Digital Bytes - 24th April, 2017

	A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics Infographics help us understand complicated data sets and simplify the complex. With outstanding examples and easy-to-understand text, this guide for beginners  will help you learn about what makes a good infographic, the various types of infographics and steps to create a powerful infographic.
	Teaching Digital Citizenship with Seesaw A lot of the behaviours we want our students to exhibit in regards to digital citizenship can be taught in Seesaw. Teacher Heather Marrs explains in her post, “Don’t Teach Digital Citizenship - Embed it!” how she uses Seesaw to teach her help her students learn how they can interact in a digital environment.
	Five Ways Humor Boosts Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving in the Classroom John Spencer raises some great points in support of humour and fun in the classroom, particularly as a model of creativity and divergent thinking for our students. Read about the Five Ways Humor Boosts Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving in the Classroom to get your week off to a great start!

Learning How to Focus

Take a look at the photo below. What does it tell you? What do you notice?

It tells me that with close to 60 tabs open, this student was so distracted by the extension that he/she wasted a significant amount of time being off task. The worrying thing is that if this student continues these patterns of behaviour, he/she will find it increasingly hard to focus on learning. Let's face it - learning is our business!

But how much direct teaching goes into helping students learn how to focus? I'm willing to wager not enough. We need to be fair to our students: we can't expect them to pick it up through osmosis. As teachers, part of our role is to teach into how to focus, not merely that one should focus.

Telling students to delete distracting elements such as non-educational chrome extensions is not enough; students need to understand the reasons behind the request - why is it unsuitable for learning?

After all, they're not doing this maliciously - they have a genuine curiosity and love making their devices feel like their own. The trouble is, many of their choices have a negative impact on their ability to stay on track and focused.

Helping students to identify what helps their learning and what hinders their learning is a great place to start.

Chrome Extensions

Recently, we had a number of students install a Chrome Extension called Tabby Cat. It's a cute, harmless-looking extension that shows a different cat every time you open a new tab. You can interact with it, and sometimes you will get little gifts to play with. Sounds ok, right?

I asked the class to tell me what they liked about this Tabby Cat. Predictably, the responses were as follows:

"It's cute!"

"It's fun because you get toys to play with if you keep opening new tabs."

"Every new tab is different."

"I want to see what is going to happen next and if I will get any gifts"

Helping students understand that each new picture of a cat is essentially rewarding distracting behaviour, can help them make better choices.

One recommendation is to replace Tabby Cat with the Chrome Extension Momentum, which gives one new picture a day, together with the question: What is your main focus for today? This personal reminder prompts students that they have a task to complete, with a beautiful photo that doesn't change every tab. 

Vision and Movement

"Vision trumps all other senses,"  according to John Medina, author of Brain Rules. Approximately half of the brain's resources are dedicated to processing visuals. Our brains are attuned to noticing colour and movement, so moving backgrounds, animated gifs and scrolling advertisements draw our attention.

In a G3 class recently, we did an audit of our visual noise. Common things we saw were:

• Animated snow falling on Gmail backgrounds (or similar)
• Desktop backgrounds where the picture changes every 5 seconds
• Highly pixelated images used as desktop backgrounds

In pairs, students helped each other make good decisions to remove distracting movement - that was the easy part. The hard part was making good decisions about their desktop backgrounds. Saying goodbye to their favourite sports star or cartoon character was more of a challenge for some.

We discussed quality resolution of images being more pleasing to the eye. We also introduced the idea of colour association. Green is a calming colour (think, Green Rooms backstage in theatres) and blue can help with productivity. Encouraging students to choose a green/blue-based image that is high quality helped them see they still had some choice and the option of personalisation, but not at the expense of their focus.

Number of Desktops

Students using school laptops that don't go home, really have no need for multiple desktops. Deleting extra desktops will help to remove the temptation to swipe between apps.

