Now that so many children carry smartphones, do you track your child’s location? If you’re worried that’s akin to spying on them, read on. The Ask a Tech Teacher team has background, pros and cons, and more to help you come to a go-nogo decision:

• Reasons
• Techniques
• Best approaches
• Emergency readiness
• Supervising
• Communication and trust
• Educating your child 
• Addressing privacy concerns
• Importance of parental controls

How to Track My Child’s Location

In today’s world, parents frequently worry about their children’s safety and whereabouts. With the rise of smartphones and other technological advancements, keeping track of your child’s location has become more convenient than before. How can you ensure that you track them effectively and responsibly? This article aims to delve into approaches and factors to consider when monitoring your child’s whereabouts while respecting their privacy and building trust. The quick answer is to look into Scannero. (more…)

Here are popular online resources to teach about news sources for kids (click here for updates to this list):

1. Allsides (news stories compared across multiple political perspectives)
2. Breaking News–from Class Tools, create your own screen
3. BBC News (app)
4. C News for kids
5. Kids News – Current Events
6. Listenwise
7. Newsela–news for kids, reformatted at different reading levels
8. News-o-matic for kids (app)
9. NewseumEd
10. News for Kids–free
11. Newspaper Navigator–from the Library of Congress; search endless newspapers
12. PBS Newshour Extra–for grades 7-12
13. Scholastic
14. TeachingKidsNews
15. TweenTribune–by Smithsonian
16. US News Map–the news headlines between 1789 and 1922
17. Youngzine
18. Youth Radio
19. Yummy Math—math news

Fake News (click for resources)

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Reliable internet sources are the same as those you would search for in the library. You want:

• primary sources
• unbiased sources
• sources with the background and training to understand the topic

Young students have difficulty understanding these rules. They have barely learned about ‘primary sources’ and have no idea how to select unbiased ones. As for the final point, the ability to select sources with relevant background–that usually comes with age and experience, not something students get for most of their academic career.

With that in mind, there is one guideline that will help even novice researchers find reliable sources: the extension. Here are the most popular extensions in order of reliability, dependability, and trustworthiness:

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I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m going to take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

Overview

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum—9 grade levels. 17 topics. 46 lessons. 46 projects. A year-long digital citizenship curriculum that covers everything you need to discuss on internet safety and efficiency, delivered in the time you have in the classroom.

Digital Citizenship–probably one of the most important topics students will learn between kindergarten and 8th and too often, teachers are thrown into it without a roadmap. This book is your guide to what children must know at what age to thrive in the community called the internet. It blends all pieces into a cohesive, effective student-directed cyber-learning experience that accomplishes ISTE’s general goals to:

• Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology
• Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity
• Demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning
• Exhibit leadership for digital citizenship

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Understanding how to use the internet has become a cornerstone issue for students. No longer do they complete their research on projects solely in the library. Now, there is a varied landscape of resources available on the internet.

But with wealth of options comes responsibility to use resources properly. As soon as children begin to visit the online world, they need the knowledge to do that safely, securely, responsibly. There are several great programs available to guide students through this process (Common Sense’s Digital Passport, Carnegie CyberAcademy, K-8 Digital Citizenship). I’ve collected a long list of resources here:

K-HS Digital Citizenship Resources

Today, we focus on Kindergarten–1st Grade.

Overview/Big Ideas

Students learn how to live in the digital world of internet websites, copy-righted images, and virtual friends who may be something different.

Essential Questions

• What is a ‘digital citizen’?
• How is being a citizen of the internet the same/different than my home town?
• What are the implications of digital citizenship in today’s world?

Objectives and Steps

The objectives of this lesson are (use the lines in front of each item to check them off as completed):

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Blogging has become de rigeur in the Grade 3-8 classroom. It is flexible, scalable, and encourages diversity in both learning and teaching. Handled right, blogs can be used for pretty much any need that arises in the classroom. It has the added benefit of being an activity that students want to do. They like that it’s online, with lots of multimedia options, and a focus not on writing but communication.

I decided to track the skills I teach through blogging. When I started, I had seven, but as I continued, it exploded to this long list that I’m adding to even as I write this post. Read through these, tell me other ways you use it in your class:

Collaboration

Students collaborate on blogs when they comment on the ideas of others. They can also take it a step further by collaborating on the blog itself. Be co-owners of the blog, themed to a particular topic, and work together to fulfill goals.

Developing a profile

Blog profiles must be pithy, concise, and clear. What a great way for students to think through what makes them who they are and share it in as few words as possible. I am constantly reworking my own as I figure out a better way to communicate the gist of who I am.

Differentiation

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I’ve posted this before but it’s worth repeating. Then share it with friends, colleagues, parents, even older students.

When I teach professional development classes, by far the topic that surprises teachers the most is the legal use of online images. And they’re not alone. On my blog, in educator forums, and in the virtual meetings I moderate, there’s lots of confusion about what can be grabbed for free from online sites and what must be cited with a linkback, credit, author’s name, public domain reference, or even as little as an email from the creator giving you permission. When I receive guest posts that include pictures, many contributors tell me the photo can be used because they include the linkback.

Not always true. In fact, the answer to the question…

“What online images can I use?”

typically starts with…

It depends…

Luckily, teaching it to K-8 students is simpler because most of them haven’t yet established the bad habits or misinformation we as adults operate under. But, to try to teach this topic in a thirty-minute set-aside dug out of the daily class inquiry is a prescription for failure. The only way to communicate the proper use of online images is exactly the way you teach kids not to take items from a store shelves just because they think they can get away with it: Say it often, in different ways, with the buy-in of stakeholders, and with logical consequence. Discuss online images with students every time it comes up in their online activities.

There are five topics to be reviewed when exploring the use of online images:

• digital privacy
• copyrights
• digital law and plagiarism
• hoaxes
• writing with graphics

Here are suggestions on how to teach these to your students.

Plagiarism

Discuss plagiarism. What are the repercussions of ‘plagiarism’? When must you credit material found online? In general terms, you must cite sources for:

• facts not commonly known or accepted
• exact words and/or unique phrase
• reprints of diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
• opinions that support research

Digital privacy

Have a discussion about privacy on the Internet—how rare it is in a world where people post everything they do onto Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Expand your discussion by watching and then discussing this video on Online Reputations.

Discuss the use of avatars to protect online privacy. If students have online accounts (through blogs, Twitter, or a class website), have them create an avatar for their profile. Here’s a list of great avatar-creation sites.

Wrap up with a discussion on the impact of hacking on privacy. Talk with students about how kids ‘hack’ game codes. Should they do it? Is it a victimless crime? What issues should they consider?  What is the difference between ‘hacking’ and ‘cracking’?

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Wall Street Journal sent a young-looking journalist back to high school to test out the effectiveness of the web’s newest homework helper, ChatGPT. It will write entire essays for students, take notes on literature, and compare-contrast chosen pieces in seconds. If you aren’t aware of this hot new (questionable) tool, check out WSJ’s video here:

What are your thoughts on this–education assistant or cheating tool?

Copyright ©2023 askatechteacher.com – All rights reserved.

–image credit: Deposit Photos

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Every year, January 1st is Public Domain Day. This is an observance of when copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain–free for all to use. According to Public Domain Review, here are some of the newly-available artistic works you might like a/o January 1, 2023:

The picture above is interactive. If you click it, you enter Public Domain Review’s website and can then explore each of these new sources of inspiration, free to use.

One that caught my attention is Winnie the Pooh, now in the public domain. Knowing that, I should feel comfortable posting his picture: (more…)