In our lecture this week I found the issue of cyber bullying really upsetting. When I was at school bullying certainly took place, I personally suffered from it, but the nature of cyber bullying was not fully established. Obviously any form of bullying is terrible but in some ways I think cyber bullying is harder to control and potentially more damaging. Bearing this in mind, as a teacher I will endeavor to model the use of appropriate online behavior and inform children about their responsibilities as safe and respectful online users.
There are lots of different ways you can inform people about online safety. Acceptable Use Agreements (AUA’s) are a more formal way and deal with outlining guidelines for everyone: teachers, students and parents. Cybersmart (http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/) is great educational website set up by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). It promotes the Australian Government’s cybersafety program, which aims to show young kids how to safely enjoy the online world. Cybersmart has two Interactive Shared Learning (ISL) activities that are popular in upper primary classrooms today: Cybersmart Detectives focuses on the issue of posting personal information and Cybersmart Hero deals with cyber bullying.
At the beginning of our workshop we investigated the VELS Interdisciplinary Learning strand and its domain of Design, Creativity and Technology.
This domain has three dimensions:
• Investigating and designing (ID)• Producing (P)
• Analysing and evaluating (AE)
In our “Make the Frog Jump” activity we completed a Design Brief worksheet that is typically used in classrooms to explore the ID/P/AE process. He helps kids to map out thinking which leads to a design strategy. By displaying a whole classroom of Design Brief worksheets the children can read about other design strategies and broaden their own thinking. It was fascinating to see in our own group the range of different approaches to making the frog jump. Greg highlighted that the ID/P/AE process is cyclic and as teachers it is important to celebrate the process of how a child thinks.
Next Greg showed us a fantastic games development software program, Quia. It allows you to easily create online learning activities, for example quizzes, which are fun ways for children to apply their learning of an area recently studied. The online activities could also be a helpful assessment tool for Teachers. Word finds, jumbles, or hangman are useful spelling activities without the kids directly associating it to doing spelling. The activities can be applied to all areas of the curriculum. I created a quiz and cloze.
http://www.quia.com/quiz/2542609.html
We had so much doing each other’s quizzes and activities!
I have taken some time to look at the Creative Commons website. It will be a great resource for me as a teacher to find and share licensed material, legally.
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