Reader View (Safari) or Readability (Chrome Extension) 

When looking at websites, particularly those which have articles, using Reader View in Safari or  the Chrome Extension Readability can help strip away those annoying advertisements and other extraneous and distracting material, allowing us to focus primarily on the text and images in the article. Check out the tutorial below:

Effective Digital Reading using Safari Reader View from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Tidying your "Room" 

When in a rush, it's easy to leave your desktop background as a cluttered disaster, always thinking, "I'll clean it up later." Many of our student's desktops look like this (not unlike my teenage bedroom):

A secondary-click (right-click, or 2-finger tap) > Clean up by > Kind, helps organise files into groups of the same type. See below:

Once organised by kind, it's easy to trash all the screenshots and/or arrange files into folders.

We recommend moving files/folders to Google Drive or Documents on a Mac (depending on file type) rather than keep things on the desktop, so as to make startup as smooth as possible. Aesthetically, it's also more pleasing!

These suggestions are aimed at helping empower our younger students to make better choices by being well informed about distracting elements on their laptop. If you are interested in specific apps and Chrome Extensions to take managing distractions one step further (blocking specific sites etc), you may wish to check out our recent Parenting in the Digital Age resources.

Do you have any other great tips for managing distractions in primary? We welcome your ideas!

Parenting in the Digital Age - The Conversation Continues

Being the first group of people to parent the iPad generation certainly is an adventure.

On the one hand, we are amazed by their capabilities to navigate between applications, create movies, build websites and FaceTime their grandparents. On the other hand, we may feel anxious about buzzwords like 'screentime', 'game-addiction', 'distractions' and 'cyber bullying.'

Keep in mind that advances in technology have helped families in numerous ways. Here are some of our favourites:

• Communication - We can communicate quickly and easily with people around the globe via messages, email, FaceTime, FaceBook and instant messaging. In our international school setting, this is a huge benefit.
• Efficiency and Organisation - GPS has changed the nature of travel. We can find any address easily, even if we haven't been there before. We can use apps to organise our shopping list, to sell our used goods, and let's not forget do our banking.
• Learning - Now we can teach ourselves anything with the powers of YouTube, Pinterest and Google combined! Lost the rules to your board game? No problem! Need to change a tyre? Can do! Learning can be 24-7.
• Entertainment - It's only in the last few years that Netflix came into being! Developments in movie and video distribution, the gaming industry and the explosion of apps means there is a little something for everyone when it comes to entertainment.
• Medical - At the consumer end of the scale, fitness monitoring is now built into many devices, and made it easier to be aware of the need to keep exercising regularly. 

We are, however, realistic about the challenges facing parents too. We have put together a resource that has information, articles, and apps around common pressure points for parents. We have tried to provide a balanced perspective around some of these key issues so that you as parents can find an approach or strategy that best fits your parenting style.

We encourage you to keep the lines of communication open with your children. Inspired by the Key Jar, we have put together a list of questions that might help you begin some conversations with your child around some of these issues. Perhaps print them both off and mix them in together?

Common Sense Media has a lot of resources around parent concerns, so that is also a great source of information.

At the end of the day, each family is different, and you need to find the right combination of solutions to challenges that works for you. We hope these resources are a step in the right direction.

Please let us know any other resources you think might be useful, and we will do our best to add them.

Digital Bytes - 24th October 2016

	I See Math Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington uses photos of everyday objects and experiences to teach mathematics in a simple yet effective way. They start with an image and then add a story and a question about the image. This is all put in Google Slides which is then shared with students.
	Teaching Through the Camera Lens - 10 Activities with photos and video Photos and video are powerful tools in our classrooms. This article gives you 10 ways you can use them with your students to support learning. One example is a time lapse like this one created on a grade 4 trip to Sibu Malaysia.
flickr photo by mkhmarketing https://flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8540717756 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license	How you can Become a Champion of Digital Citizenship in your own Classroom Kayla Delzar reminds us that Digital Citizenship is no longer an “elective”, but something all teachers need to be modeling and actively teaching with their students. By way of example, she incorporates a ‘tweeter of the day’ to her classroom roles and responsibilities. This article contains more resources and ideas.

