Category Archives: Grade 4

Digital Citizenship Week October 15-19 2018

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Digital Citizenship Copyright © 2016 Marie Bou k12 inc.

What is digital citizenship?  

According to TeachThought, digital citizenship is “the self-monitored habits that sustain and improve the digital communities you enjoy or depend on.”

“Digital Citizenship prepares young people and adults alike to use digital media safely, confidently, and wisely”, according to Cyberwise.
 Common Sense Media  defines digital citizenship as way of being, thinking and acting online.

This fall in Library Media classes , students in Gr. 4 -6 participated in various learning activities that emphasized the importance of responsible digital citizenship.  Read on to see examples of digital citizenship in action in Library Media classes . . .

Gr. 4  – Our focus was on the digital citizenship concepts of  “digital footprints” and “media balance”.  Using videos from Common Sense Media as a stepping off point to class discussions, students reflected on their learning and understanding of these concepts with response activities assigned to them in Google Classroom.

The video, Follow the Digital Trail , reminds students to think before they post, to be aware that everything they post online is traceable and permanent, and to consider the effects of their posts on others.

Pixabay.com

The video, My Media Balance  explores the effect that our media choices can have on how we feel each day.  Media balance is “making healthy choices about what media you choose, when you choose it, and  how much you use it”.

Next, we are creating student online user accounts to WebRangers , a the National Park Service’s online site “for kids of all ages” as part of our larger research unit about U.S.  National Parks.  Students are learning how to create safe usernames, passwords and secret questions and answers, as they sign up to be WebRangers.

NPS.gov
ISTE Standard 2a
Students cultivate and manage their digital identity and reputation and are aware of the permanence of their actions in a digital world.

 

Gr. 5 –  Students learned how to create a Google Drawing that demonstrated the main purposes of Google Drive (access, storage, creativity and sharing) while also demonstrating the importance of giving credit to to the author/owner of creative works, (in this instance, digital images) by linking any image that students use in their work to its public domain file address.

Google Drive for Education apps (G Suite) give students access to image files that have been labeled “fair for reuse”.  Students learned how to find the URL of each image they chose to add to their Google Drawing using the Google Drive image search tool, and then used the Google link tool to link the image to its online address.

If students could not find an image they wanted within Google Drive, they learned how to use the general Google Image search modifier tool, “labeled for reuse.”

Google Drawing by Suhaila Merhi

We also accessed My BrainPOP’s lesson resources, Copyright in a Digital World, to explore what fair use means (allows people to use copyrighted works without permission) and to learn when it’s necessary to give credit to the rights extended to the author of a creative work like a book, song, or piece of art.   Students used our schools’ subscription to BrainPOP to watch a video, take a review quiz and play an interactive game together (The Meaning of Beep).  Google Suites connection to engaging BrainPOP’s instructional and assessment tools (quizzes and games) provides educators with formative assessments and insight into their students understanding of the concepts they need to know.

Flicker.com

Gr. 6 –  In concurrence with their grade level Social Studies curriculum units for the fall, students learned how to create a Works Cited document in Library Media classes.  A works cited document is a list of citations in MLA format, from reputable information sources, that give credit to the information sources used in doing a research project.  Students accessed our school subscriptions to World Book Online, Research in Context, and Country Reports in order to find relevant articles, facts and media about countries of the world and hunter-gatherer peoples.  These resources provide the actual citation so that students simply need to find the citation and copy and paste it into their works cited documents.

Giving proper credit to information sources is an essential digital citizenship skill.

isu.libguides.com
ISTE Standard 2c
Students demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.

Digital Citizenship

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Image from Common Sense Media

Grade 4 students have been learning about digital citizenship in Media classes this month.   Common Sense Education Digital Citizenship provides excellent curriculum materials for school and families, including entertaining videos like Super Digital Citizen (image above).   What is private information?  What information is personal?  What information is OK to share online?  The mascots from Common Sense media help inform young digital learners about their digital footprints, digital etiquette and online safety.

ISTE Standards for Students 

Digital Citizen 2a Students cultivate and manage their digital identity and reputation and are aware of the permanence of their actions in the digital world.

