. The trunk, or knowledge of the basics, continue to widen and strengthen over time, and are also required to support branches. These branches continue to divide, but always remain connected just as knowledge of numbers leads to math which branches off to physics, which remains connected and related to math. The health of the whole tree is required to create branches, and the branches are required to grow leaves.

October’s professional development day entitled “Lhtakoh – Where People, Place, and Practice Flow Together” was hosted by Classrooms to Communities and was focused on place-based education. I had the chance to attend two sessions entitled “BC Tomorrow: Investigating watershed sustainability using interactive technology” that explored using environmental modelling software in a classroom setting and “A Path for the Future to Reduce Fossil Fuel Emissions” that explored moving our communities towards a cleaner tomorrow focusing on alternative energy sources.

The BC Tomorrow session used software to give students an idea of how certain “system inputs” in a watershed can affect each other over time, and how all values (economic, social, environmental, etc.) must be balanced to allow an area to flourish. The program uses a user interface that shows a land use map of a water shed and allows users to manually adjust the system inputs such and goals for the region. Through the process of using the program the student can be motivated to learn in many ways, they may be motivated by curiosity to learn more about the different factors that affect the outcomes of the simulation, or they may be motivated by a sense of purpose to balance the system and have a healthy environment while still having strong economic output. Exploring this model is also an excellent way to scaffold learning as it encourages students to delve into many subjects in one project, as it brings together biology, environmental science, social topics, and questions of values, as well as the possibility to explore other additional topics. The model can also help prepare students to make the difficult decisions in the future to balance prosperity and preservation.

October’s professional development day was also an opportunity to learn more about my own biases and potential strengths as a teacher candidate. In “A Path for the Future to Reduce Fossil Fuel Emissions” The presenter brought up many ways that society is working to reduce emissions, as well as ways that we as individuals can help, including moving to electric cars which will be the only new cars on sale by 2040 in British Columbia. Many of the session participants expressed surprise at this 2040 timeline which I had taken to be common knowledge, this led to the realization that I only knew this because of my background as an environmental scientist with an interest in the automotive industry. This governmental goal and the session reinforced the idea that climate change awareness is often lacking, and it is a passion and knowledge base that I can bring to my future practice. It also was a good reminder of the value of having a teaching staff with varied backgrounds and passions.

Creating a learning environment that encourages students to do their best and fosters their natural curiosity and creativity is one of the most important jobs of a teacher. In my observational practicum I have had the chance to view several teachers work towards this goal using some of the ideas we have been discussing in the education program. I observed teachers using more formative assessment in conjunction with summative assessment, letting students pick project topics that interested them, and emphasizing lesson topics that resonated with students.

Students that were working on formatively assessed assignments were visibly less stressed and more likely to work through problems in the classroom. By making the learning itself the goal of the assignment instead of a letter or number at the end of the task the students were not focused on the end result but instead were focused on the learning itself.  Students also tend to choose easier tasks when they know they will be graded on them as that makes the goal of graded work more easily attainable. Shifting the focus to the learning from the grading then also encourages students to select more challenging tasks, and therefore allow for more learning.

Allowing students pick their own projects or subjects taps into another basic human reality that curiosity drives learning. Students who are allowed to explore what they are interested in will have strong intrinsic motivation to learn, rather than relying on the extrinsic motivation of “I need to know this to get a good grade”. The idea of story telling in presenting key concepts as it helps topics to resonate with students, for example a science teacher I observed used the story of the Hindenburg explosion to discuss the reactivity of different elements. This lesson excited the student’s curiosity and is far more likely to be memorable than simply telling them that the elements on the left side of the periodic table are more reactive than others.

From my time in elementary and secondary school I experienced far less engagement in learning than is possible with these new methods of teaching. It will take me some time and effort to continue to familiarize and make myself effective at using these methods to encourage student engagement. I have also recently observed how resistant some parents can be to reducing grading in classrooms as they often view this change as a reduction in the value of excellence or simply a way of avoiding discouraging poorly performing students. However I feel it is paramount to continue the shift towards encouraging learning for the sake of learning instead of results, and I personally would have had a better time throughout my environmental science degree if my own intrinsic motivations for learning would have been fostered more.

Entering the UNBC education program I was expecting to immediately begin learning about how to deliver material to students and to build effective lesson plans. While I am still expecting to learn these techniques going forward the most important ideas I have learned about so far have been that teaching is about the identity of the teacher and the students, and the relationship that you build between the two. I appreciate the efforts of the education program to encourage us as future teachers to explore and expand our identity as learners and educators so that we can teach with passion and focus. It is important for us to enter our practice with a solid sense of self, and to also foster a sense of self in our students as well. This student identity is crucial to the learning process as it brings passion and motivation in students and helps teachers build a relationship with students. A strong relationship with their students will also help the teacher construct their material in a way fits the students’ own passions and motivations and in a way that allows the teachers’ passion to show.

A subject that I was expecting to delve into was how to bring the ideas of truth and reconciliation into the classroom. We have started to methods to achieve this through many of our classes and the Lhulh’uts’ut’en workshop that we attended in September. The first keynote speaker of this workshop was Dr. Louie who proposed that as teachers we need to decolonize our education system and work towards removing the western viewpoint from the position as the default lens through which we view knowledge, and instead use it as one of the many cultural views that we approach education through. With this shift in perspective in mind we can introduce traditional and current First Peoples ways of knowing and being into our education system and work to create respect and equality for the First Peoples of Canada.