Digital Bytes - 24th October 2016

	I See Math Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington uses photos of everyday objects and experiences to teach mathematics in a simple yet effective way. They start with an image and then add a story and a question about the image. This is all put in Google Slides which is then shared with students.
	Teaching Through the Camera Lens - 10 Activities with photos and video Photos and video are powerful tools in our classrooms. This article gives you 10 ways you can use them with your students to support learning. One example is a time lapse like this one created on a grade 4 trip to Sibu Malaysia.
flickr photo by mkhmarketing https://flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8540717756 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license	How you can Become a Champion of Digital Citizenship in your own Classroom Kayla Delzar reminds us that Digital Citizenship is no longer an “elective”, but something all teachers need to be modeling and actively teaching with their students. By way of example, she incorporates a ‘tweeter of the day’ to her classroom roles and responsibilities. This article contains more resources and ideas.

Digital Bytes 11 April 2016

	Everybody Panic! 5 Ways Social Media is Changing your Brain Responding to a popular TED talk, Lisa Nielson attempts to debunk some of the myths raised. Some really interesting points! Check it out!
	The Real Me Prompted by a conversation she had with a group of people who argued it’s impossible to have decent conversations because people are “addicted to their phones”, Kim Cofino has written a thoughtful blog post in which she shares how she is the same person, both online and offline.
	14 Google Search Tricks Most of us use Google search every single day. The same can be said for our students. Have you ever wanted to compare two foods? Just write “vs” between the foods in the search box. What about scheduling an alarm for a nap? Google can do that. Have a look at these and other Google Search Tricks.

Digital Bytes 15th June 2015

In the last Digital Bytes for the academic year, we feature:

- Why Wunderlist Works - an app to manage task lists collaboratively;
- The 10 Most Valued Work Skills in 2020; and
- Apps that help limit time on the iPad.

All the best for a wonderful end to the year.

Digital Bytes 18th May

In this week's Digital Bytes, we learn why "How much screen time?" is the wrong question, how coding can help us learn how to learn, and how playing video games for 10 minutes a day can improve maths scores.

Digital Bytes March 9th 2015

This week's Digital Bytes features some excellent apps (organised by age level) for Coding, Art, Music, Writing and Film-making, a tutorial for moving incorrectly placed content in a Google Site, and some advice for parents for talking about Digital Citizenship at home with their children.

Parenting in the Digital Age

As parents, we all want what is best for our children. Kids are growing up in a digital age that is much different than the one we grew up in. Many parents are coming to grips with how they approach digital technology usage in their home. There are many approaches and every family and situation is unique. Parents have to decide what approach works best for them. There is no "one size fits all" method.

Technology brings many benefits to our lives.

One of the biggest benefits of technology is that it enables us to communicate very easily. Parents can keep in contact with their children via texts, phone or video calls. Many children regularly communicate using Skype with family members far away for free. Gone are the days of short, expensive, long distance calls to relatives. These same children are capturing photos and videos and sharing them with friends and family.

Technology has allowed us to have a window into the classroom that we have never had before. Teachers and students share photos, videos, work samples, voice recordings and many other things easily using technology. Big events like performances are often recorded or even live streamed so people who can't be at the event won't miss it.


Technology helps us with our efficiency and organization.
Not so long ago, trying to find someone else's location could be a very frustrating experience. Now when we are taking our children to something like a birthday party, we use the maps function on our phone to help us locate the address, and even get us there by guiding us every step of the way.

Shared calendars and to-do lists on our devices help to keep our schedules and lives organized. I know I feel less stressed about forgetting something when I have it written down on my phone. And if you haven't used the voice to text feature on your device recently, you should really try it out. I love it and I am excited about how it can help students in the classroom.

