7a. Inspire and encourage educators and students to use technology for civic engagement and to address challenges to improve their communities.
7b. Partner with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology.
7c. Support educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media and identify underlying assumptions.
7d. Empower educators, leaders and students to make informed decisions to protect their personal data and curate the digital profile they intend to reflect.
CoG K-8 Academy AUP.pdfIn creating an AUP from scratch, I had to research and think a lot about what goes into creating a document that would lay a foundation for safe and responsible internet and technology use. It’s a big responsibility for a single document to take on which is why it is also important for the people expected to uphold the expectations of the document to understand it and understand what they’re meant to uphold. If the document is allowed to stay flexible and is implemented in the way I described, teachers will also have an opportunity to use technology for civic engagement and to address challenges to improve their communities. I think the video I created explaining each piece of the document would be most helpful in partnering with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology (7b). In particular, the student pledge is foundational in creating an empowered community that can make informed decisions to protect their personal data and curate the digital profile they intend to reflect (7d).
7a. Inspire and encourage educators and students to use technology for civic engagement and to address challenges to improve their communities.
7b. Partner with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology.
7d. Empower educators, leaders and students to make informed decisions to protect their personal data and curate the digital profile they intend to reflect.
This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and accompanying student pledge was created for the Center of Gravity community in a K-5 learning center pod setting. Students brought their own devices or borrowed devices from the school to attend their individual district’s distance education in a small classroom. The pod was overseen by a credentialed teacher during the 2020-2021 school year when school districts were enacting distance education due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This AUP has been presented to the administration at Center of Gravity and is being considered for adoption. The plan for implemented is that teachers would understand and adopt the document with flexibility to change it each year depending on teacher and student needs and how well it worked for the previous year. Teachers would introduce the AUP and student pledge to families during orientation and ensure that they understand the terms. Finally, students would get a chance to understand appropriate use of technology, internet, and devices at the beginning of school over several days to create a foundation for the school year.
The intended impact for this document, the student pledge and the video explaining how to use the AUP and it’s supporting documents, is to create a safer, more respectful, and a more accessible virtual space for our young students. Having prerecorded video instructions for use also allows teachers to revisit the AUP and how to use it with students as needed.
7b. Partner with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology.
7c. Support educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media and identify underlying assumptions.
For this presentation, I created a VoiceThread to go along with a powerpoint on information literacy and important elements to consider when using the internet specifically for a preK teacher audience.
I plan to use this with preK teachers to grow their information literacy and internet use. I have the presentation that I can send to teachers to use on their own or I can choose to present the powerpoint and do a presentation live. I love that I have this presentation ready for any teachers that might specifically ask about these skills.
I hope that this presentation gives preK teachers more confidence in researching information for lesson planning. In my work teaching teachers how to implement an inquiry and Project-based curriculum, information is at the center of planning. If a teacher is researching alongside students a different topic each year, they must get very skilled at using the internet and processing the vast amounts of information they will come across. I think this is such an important skill especially considering using the internet in tandem with students as young as 3 & 4 years old.
I’m looking forward to using this artifact in my work with preK teachers. It’s hard to come across resources like this specifically made for those who work with our youngest students and I know that preK teachers appreciate when the presenter has a background working with young students. For early educators it's assumed that you have some background knowledge of the internet and how to use it but it my experience, that's not always the case. That also inspired me to create this power point, so that I would always have something to use in order to support educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media and identify underlying assumptions (7c).It also inspires me to create more resources such as this for teachers to access and learn at their own leisure. I hope it inspires a foundation for a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology (7b).
I have so much room to grow in this standard. I think I have created artifacts that will help me as I continue to partner with and coach teachers that use technology and the internet in their classrooms. Understanding for myself the importance of creating boundaries, safety protocols, and systems of acceptable use of the internet and technology will allow me to model digital citizenship and support educators and students in recognizing the responsibilities and opportunities inherent in living in a digital world.
I believe I have started a foundation to build on with these artifacts for each of the Digital Citizen Advocate standards but still have room to reach full competence for each of them. With my AUP yet to be adopted, I hope to use it to Inspire and encourage educators and students to use technology for civic engagement and to address challenges to improve their communities (7a); partner with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology (7b); and empower educators, leaders and students to make informed decisions to protect their personal data and curate the digital profile they intend to reflect (7d). I plan to use the Information Literacy and Internet Use presentation as a webinar through the company I consult for in the near future as a way to empower the field of ECE to lean further into the world of technology by support educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media and identify underlying assumptions (7c).