Reaching Students Through Nearpod

As a part of my professional development this year, I had the goal of using Nearpod to create lessons that could reach students that I could not see in person. I wanted to start by creating lessons that would cover essential research skills and then move them on to working on digital citizenship and media literacy. To that end I created four lessons to date that work to engage students and allow them to practice new skills along the way.

Research Skills

The first one that I created was Using Keywords. The goal here was to teach students how internet search works, how to search effectively using concise keywords, and to give students a chance to try it out for themselves. They also learned how generate keywords for much larger search questions. And finally, I present them with many kid-friendly research sources. This workshop can be used from grades 4-8 but is specifically for our 4-6s.

The second lesson I created is called In-Text Citations and Bibliographies and was designed specifically for middle school. Upon entering middle school, citations and bibliographies take on a new level of importance. This lesson explains to students how critical citations and bibliographies are in avoiding plagiarism. It demonstrates through a tutorial how to use the citation and bibliography creation tool in Google Docs and it also allows students the opportunity to practice these skills with built-in assignments.

Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy

This lesson on cyberbullying was designed for our 4-6s. It is a quick lesson on what cyberbullying is and the different forms it takes, how to stop bullies who are bothering you, and how to be an upstander. This lesson is based more on discussion and collaborative boards than assignments.

And finally, the lesson that I am most proud of and the one that is the culmination of years of running my library workshops is my Nearpod lesson on Information Credibility. This covers a broad range of topics and is meant to give students a comprehensive knowledge of different forms of misinformation. It includes several built-in assignments and is a much longer lesson that could cover two periods or more.

It is my hope that these lesson become a valuable resource to our teachers and can be used year after year. It is also my hope that they can be used in other schools to facilitate teaching these key skills. I am looking to solicit feedback from any teacher who uses these lesson with their classes. Please post your feedback in the comments here or send me an email b.ruel@theojcs.ca

Category: cyberbullying, Digital Citizenship, media literacy, research skills | LEAVE A COMMENT

May 25

Cyberbullying – Being Mean Online

Lower Grades Digital Citizenship Lesson for the week of June 1st

When friends or classmates are mean at school, we know what that looks like…

making fun of how you look or what you wear
not letting you play with them
spreading rumours or lies about you that aren’t true
sharing personal information about you (gossip) to hurt your feelings or embarass you
insult you for how good or not good you are at something

We also know how bad that kind of meanness makes us feel…

Even though the internet can be a super fun place to spend our time, the same kind of meanness and bullying can happen when we are there too. CYBERBULLYING is what you call bullying or meanness that is online.

The way it looks online is…

being mean to other players in a video game
posting rude comments on other people’s webpages, photos, or videos
posting and sharing embarrassing or mean photos of someone online
excluding someone from participating online

These things make us feel just like we did with real life bullying…

Sometimes people are meaner online than in real life, because if you were with the person in real life, they would be able to see how bad you felt about their behaviour. Online they aren’t seeing how you are reacting to what you they are saying (example crying), and that makes people think less about the impact of what they are doing.

Here is a short video that shows an example of cyberbullying and what you can do about it.

In the video the girl talks to her parents who talks to her teachers and they put an end to the cyberbullying. It is really important to tell a trusted adult about cyberbullying if it is happening to you. They can help you to figure out what to do about it and how to stop it.

Another way to be a great digital citizen online is to stand up to cyberbullying when you see it happening to someone else. This is called being an UPSTANDER. Tell your friend who is being bullied how great you think they are. Tell the bully that mean comments are unwelcome. Or tell a trusted adult about your friend being bullied.

And finally, there are buttons on websites that say BLOCK and REPORT ABUSE.

- BLOCK means that you have the ability to block somebody from being able to see or comment on your account.
- REPORT ABUSE is a way to tell the website or game owner that someone is misbehaving on the site.

Never use these buttons as a joke because they are permanent and can’t be undone.

Now you know how you can stand up to cyberbullying and be a great digital citizen.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

In the comments on this page, write about a time that you experienced cyberbullying or saw it happen to someone else. If you haven’t seen examples of this, write about one thing you will do if it happens to you or to a friend.

Category: cyberbullying, Digital Citizenship, gaming | 4 Comments

May 20

Charli and Dixie talk about Cyberbullying

Charli D’Amelio needs no introduction and in this video she talks about a huge issue of concern to everyone, cyberbullying. We are online more now than ever. And with new social media apps and games, comes more and more opportunity to comment on strangers videos and posts and even send them DMs. Opening up our ability to communicate with new people around the world brings with it a lot of responsibility. The types of comments we are posting online say much more about us than they do about the person we are commenting on.

Cyberbullying can take many forms. A few of them are;

Trolling – The kind of bullying Charli and Dixie talk about in the video is getting hateful comments. This is called trolling. Trolls often target the same people over and over. It is important to report and block trolls when you notice them becoming a problem.
Masquerading – Someone sets up a fake profile just so that they can bully others anonymously. This is an extremely cowardly kind of bullying that makes the bully harder to catch and report.
Outing or doxing – sharing private or personal information about someone else without that person’s permission and usually to cause humiliation and shame. This can include information about or private photos and videos of that person.
Exclusion – leaving a person out of online groups or hangouts, or intentionally posting comments or photos in which a friend is excluded. This can seem like a passive form of bullying but has serious consequences on self-esteem.
Dissing – Everyone now knows about the popularity of diss tracks. But by supporting diss tracks and other forms of dissing, you are supporting bullying and spreading hate. Dissing is an attempt to ruin another person’s reputation and is often founded on false information or deliberate lies about a person.

Cyberbullying is a difficult and mostly unavoidable aspect of living a good part of our lives online. Building resilience (or a thick skin) is one way of coping with this problem. Knowing that it isn’t about YOU, it is about the person trying to hurt you. They can be feeling jealous, they may have a bad home life, they may be trying to win followers through meanness, they might be insecure. It is not that there is something wrong with you personally. And always talk about this issue with a trusted relative or teacher if things are bad. They can help you figure out some next steps.

Watch this video and post in the comments if you’ve used any of these ways to stop a cyberbully before.

Category: cyberbullying, Digital Citizenship | LEAVE A COMMENT