Thing 16: Digital Tattoo & Digital Citizenship

I really enjoyed exploring the many resources provided for Thing 16 - almost too many to choose from! I will definitely be re-visiting some of them in the future. I watched both videos and found the mind reader video very powerful. I plan to use it with my 6th grade Digital Literacy course and pause just before the tent wall is dropped. It will be interesting to see what the students think is going on, and whether they correctly guess what is really happening behind the scenes. I also watched the common sense media video but didn't find that one as moving.

Another resource that I found particularly interesting was the poster found in the Edudemic article. In fact, I plan to print and post the poster in my school library, and also tweeted it out to my Twitter followers on @MCSDlibrary.  Edutopia also had an excellent list of great resources that I plan to re-visit. I found the idea of an analog Twitter wall a great idea to use with younger students not yet active on social media.

I spent quite a bit of time exploring the resources for managing screen time. There was a sub-link to a site that had downloadable screen time templates to use at home with my own children. My 8 year old would be on his devices 24/7 if allowed, so I plan to modify those templates and implement them in my personal life!

The other major amount of time for Thing 16 was spent exploring the Google Digital Literacy & Citizenship curriculum. As I read through it, I became more and more inspired, and am now updating my own Digital literacy course curriculum to include the Google program. I loved the emphasis that having "digital literacy skills" is not the same thing as being "digitally literate". What a great concept to share with administrators, too!

One Digital Literacy resource that I already use but was not included in this "thing" is the Everfi Ignition digital literacy program. I started using it with my 6th graders last year, and find it to be quite effective with students. Individual logins are created for each student in my class, which they then use to access multiple digital citizenship modules. It is a self-paced course that provides me with quiz grades from each module. There is a culminating game activity in which each student plans a concert simulation for the school. I use this as a competition to see which student can sell the most tickets to their concert (the better they do in the modules, the more tickets they sell). Kids respond well to this program.

Overall, another great "Thing" full of excellent resources I plan to implement and/or refer back to.