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I have two very amazing young men looking over my shoulder as I write this post. They have a challenge and some questions to ask you and your students. We are looking for people and students who are willing to UNWIRE for a day. That's right. One whole day! Now, if you need to use technology for work/school that is ok. But, besides that we want your cell phone off, your xbox off, and even your TV off for a day. Are you and your students willing to take the challenge? Why or why not? Either way we want you to fill out our survey! They would like as many people as possible to take the challenge and fill out their survey between now and next Monday at 8:15 am Eastern. If you're NOT willing - go ahead and fill out the survey. If you are willing, come back and fill out this survey AFTER you have completed the challenge! (even if you fail) What do you think your students will say? This is part of our Digiteen Action project . <p>Loading...</p>

Image via Wikipedia The Dealia's swimsuit catalog came in the mail for my teenage daughter and I handed it to my youngest son and asked him to take it to her. He padded in the den and I heard him say, "Here's your bathing suit catalog, sis. Pick something that won't scar me for life!" Scarred for life? lol. Hmmmm. Not a joke if I think about it. Scarred for Life. As I listened to my book on iPod and cleaned the kitchen, I started thinking that that is what is happening to many of today's teens. We have driver's education because we want to protect kids from themselves. A car is a powerful machine and can kill. We have sex education because we want to protect children as well. Sex is a very intimate thing that shouldn't be taken lightly. Sex can also kill if one contracts various STD's . Cell phones and the Internet are powerful vehicles. Yet parents give kids cell phones like they are the latest gadget, ignoring what can happen if a chi...

Image via Wikipedia Part 4 - Web 2.0 Leadership - In this four part series, I cover tagging, review building a PLN with an iGoogle page, notes on wiki editing, and end up with Leadership notes. This is taken from a blog post for my ninth graders. Really this is leadership and their future - more than Web 2.0 but part of it. Web 2.0 Leadership Finally, for my students I have a word for you. Handouts are going Out. This is a tough, competitive world going through tough times right now. No one is going to "hand" you anything. The handouts that are already being given out are rapidly going away and will continue to. You need to be able to collaborate globally. There are skills that you need to have that most adults, yes, most educators don't understand right now but you are in this project because your teacher (and teachers if you are from another school) see and understand that global collaboration is an essential part of your future. And global collab...

This is a four part series that I've broken up so that other teachers can link to the posts that are most useful for them. Part 1 - Tagging In this four part series, I cover tagging, review building a PLN with an iGoogle page, notes on wiki editing, and end up with Leadership notes. This is taken from a blog post for my ninth graders. It is the end of the grading period and I have a few reminders and notes for my students about how they have been assessed and some small things that make a big difference. Collaborations like this will continue to grow. The tag helps us find our students and also helps everyone categorize things. I should see three kinds of tags on your blog - separate them by commas. (Note: This is called "taxonomy" because we are agreeing upon the tag so we can categorize and find things.) A) Tagging: With so many students on this Ning , it is important for teachers to be able to find their students. 1) The school tag: whs Why? This h...

My ninth graders set out to evaluate the best social sites for kids 12 and under and present their recommendations and sometimes shocking findings in a presentation recorded as part of the K12 Online Conference 2009 and Digiteen: A Flat Classroom Project . When they asked to evaluate sites that were available for kids 12 and under, we thought that was a safe range - these are 14 and 15 year old students!  Little did we know that there would be some sites that we had to immediately pull access to and block (of course after taking screenshots.) While I DO NOT recommend having your students do this quite this way (talk about a wake up call) - it does bring up the point: Who is verifying the age appropriateness of the sites that claim to be age appropriate? I applaud my students for their maturity for bringing these items to light that needed attention and the supportive parents who believed in what they were doing enough to let us continue! They worked hard and while they did...

Image by kiwanja via Flickr Last year, in the blog post Kids Sleep with Cell Phones: Are They Suffering fromConnection Addictio n? students had shared with me a digital citizenship principle that they believed strongly. "In this gcast podcast , I discuss what my son told me about his friends "sleeping with their cell phones" under their pillow and texting through the nightI've talked to three different groups of students and all of them report that over half of their friends will cell phones sleep with them under their pillow on vibrate and text through the night."  This is one common thing that I've shared while traveling around and speaking about digital citizenship -- Digital Health and Wellness and Addictive issues are important. The New York Times now has an article Texting May Be Taking a Toll in their health section about this very same thing. "The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists , who say it is leading to an...

Over the next days of break, we've scheduled student reflections on the Digiteen Dream Team and the protest of Google lively shutting down to post on the Dream Team Blog. As part of their reflection, I asked the students to tell me if the protest was worth it since Lively is still shutting down and Google hasn't responded to their requests. Today's reflective post from Krysten , says it so well: "I feel that our efforts were worth all the trouble we went through. We had people say mean things about us but we kept going. I learned to not let other people's opinions keep me from doing what is right. Some people think that we should not teach others about digital citizenship because they think it can be taught in twenty minutes and that it wont help. But the fact is that more and more people are using the internet and if they dont know how to use it properly, it could be dangerous." My goodness, such wisdom for life and for so many things.   Hope you'l...

Just some reasons why my students make me so proud! I've been out this week, here is a sampling of some of the emails in my inbox as I'm checking it in the Atlanta airport.  You can see, that I'm a coach and my students and I have a relationship.  They are professionals and they amaze me.  This is what happens when student projects become OWNED. "I was out of your class Tuesday and Wednesday because I had to go to the doctor, and I was sick. I have recently been informed that there has been some plagiarism on the wiki. We have been researching most of the wikis and found plagiarism on some of them. I have decided to post a blog post on Digiteen to inform everyone that plagiarism is illegal. If you have any ideas on how to deal with the plagiarism, please email me back." This is about http://wiki.digiteen.net and plaigarism is something that does happen - we have to continually work on this as teachers, but many of the students get very angry and want to work...