Multi-faceted Refractions

While at NECC, ISTE was promoting its newest volume, Digital Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble and Gerald Baily. Yesterday, I received my copy after ordering it at the conference and have had a chance to give it a first reading.

The authors argue that it is essential that school districts and schools to take stock and begin to create their definition of digital citizenship. Once defined, they present example activities that will help all members of the school community, students, faculty and staff, and parents gain a better understanding of the definition which was created by the community.

With the author’s goals of wanting to improve learning outcomes and prepare students to become 21st Century Learners, the authors outline nine elements which define digital citizenship:

Student Learning and Academic Acheivement

• Digital Literacy
• Digital Communication
• Digital Access

School Environment and Student Behaviour

• Digital Security
• Digital Etiquette
• Digital Rights and Responsibilities

Students Life Outside the School Environment

• Digital Commerce
• Digital Law
• Digital Health and Wellness

I feel that authors have done a great job of defining the elements and providing the framework for schools to begin to have the conversations about how their district or school will deal with these issues. One of my takeaways from this volume are new ways of thinking about updating of our Acceptable Use Policy. As we continue to develop the changes, we need to be mindful of making sure we cover all aspects of each of these nine elements. The more that we work on our AUP, it is becoming apparent that we need to come at the problem as an information service provider. Education of all groups is essential.

I especially like the inclusion of health and wellness in the list of elements. It provides credence to this important aspect. One element which is not included in the published volume is where social networks fit in. They do provide guidance about podcasts, wikis, and blogs, but social tools, like Facebook, mySpace, or Nings is absent. I am going to have to check the online resources to find these materials.

But overall, a great job of providing a framework to begin the conversations, especially for those who are not regular users of the new tools.

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Upon the recommendation of Joyce Valenza, in her NECC presentation Information Fluency Meets Web 2.0, I reserved the following book from my local public library. Picking it up last week, I got a chance to read it and was amazed how quickly I got through the reading (two evenings) and how thought provoking it is.

In this book, the authors, Ori Brafman and Rod Breckstrom outline how a decentralized organization can be stronger than an centralized heirchy. Using examples from history (the Apaches vs the Spanish) through modern technology (the emergence of wikis and craigslist), the authors use the metaphor of the five legs of the starfish to describe the five aspects of a decentralized organization:

1. Circles
2. Catalysts
3. Ideology
4. Preexisting Network
5. Champion

Focusing on the role of the catalyst, the authors then describe strategies and rules for becoming a starfish organization

In thinking about the impact towards education and what I would like to implement at my school, I am taking away from this volume is that although a there needs to be a central authority at the top (superintendent or principal), that you have to allow for more teacher autonomy in order to allow students to have the best learning environments. Teachers should be guides within their classrooms, like the Apache Nant’an who provide a vision and then allow the rest of the tribe to meet the vision. At North Shore, I think that we do a reasonably decent job at providing this within each classroom, but like with the conversations surrounding classroom 2.0, we need to have further opportunities for students not to feel like they are being forced into a local centralized classroom.

Also, it is important for teachers to be able to have time to get together, organically, to share best practices with each other. Like in many schools, we acknowledge the need to do so but do not always prioritize the practice as being essential for our own learning.

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I have returned to the work after an eleven day mini-hiatus since I have returned from NECC. Unfortunately, the projects that I left undone did not complete themselves, so this week, I am playing a bit of catch-up.

I have five work days in which to complete a number of these projects before I travel to the Laptop Institute which is being held in Memphis. I am looking forward to this conference and have been in contact with the organizers to see if there is a way that an area, similar to the Blogger’s Cafe, can be set up in order to facilitate reflection and conversation. I am looking forward to learning and thinking about a transition to a more technology rich environment. I will be sharing my schedule in the next few days.

I also look forward to following the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston. Both of these conferences look great and it was difficult to make a decision as to which to attend.

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