Trick or Tech Treat!

So…I’m sure you are all aware that it’s Halloween this Saturday, right? Did you know it’s also the second full moon of the month of October? And that we change our clocks the very next day? Seriously….someone is having a good laugh at our expense! Toss in a general sense of confusion about whether or not kids should be trick-or-treating, whether or not schools should even celebrate Halloween and I have to say….the end of this week and the beginning of next week could be tough!

Art by me, Inspired by Art with Flo on Youtube

So, I thought I would send you some tech treats. They might help make the week a little less ghoulish. They’re mostly for Kindie to Grade 5-ish….

This popped up in my email this morning: The Knowledge Kids Halloween Specials. Now, I realize Paw Patrol might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s lots here to enjoy! I watched “Room on the Broom” while eating my breakfast and I think even a high school class might get a kick out of the story of the kind witch.

Storyline Online never fails to delight. They have several Halloween-ish stories. I loved “Zombies Don’t Eat Veggies” and I also liked “Sophie’s Masterpiece”. 

Would you rather have your kids do some of their own writing? This “Build a Jack o Lantern” activity from Eric Curts at Control, Alt, Achieve is great fun and I know loads of kids who would enjoy his “Halloween Rebus Story” activity that uses emojis.

Looking for something to keep your class happy while waiting for the bell to ring on Friday afternoon? CBC Kids has some fun Halloween games – no downloads or sign-ins required.

Want to read some classic ghost stories? Here’s a good collection (not for little people!) And hey, if your students need a break from the routine, some of these would make awesome radio plays. You don’t even need fancy equipment – most smart phones have some kind of voice recording tool. Have kids work in small groups to record the story, complete with spooky sound effects like rattling chains and knocking doors!

That’s it for me for this week! I’ve got a pumpkin to carve…ooh, I wonder how many seeds it has? Do I sense a Math activity here? Boo!

Whatcha Doin’ This Friday?

This coming Friday is BC’s annual Provincial Professional Development Day. Every public school teacher (and many private school teachers, too) has the opportunity to spend a full day engaged in professional development that suits their current needs. Many teachers chose to work at school, learning new curriculum, researching and developing new units or collaborating with a colleague on new ideas. Other teachers chose to attend conferences, giving themselves a chance to meet and connect with teachers from other districts while learning.

For the past ten years or so, I have spent my Provincial Pro-D day at the CUEBC Conference – first as a presenter, then as a host and lately as a member of the executive running the conference. CUEBC, for those who don’t know, is the Computer Using Educators of BC, a provincial specialist association.

I don’t like to boast, but our conference is one of the best. We regularly have over 400 to 500 attendees, we always have a hot, yummy lunch, our keynotes are great, our sessions are varied and the swag and giveaways are the best! As a team, our executive works hard to put on a good conference as we know that for some teachers, our conference will be the only one they attend in a given year.

This year, things are a little different. No yummy lunch (but you can attend in your pjs if you want) and no swag (but the cost to attend is way down – only $50 for BCTF members) and the conference is virtual…of course!

But we still have a great keynote speaker…our very own Chris Kennedy! Chris has always been an advocate of CUEBC and the work we do and we are looking forward to his keynote this year!

And we still have great sessions! We have sessions focusing on MS Teams, on Google, and on Apple Pages! We have sessions on coding, robotics, digital citizenship, hyperdocs, girls in gaming, e-sports, and global sustainability! With up to 8 sessions running concurrently over three time slots it promises to be a busy day of learning and fun!

So….what are you doing this Friday? If you haven’t made plans yet, why not join us at the annual CUEBC conference? To register, click here. To see the schedule, click here. Hope to “see” you there!

Raising Responsible Digital Citizens Is Everyone’s Job

Next week is Digital Citizenship week. It happens the third week of October every year, which tells me two things. First, it’s predictable, so as a teacher if I don’t tackle Digital Citizenship any other time of the year I can at least plan to have a few lessons about it during the third week of October. Second, the fact that it happens every year tells me that it’s still important and, like manners, something we need to talk to students about every year.

