Amy Oberlin and Lauren Jonaitis, Herald-Republican
The internet can be used to tear someone down. It can be used to spread a positive movement. It is incorporated into school curriculum.
Students start online classes as early as kindergarten — their first steps into a jungle of information, friends, commentary, fake news, cat videos, YouTube, surveys and scams.
“We want our teachers and students to be digitally literate, have an understanding of digital law, digital health, digital commerce and more,” said Lakeland School Corporation Technology Coach Amy Sayers. “We understand that while kids appear ‘tech savvy’ they still need guidance when it comes to utilizing technology for learning — and that in order to guide them, we need to be immersed in it ourselves this way.”
Starting out right
Lakeland kindergarten through eighth-grade students take digital citizenship lessons through Learning.com.
“We want to focus on digital leadership — not just citizenship,” said Sayers. “This begins Day 1, kindergarten — showing students and modeling for them appropriate online interactions.”
Lakeland uses Canvas and Echo learning systems for online lessons. Sayers said students are taught proper etiquette not just on the interactive learning sites, but in other social media as well.
“At Lakeland we believe it’s important for teachers to model use of online spaces. Teachers are learning to be familiar with how these spaces can grow both their students and themselves as educators,” Sayers said. “By engaging themselves in these online places, it helps them to better teach their students about how to engage in them as well.”
Hoosier teachers and administrators receive technology leadership training and collaborative opportunities such as an educational Twitter chat put on by #INeLearning and attending the Indiana Connected Educators conference.
Metropolitan School District of Steuben County elementary school students use Google Classroom.
“The Google Classroom is a big thing for virtual learning,” said Carlin Park teacher Erin Strieter during a presentation Tuesday for the MSD school board. However, she noted, teachers learning how to instruct using technology “learned best in person.”
Tech training
Angola High School has a student-led tech team, the High Tech Hornets, that has provided leadership for students and teachers through digital citizenship presentations. It was started by Chantell Manahan, who is now the MSD director of technology, assisted by Lance Yoder.
The tech team has attended many conferences to gain more knowledge about technology integration in the classroom, digital tools and digital citizenship.
Over the past four years the High Tech Hornets have presented at many Hoosier Student Digital Leader conferences as well as the Indiana Connected Educators conference. This year at ICE, they spent the day teaching educators about their tech team’s accomplishments and goals.
Presentations and digital citizenship efforts at Angola High School are meant to open the minds of students and teachers to the world of technology in an effective way.
The Google technology used by MSD includes Google Hangout, a free application that allows people to chat with each other in real time. MSD administrators monitor closely everything that students do on the Chromebooks they are issued, on Google Hangout and on other internet sites.
“We can put internet restrictions and you can block it,” said Angola Middle School Principal Ryan Bounds. However, he noted, there are other ways for youth to interact online and they may find a more clandestine avenue that is harder to supervise. “If we start down that highway, they can find a dirt road,” Bounds said.
Sayers said the goal at Lakeland has been to train students to be respectful users of technology versus banning it.
“We trust, but verify,” she said. “Administrators do daily reviews of flagged searches. Many teachable moments present themselves as students — and parents and guardians — learn the impact of comments left on social media.”
Social media
“What I deal with a lot in my office is kids bringing me social media concerns,” said Angola High School Assistant Principal Nancy Irwin.
She said when possible, she gathers the students from both sides of a misunderstanding in her office. Setting the media aside for a moment, Irwin focuses on “getting kids to talk and open up and share.”
Some negative vernacular and imagery is so common on social media, “I think that they can become desensitized to it,” said Irwin.
On the flip side, students are making an impact through social media.
Thursday, NBC reported that students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are using social media like Twitter to open conversations about gun control and debunk conspiracy theories. Student Emma Gonzalez, who has been a prominent voice in the days since the massacre, now has more than 300,000 followers on Twitter. Students Cameron Kasky, David Hogg and Sarah Chadwick have more than 100,000 each. When conspiracy theorists claimed Hogg and other students were “crisis actors” pretending to have been in the school, Parkland students whipped out their yearbooks and took video and pictures to show proof, said the NBC report
“One of my best friends was shot twice. And many more were injured. But sure keep making us look like we don’t know anything when in reality what we’re doing is much much much bigger than you can imagine,” tweeted Chadwick on Wednesday.
Lakeland ninth graders take Media Communications the first trimester of their freshman year. It is an integrated course combining digital citizenship and speech. Students cover aspects of communication and research utilizing various technological mediums.
“It lays the foundation of collaborative communication throughout the high school experience,” said Sayers. “We don’t want to just keep our kids away from bad content on the internet. We are trying to teach good digital leadership skills that will enable them to do some amazing things online.”