I reprint this post every October, to remind all of us about the treachery of bullying.

In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet after suffering months of cyberbullying. She believed her tormentors’ horrid insults, never thought she could find a way to stop them, and killed herself. She’s not the only one. In fact, according to StopBullying.gov, 52 percent of young people report being cyberbullied and over half of them don’t report it to their parents.

Everyone knows what bullying is — someone being taunted physically or mentally by others — and there are endless resources devoted to educating both students and teachers on how to combat bullying. But what about cyberbullying? Wikipedia defines “cyberbullying” as:

the use of information technology to repeatedly harm or harass other people in a deliberate manner

Cyberbullying occurs on not just social media like Twitter, Facebook, and topical forums, but multiplayer games and school discussion boards. Examples include mean texts or emails, insulting snapchats, rumors posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing photos or videos.

How serious is it?

The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center estimates that nearly 30 percent of American youth are either a bully or a target of bullying. 7% of high school students commit suicide, some because of cyberbullying:

On October 7, 2003, Ryan Halligan committed suicide by hanging himself [after being cyberbullied by high school classmates]. His body was found later by his older sister.

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Surprisingly, 15-20% of the population has a language-based learning disability and over 65% of those are deficits in reading. Often, these go undiagnosed as students, parents, and teachers simply think the child is not a good reader, is lazy, or is disinterested. Thankfully, the International Dyslexia Association sponsors an annual Dyslexia Awareness Month in October aimed to expand comprehension of this little-understood language-based learning condition.

What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a condition that affects people of all ages, male and female equally, and causes them to mix up letters and words they read making what for most is a joy-filled act challenging and frustrating.

“Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, that result in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia often experience difficulties with both oral and written language skills. … It is referred to as a learning disability because dyslexia can make it very difficult for a student to succeed… ” — the International Dyslexia Foundation

There is no cure for dyslexia. Individuals with this condition must instead develop coping strategies that help them work around their condition. In education, it is not uncommon to accommodate dyslexic students with special devices, additional time, varied format approaches (such as audio or video), and others. Most prominent educational testing centers (like SAT, ACT, PARC, and SBACC) make these available for most of the tests they offer.

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I don’t write enough about special needs so when Rose contacted me with an article idea, I was thrilled. Rose Scott is a literary teacher with a goal of making education comfortable for students with special needs. Her dream is to help students explore their talents and abilities.

In this article, Rose writes about a little-known problem that students may unknowingly suffer from that may make it look like they are plagiarizing when–to them–they aren’t.

Read on:

Many people have come to believe that plagiarism is intentional and evil, and all students whose works have text coincidences are shameless wrongdoers. While it may seem that the majority of plagiarists do turn out to be cheaters, there are exceptions. Have you ever heard of cryptomnesia?

Cryptomnesia, according to the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary, is “the appearance in consciousness of memory images which are not recognized as such but which appear as original creations.” In other words, a person says something for the first time (as he or she thinks), but in reality he/she has already mentioned it, and now just doesn’t remember the previous occurrence.

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#ISTE had an interesting discussion on how to foster digital citizenship in schools. This is especially critical because students are spending so much more time than ever before online. Here’s a peak at their conversation and then a link to the rest:

3 Ways To Foster Digital Citizenship in Schools

For teachers, it can be difficult to know when and how to instill digital citizenship skills. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to weave digital citizenship into the school day and for parents to reinforce it at home. ISTE has a few suggestions:

Read on…

For more on Digital Citizenship, check our K-8 curriculum here and these additional articles:

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Here are popular resources teachers are using to teach about digital citizenship. Click the titles for more links:

Avatars

Copyrights and Digital Laws

Curriculum

1. Applied Digital Skills–all tech skills
2. Google’s Be Internet Awesome–abbreviated course
3. K-8, scaffolded, Ask a Tech Teacher (with projects)

Cyberbullying

Cybersecurity

1. Cyber Patriot program–by the Air Force

DigCit–General

Digital Footprints

Digital Privacy

Digital rights and responsibilities

1. Digital Passport
2. Digital rights—sharing info

Digital Search and Research

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Information that will help you teach digital citizenship to your students. Below, you’ll find everything from a full year-long curriculum to professional development for teachers:

Resources:

Digital Citizenship: What to Teach When (a video)

Curricula:

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

More on Digital Citizenship

How to Grow Global Digital Citizens

Teaching Digital Rights and Responsibilities

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To celebrate the launch of Natural Selection, Book 3 in the Dawn of Humanity trilogy, the ebook of Book 1–Born in a Treacherous Time–is FREE on Amazon Kindle October 15th-October 19th

When you fall in love with prehistoric fiction, read Book 2 of the trilogy, Laws of Nature before the launch of Book 3, Natural Selection, on October 19th.