A little while ago, I found one of my favourite books online that is out of print and no longer in bookstores and had it delivered to my door. I didn't have to travel all that way to the little bookshop in Michigan - how is that for efficiency?

Technology provides entertainment.
Let's face it, we all use technology as a form of entertainment and that is a good thing. It might be your child building worlds in Minecraft or you playing a game of Scrabble. Never has it been so easy to rent a movie with the touch of a button or download an app that reinforces a concept a student has learned in an entertaining way.

Technology helps us learn.
When you want to find out about something, what is the first thing you and your family does? You Google it. It has become such an ingrained part of our lives that it is easy to take for granted. It wasn't that long ago where knowledge was stored in books and we had to use the card catalogue in the library as a starting point for our search. Memorizing information isn't the skill we value anymore; we value the ability to find and use information. And where do many teenagers look to find out about how to do something? YouTube has become the go to place to learn about something new.

But we aren't going to pretend that with all these benefits, there aren't any drawbacks to the technology. Parents have concerns about technology and their children. Screentime, inappropriate online content, digital distractions and cyber bullying are some of the issues that we sometimes hear when parents share their concerns.

Parents sometimes tell us that their children know more about the technology than they do and this worries them. Of course, this is not a new concern for parents. Every generation has a new technology that pushes against the previous generation. In 1815, educators had to fight to allow students to use paper and pencil instead of a slate. In 1941 at a principal's conference, there was resistance to students using the fountain pen because they would lose the ability to sharpen a pencil. There will always be new technology and, as parents, we can't put our head in the sand and make excuses that we don't know how it works.

The most important thing that you can do is be involved in your child's digital life.
Talk to them about what they are doing on the computer. Sit with them when they play that new game. Play it with them. Have conversations with your child about technology issues and concerns.

It is vital that you keep the lines of communication open.
We need to foster an environment in our homes where, if our children have a concern, they come and talk to us about it. Mistakes will be made. That is life. But we want kids to come to us so we can support them in learning from their mistakes.

One way to keep the lines of communication open is to regularly have conversations about technology related topics or situations with your family. Perhaps it could be a regular dinner time or family time conversation?

The topics for conversation can come from anyone in the family. Or you could choose a topic from some conversation starters we have prepared here.

You may also want to think about what style of parenting you may want to use when it comes to technology in your household. Here are three possible approaches.

1. Control Oriented Approaches - You as parents decide what happens.
You set the boundaries, rules and consequences. This doesn't mean that you can't have conversations with your child about issues. It just means that the child doesn't participate in the decision making process.

2. Conversational Approaches- Parents and children work together to decide what happens. Any boundaries, rules and consequences are discussed and set by both parents and children. You need to come to a consensus with your family about how to approach and respond to situations.

3. Disposition-Based Approaches - Children make the decisions with the coaching support of parents. 
In this approach, students are encouraged to make their own choices. Again, this doesn't mean that parents are not involved. Parents have conversations with their children about any issues and ask questions to provoke thinking and growth.

No matter which strategy you choose, here are some good question prompts when discussing an issue:
"Why do you want to do this?"
"What are your options?"
"What are the consequences of your actions?"
"How will your decision affect others?"
"Is this decision in your best interests in the long run?"

In each of the strategies above, the lines of communication are open between parents and children. The difference is who is the decision maker in the process - parents, parents and children, or children.

A fantastic resource for parents is Common Sense Media.  It is regularly updated and includes many helpful articles, videos and other resources

Below are some resources we have collated around some of the more common concerns for parents, with links to articles which provide different perspectives. There are also links grouped by parenting style, so you can find articles relevant to your parenting approach.

Heartbleed Headaches & How to Make Them Go Away

My favourite quote about passwords has always been:

"Passwords are like underwear: we should not leave them lying around, and should change them regularly." - Unknown

Most of us manage the first part quite nicely and keep our passwords hidden, however changing them regularly? That is another kettle of fish entirely!