In light of what’s going on in the world right now (global pandemic, climate change, societal revolution, lies and misinformation being peddled as truth) combined with an increasing reliance on digital technologies in all corners of our lives it seems to me that it is more important than ever that we teach our students to be thoughtful and informed digital citizens. And we all need to be a part of this work, from Kindergarten through Grade 12, from tech-averse teachers to tech champions, from teaching aides to superintendents. We all have a part to play. Oh yeah….parents need to be a part of this, too. There’s only so much that we can do at school. If the parents aren’t part of the plan, we become like Sisyphus; constantly pushing a rock uphill with no chance of reaching the top and achieving our goal.

So, if we can agree that digital citizenship is important….what can we do about it? It’s an awfully big and somewhat amorphous goal, this creating digital citizens! Let’s break it down into a number of focus areas.

Privacy

Privacy involves knowing what information is personal and how and when it is appropriate to share that information. It also encompasses the crazy world of passwords. Passwords are the key to our digital lives and being careless with your passwords is like leaving your front door unlocked.

Information Literacy

How do you know which websites to trust? How do you know who to believe? This is information literacy and in a world where anyone can publish digital information, this is a crucial skill.

Digital Etiquette

Etiquette? You mean like knowing which fork to use and when to say please? Kinda…Digital etiquette refers to knowing how to safely and respectfully communicate with other people in an online world. It includes scary topics like cyberbullying and sexting but also includes skills like knowing how to send a proper email or use social media.

Digital Literacy

Do you know how a computer works (at least at a basic level)? Do you know how to use a computer to accomplish basic tasks? Are you able to communicate using images and sound as well as words? Do you understand how machines work? Can you see computational thinking in everyday activities? I would argue that these are, increasingly, life skills our students will need.

The Law

Knowing your rights and responsibilities in a digital world is important. At its basic level, this involved things like copyright and plagiarism. Even a kindergarten student is old enough to know if something belongs to them or not.

Balance

Screen time vs. green time. Unplug. Spend time in the natural world. Spend time in face to face interactions with people. We have become an unbalanced world in so many ways – it is so important that we both model and teach balance to our students. Parents….are you listening? Put the phone away!

So…here’s your call to action! Ideally, incorporate digital citizenship skills into the lessons you already teach. If you are learning about ecological footprints, talk about digital ones, too. If you are creating flow-charts, talk about “if-then” statements – they’re all around us in the classroom and machines use them, too!

But if you’re not quite ready for that, at least take some time next week to do a lesson or two involving digital citizenship. You can find lessons here, here, here and here. And here’s a great blog post with some good information and a few activities. 

If we each commit to teaching digital citizenship at a level appropriate to our students, imagine how much better prepared they will be when they graduate?

Pocketful of Sunshine!

Since the beginning of the pandemic, my social media feeds have been flooded with all kinds of ideas for making teaching and learning better. I rarely have time to follow the links then and there, so I save them. I tuck them in my “pocket” to look at later. Here then, are a few of the things I’ve stored away in my little “pocket of sunshine”.

Google Meet Translation 

This one is pretty cool! It would be especially helpful for our secondary ELL students in hybrid classes. When you do a Google meet, they can have what you are saying translated for them!

Using Emojis to Organize Google Classroom

Here’s a fun way to organize all of those assignments and materials you are putting into your Google Classroom.

Icebreaker Activities for Socially Distant Situations

Always nice to have some of these in your back pocket, especially for secondary teachers, who will be meeting  new groups of students every ten weeks!

https://www.boredteachers.com/classroom-ideas/21-social-distance-friendly-and-virtual-icebreakers-students-will-actually-have-fun-with

Google Slides Craziness!

Okay, this one is for those hard-core fans of Google Slides – there’s some neat ways to jazz up your slides in here.

Choice Boards on Google Slides

Here’s a great way to give students some choice in what they do to show their learning.

Book Bento

And finally, for those of you who teach English Language Arts, here’s a fun way for students to show what they’ve learned from a story or novel.

I hope you enjoyed these little rays of sunshine!