This week we had the opportunity to begin our observational practicums where I was able to visit Shas Ti Kelly Road Secondary to sit in on classes for a day. This experience was excellent for reframing and contextualizing what we have been learning in our classes. Before this week I had the fear that I would take some time to become comfortable in a high school classroom environment that I have not experienced since 2009. After the first practicum day I learned that I was not only quite comfortable in the classroom but found it fascinating and exciting to observe the dynamics between the students and teachers. It was a joy to see how the teachers managed their students emotions and learning and to see the enthusiasm of the students for learning.

During the Lhulh’uts’ut’en We Come Together Workshop I had the opportunity to listen to two excellent keynote speakers, as well as the “Science, Art, and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge: A Holistic Approach to Training Future Health Practitioners” and “Restitution and Restorative Practice – Using Circles to Build Community” workshops. I found all speakers had extremely valuable insight into how to promote and include Indigenous ideas and ways of being into our education system, but the session I found resonated with me the most was Dr. Dustin Louie’s keynote on truth and reconciliation, and decolonizing and indigenizing our education system.

Early in the keynote he brought up truth and reconciliation as a current goal in our society that we are trying to achieve. Truth requires that the stories of our country’s past be told, and information about our mistreatment of Indigenous peoples comes to light. Reconciliation requires not only apologizing and making reparations for the past but to create an equitable present and future. As educators and aspiring educators, we can and will carry a large part of the responsibility for this work going forward.

To work towards this equity we need to decolonize and indigenize our education system and society as a whole. We need to break down the idea that western world views are the “neutral” view and that “other” views are different or an alternate to the normal view. Dr. Louie described how indigenous people have been torn away from their culture and left with very little framework and community to show young indigenous people what it is to be indigenous other than the mirror of media that is tinted by the prejudices and stereotypes that the general western culture holds of indigenous people. It is crucial to provide a learning environment that is decolonized and open that can foster the revitalization of traditional ways of being and knowing that existed before colonization, and to include these values in our education system.

This workshop reinforced the idea that as a new teacher I need to continue to learn about indigenous ways of knowing and being and strive throughout my career to continue to decolonize and indigenize my practice. It will also be important to continue to build relationships with the local community and to seek out help from elders and other teacher to guide me in this process.

Digital literacy is a broad concept that includes many facets including one’s ability to use technological devices, understand and evaluate information, and to create digital materials (“Digital Literacy Fundamentals,” 2019). Digital literacy goes far beyond simply being proficient at using technology and accessing information online. It also includes the ability to critically examine information you encounter which requires training and a basic understanding in the subjects examined. Another important part of digital literacy is the understanding that any information created is persistent and able to be viewed around the world and that anything posted should be information that can reflect on you for the rest of your life.

Digital literacy is increasingly important in our world as more and more of our lives are spent online and socialization and work alike are moving to digital platforms. This has been accelerated and made apparent the past year due to the COVID pandemic leading to more remote work, and the reliance on digital channels for friends and family to interact (Buchholz et al., 2020). It has become critical that students learn digital literacy as the enter society and the workforce. As a new educator I would like to encourage students to use technology in creative ways and to learn alongside them in new techniques and platforms, while providing support and advice in a safe space. I believe it would be helpful to have guided exercises, particularly in situations that a students work could be looked back on and re-evaluated at a later date to examine how it ages and what longer term impacts the content they create can have. I would also like to attempt to teach students how to evaluate information and sources they encounter. This would include quality of the material itself, as well as determining what the source of the information is and what biases and motivations these sources may carry (Breakstone et al., 2018).

Teaching digital literacy has many challenges including maintaining the privacy of students and continuing to keep up with a rapidly evolving field, although any help that I could provide my future students navigate digital society in a safe and productive way is worth any effort.

 

References

Breakstone, Joel., McGrew, Sarah., Smith, Mark., Ortega, Teresa., Wineburg,  Sam. (2018). Why we need a new approach to teaching digital literacy. Phi Delta Kappen, 99(6), 27-32. doi:10.1177/0031721718762419

Buchholz, B. A., Dehart, J., & Moorman, G. (2020). Digital Citizenship During a Global Pandemic: Moving Beyond Digital Literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(1), 11-17. doi:10.1002/jaal.1076

Digital Literacy Fundamentals. (2019, February 20). Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/general-information/digital-media-literacy-fundamentals/digital-literacy-fundamentals

Throughout my education I have been taught by many excellent teachers and had many memorable moments of learning. One moment that stands out in recent memory occurred when taking a two day electrofishing course. The course included one classroom day to learn about the device used, the science behind it, and techniques to effectively use an electrofisher followed by a day at a local stream to practice what we learned. We were taught how to set up the electrofisher and set it to the appropriate settings for the conditions, then we were able to test and refresh our knowledge the following day. We were shown the electrical theory behind the device and how the electrical field is created between the anode and cathode and then were able to observe with our own eyes how fish were caught in, and reacted to, the electrical field created by the device.  We observed the intermittent electrical field causing the muscles of the fish on the side of the field to contract and relax due to the current, causing the fish to swim towards the anode. We were then guided through all the techniques we learned in the first day to find fish in likely habitat areas and approach them in such a way they are not alerted of our presence until caught in the electrical field.

This teaching approach of presenting material in a lecture format, then re framing the information and guiding the application of learned material allowed me to take in the information in a more meaningful way and to retain more of what I learned.  This experience reminded me that presenting learning material in multiple different ways multiple times can be helpful and usually necessary for students to gain a deeper understanding of important concepts. This learning moment was also a good example of the importance of practice and review to improve the ability of students to apply things they have learned.

My watering can represents that like a planted seed, knowledge is better fostered than merely planted and left to fend for itself.