I'm sure by now you will have heard of the Heartbleed Bug - a serious vulnerability in OpenSSL encryption, used by significant numbers of popular websites to protect data. This weakness can allow access to confidential data, including names, passwords and cookies. For more information about the Heartbleed Bug, please check out Heartbleed in a Nutshell. 

This vulnerability has been active for over 2 years, making it incredibly likely you need to sit up and take this seriously! 

Mashable produced a list of affected websites, so please check there for a more comprehensive overview, however many websites you use everyday are among those affected, including:
   
The thought of changing your passwords for all of your accounts is very overwhelming. Overwhelming, but necessary. As I was pondering possible password combinations, I saw a twitter post detailing a 50% sale on 1Password - a piece of software that can help you store, generate and protect your passwords, while you only have to remember (yep, you guessed it) 1Password! 

I decided that in the interests of managing all of my passwords for various accounts, buying a license for 1Password was a sensible decision! It is also available for iOS, which helped seal the deal. 

To get started on your Mac (or PC), you simply purchase the license, download 1Password and enter the license information. Their support website is helpful in getting set up. 

Installing the 1Password browser extensions for Chrome, Safari & Firefox, made the next stage in getting set up a lot easier. For each of my accounts (e. g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.), I would change and save a new password. With the extensions installed, 1Password prompted me to see if I wanted to save this new password. Easy. 

I also downloaded the 1Password app for iOS, and it was super simple to log in to my account and do a wifi sync, meaning I can now access all my 1Password information on all of my devices. 

1Password offers a host of other features, including the ones outlined in the image below.  So far I have added extras like credit card and passport details. Really handy for when you want to do some online shopping, but don't have your credit card on hand. Same goes for booking flights when your passport is at home...!

   
Next on my list is to use Strong Password Generator to help me create sensible passwords. As I only have to remember ONE, I feel much less concerned about making a password too difficult. 

Have you used a password management tool before? I would love to hear your thoughts. 

Image Credits: 
Underwear - by Keri-Lee Beasley (made with paper by 53) 
Facebook, Flickr 
Twitter 
All other icons freeware found at iconarchive.com

Grade 1 Students Start Blogging with Easy Blogger Jr

At UWCSEA we like to empower our students to share their learning in lots of different ways. They take charge at Student-Led Conferences, and interact with various service groups as part of the school year.

In Grade 1, we wanted to add blogging to an authentic audience to the list, both as a part of our Digital Citizenship curriculum, and an extension to their critical thinking and literacy development.

The app Easy Blogger Jr (developed by teachers) was the perfect starting point. In Ms Robinson's class, we first discussed what a blog is, and why we use blogs.

Grade 1 BRo thought that we use blogs:
- To share what we have been doing.
- To help us remember our learning.
- So people far away (e.g. Grandparents in other countries) can see what we are learning.

We let the class know we wanted their expertise in helping share their learning with others on our class blog. Discussions then ensued about what we needed to have in a blog post. We came up with a list of things to think about as we blog.

The class decided on the following:
- Use sensible words.
- Use pictures to show what we are doing.
- Use words to explain.
- Think about what we want to say first.
- Use a storyteller voice.

We then invited students to help demonstrate the app (we reflected the app on the interactive whiteboard so all students could see), and created our first blog post as a class. From there, students paired up and created posts about the learning that week.

Here is an example of a blog post Jack & Zakia created to explain the things they want to remember when blogging.

Why not leave them a comment and tell them what you think!

Email, Spam, YouTube Subscriptions and Snopes

One of the many wonderful things about having Google Apps at our school is that our students are able to have GMail accounts. This really does enable them to have the functionality we adults enjoy with having an email, with the added bonus of learning to use it in a supportive school environment. It allows teachers to play a role in helping guide them in appropriate use.

