Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

This is a tough standard to simplify into a blog post, mainly because it is ongoing and difficult to pinpoint into one activity.  I would say, this summer, that I have "modeled" this by being involved in this class.  I have been able to use and experience a variety of tools for expressing my own thoughts, and discussing the thoughts of others.  If I was to describe this with one event related to students, it would probably be quad blogging.

I signed up for a quad blogging group at the start of the summer, and have done some reading and research on its benefits.  Primarily, I'm excited for a more genuine, less contrived, blogging experience.  It's pretty cool to write and post your ideas on the web for people to peruse.  It's really cool to have students discuss these ideas on blogs or in a Facebook group.  But, it's ridiculously cool to have students discussing their thoughts and ideas with people from all over the world....and truthfully, that is what blogging is really about. 

I also plan to use my blog and their blogs for my own comment and discussion posts.  I think I've lost that connection with blogging in the past.  It's nice to see a post from your friend and classmate, but it's pretty cool to see a personalized post from your teacher.  Posting on their blog also allows a great avenue for modeling proper discussions...so that students keep from writing posts like, "cool!"  Instead, taking more time to describe what is cool, why it's cool and what they don't understand or agree with.

Finally, I have a poster activity that allows students to model online discussions.  I have students create a poster from a lab report.  Then, they view each poster and write sticky note comments about their thoughts.  I found that this was a fun way to introduce digital citizenship in online discussions at the beginning of the year.  It also allowed me the time to walk around and discuss sticky notes that lacked content.