Then, join the launch party on Oct. 25 and find out the answers to your pressing prehistoric people questions:

1. What did our ancestors do all day?
2. What Did Early Man Eat?
3. What I learned from Lucy
4. How Did Early Man Tell Time?
5. How Smart was Lucy 2 mya?
6. Prehistoric fiction is boring. Change my mind
7. How Did Early Man Count?
8. Could an almost-blind person get around feral Africa?
9. Does man’s unusual “wanderlust drive” explain why we spread throughout the planet? Science thinks so.
10. Early Man Can’t Talk. Change my Mind
11. Convince me Early Man Hunted by Running Down His Prey
12. Early Man didn’t Use Proper Nouns. How’s That Work?
13. Early Man Used Natural Navigation to Flawlessly Find his Way Around
14. Why did Early Man Squat, not Sit? 
15. Was Early Man Spiritual?

Thanks so much for your support!

Copyright ©2022 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular prehistoric fiction saga, Man vs. Nature which explores seminal events in man’s evolution one trilogy at a time. She is also the author of the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers and Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. Her non-fiction includes over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, reviews as an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection Fall 2022.

October 1st-17th

For the first part of this time, my two children and I are touring American Civil War battlefields in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Then I’m off to my sister’s in Marion, Indiana for a recentering in rural America and an 1812 battle re-enactment.  As a result, I won’t be around much–a bit, but forgive me if I seem to be ignoring everyone! 

See you-all in a week!

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.

Family PE Week is October 3rd through 7th this year. I was traveling during this event, but thought I’d share some website resources to help in this endeavor:

1. BracketMaker
2. Final Kick–app; simulates kicking that final soccer kick (with Google Cardboard)
3. GoNoodle–fitness videos
4. LifeSaver–simulation where the viewer must save a life
5. Map My Fitness (app)
6. Move It (app)
7. My Fitness Pal (app) — map what you eat
8. OPEN–Online PE Network; lesson plans, music, more
9. ScratchEd–using Scratch to teach PE
10. Sprint Timer (app)
11. Sworkit (app) — 5-60 minute workouts
12. Team Shake (app) — pick teams
13. Virtual Reality in PE–resources and videos to use

Copyright ©2022 askatechteacher.com – All rights reserved.

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The first time I read about Unschooling, I ignored it. Surely, it was a fad that would go away.

When I read about it a thousand more times, I dug into it.

Inspired by the teachings of John Holt (1923–1985), this free range branch of homeschooling promotes learning through nonstructured, child-led exploration. There’s no set curriculum or schedule; students learn what interests them with guidance from involved adults. There are no worksheets, tests, or structure to provide evidence of learning or templates for teaching. The children pick what to learn, when, at what pace. The result — according to unschoolers, is a love of learning, tenacity to a task, and independent thought that prepares them for college and career better than traditional methods. In fact, if you look at the list of traits valued in popular education programs such as Habits of Mind and Depth of Knowledge, the reasons why parents unschool their children mirror the traits included in these lists.

What is it

According to  Dr. Peter Gray of Freedom to Learn:

“Unschooling parents do not … do at home the kinds of things that are done at school. More specifically, they do not establish a curriculum for their children, do not require their children to do particular assignments for the purpose of education, and do not test their children to measure progress. Instead, they allow their children freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests. They may, in various ways, provide an environmental context and environmental support for the child’s learning. In general, unschoolers see life and learning as one.”

If you use Genius Hour in your classroom, you have a sense of how inspiring, motivating, and addicting learning for the love of learning can be. Another popular example of unschooling is Sugata Mitra’s 1999 Hole in the Wall experiment where a computer was placed in a kiosk in an Indian slum. Children were allowed to use it freely. The experiment successfully proved that children could learn to use computers without any formal training. This was extended to be a method called Minimally Invasive Education (MIE) where students were encouraged to learn what interests them without adult direction —  much as what is expected from unschooling.

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