Digital Citizen 2b Students engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices.

More Research Adventures in our National Parks

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Gr. 4 students continue to learn how to access and use various forms of information in our year-long National Parks research unit.

Students practiced using both the search engine and the menu features of the National Parks Service website in order to locate a free pass to the parks for all 4th grade students, a special promotion of the celebration of the National Parks 100th anniversary.   Students then learned how to download the pass document to their Google Drive accounts.  If your family has plans to visit a park soon, print out and use this pass and the whole family as well as any friends along for the trip get in admission-free!

In addition, students searched for information about the nearest non-historic National Park, Acadia, using the Menu feature.  After viewing a video created by visitors of the park, students responded to a short answer assignment in their Media Google Classroom regarding the content and purpose of the video.

Massachusetts School Library Association Information Literacy Standards

1.8 Gather background information by reading, viewing or listening to a variety of pre-selected and self-selected resources.

2.10 Explain that there are different types of resources that can be used for different purposes: books, databases, periodicals, pre-selected class websites, reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclo- pedias, thesauruses, almanacs, etc.

What does a Gr. 4 Media class look like?

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kidsbits

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A Grade 4 Media class is similar to a Gr. 3 Media class in that students begin in the Media lab and choose between TTL4 or Dance Mat Typing programs in which to practice and increase their keyboarding skills. During this portion of class, those students who would like to check out a library book that day are able to do so in lieu of keyboard practice.  This is a change from their first term Media classes, in which students were in the library as a whole class activity for 20 minutes each class to ensure time for library orientation. By Term 2, most students are reading longer chapter books and do not require a new library book each week.  Library loan policy allows students to have up to three (3) library books checked out, each with a 30 day loan period.

The additional time in the Media lab allows for more focus on Information Literacy Skills.  With the recent interface partnership between Kids InfoBits and Google Classroom, students have access to content that is reading leveled, from resources not found via a search engine such as Google Search,  (magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias, primary sources) giving students meaningful, technology-rich methods for them to evaluate and repackage the information they learn about.

MSLMA Standards

1.8 Gather background information by reading, viewing or listening to a variety of pre-selected and self-selected resources.

1.9

As a class, develop a student driven essential question.

2.10

Explain that there are different types of resources that can be used for different purposes: books, databases, periodicals, pre-selected class websites, reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, almanacs, etc.

2.13 Web, map, or diagram a main topic with subtopics.

 

Digital Images and Digital Citzenship

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Cameron's Snowman (1)

Fourth grade student, Cameron DiDonato, from Ms. Davis’ class, gave me permission to use his original digital artwork in this blog post.   Thank you, Cameron!

In Media classes, students are learning how to use the Google Drawing app.   Google Drawing is a great hands-on tool to help students understand how to use images responsibly in their own digital work.

We began the unit by viewing and discussing the Common Sense Media video, Copyright and Fair Use, together in class.

In the past, Google Image search has made it so easy to take images found on the pages of the internet and use them in one’s own digital work.

It can be a difficult concept for all of us, students as well as adults, to know how to use these images with respect to copyright and Fair Use, or even to understand that we have a responsibility to do so!

It is most helpful to educators now that Google has begun to provide the web page addresses  of all the images found in its Google Drawing Image search function via embedded links.  This feature makes it so much easier for students to locate the creator of the image and how he/she has given permissions for re-use, e.g. Creative Commons license.

Students in Grade 5 have been demonstrating their understanding of the concept of giving credit to the creator of the images they use in their own “Fish in a Tree” Google Drawings.  (Fish in a Tree, by Linda Mullaly Hunt, is a book that many classes here at Spofford Pond School, as well as classrooms in Topsfield and Middleton, have read together as a part of the Global Read Aloud project.  To read more about this, click here.  Our Media projects are an extension to the this ELA project.)

Fish in a Tree

This is the example I created in Google Drawing.  I look forward to sharing some students’ Google “Fish in a Tree” Drawings in my next blog post!

Happy Holidays!

Ms. Boulay

MSLM Standard 4c. Ethical Behavior in Information Use