In Grade 5, some students expressed their frustration at the many emails they were being sent by YouTube to their school accounts. Some were puzzled as to how this happened in the first place, so we set about addressing the issue.

While logged in to their school GMail account, some students had (deliberately or inadvertently) subscribed to some YouTube channels. This most likely happened at home, where other family members share the same computer. Daily notifications were coming to their Inbox, alerting them to new content.

The quickest way to solve this problem was to show students where they can manage their subscriptions, and remove subscriptions that they weren't interested in, or might distract from their learning.

We explored how to unsubscribe from other emails too, e.g. marketing or other spam emails, using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of such emails. Other options include reporting the email as spam (the exclamation point in the circle above the email), or creating a filter to delete unwanted emails.

The subject of chain-mail or stories that employ scare tactics to get users to forward the email on to others, was another topic of discussion.

Frequently, students recognise that an email might be chain-mail and untrue, although they forward it on just in case, thus perpetuating the problem. Snopes.com is a great website to check the validity of emails they receive. Simply type the keywords into the search box, and you will find out whether it is true or false, when it originated and how it has been spreading.

Our aim is that students learn the skills to effectively manage their school email accounts, which will help them manage any other email accounts they may have.

Digital Citizenship in the Primary School

Below is a summary of the main points from our parent workshop on Digital Citizenship in the Primary School. You will also find links to some of the tools/sites we recommended in the session.

Our approach to Digital Citizenship

UWCSEA is one of the pilot schools for the Generation Safe 360 Assessment. This rigorous approach ensures all stakeholders in the school community are committed to Digital Citizenship, and have a solid structure in place to support students, teachers and parents. We achieved Bronze status recently, and we are working towards accreditation of Silver and Gold status.

Every student/parent has signed a Learning Technologies Agreement, which aims to get students/parents to begin the conversation around responsible use with technology at school and at home.

We are adapting resources from Common Sense Media as a basis for our Digital Citizenship Curriculum. Lessons are based around three broad strands: Safety and Security, Learning with Technology, and Digital Citizenship.
Sample Infant Unit - Going Places Safely
Sample Junior Unit - Rating Websites

We promote balanced use of technology. We advocate physical activity, face-to-face contact with peers and encourage students to use the best tool for the task at hand. If that is a pencil and paper, no problem! We're not forcing kids to use technology. Instead, we see it as one of many tools they can use for learning.

The school has a very useful Parent iLearn Information website you might like to bookmark. It has links to school policies, advice, and guides to sites such as Facebook.

How can Parents help?

( BY NC SD ) flickr photo by sean dreilinger:
http://flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/3069423809/

Embrace their world
Involving yourself in the activities your child enjoys through technology can go a long way towards mutual respect and understanding. Why not try that game your son/daughter has been hooked on lately? Find out why it is so engaging.

As them to teach you some of the things they know - they may well have discovered many shortcuts you could benefit from!

Encourage Balanced Use
Help them understand the importance of outdoor play, varied interests and face-to-face interactions with friends.

Dialogue
The Common Sense Media Agreement is an excellent starting point for beginning the conversation. Maintaining an open line of communication with your child is crucial for your parent/child relationship in the years ahead.

Set Boundaries
Parents sometimes hesitate in setting boundaries for technology use because technology can be used as a tool for learning as well as for entertainment and social activity. Setting terms of use guidelines, such as no laptops in bedrooms, time limits or keeping mobile phones in a central place at bedtime are suggestions you may wish to consider as a starting point. This resource provides some good suggestions for time limits, and this site provides some great tips for reducing screen time.

Role Model
You are your child's most important role model with technology. It is unfair to ask them to switch off devices if you won't do the same. Show them how you maintain balance in your life and ask them to help monitor your technology use as well.

No Bullying
Let them know that bullying is not to be tolerated, whether in person or online. We frequently say, "If you wouldn't say it in person, don't say it online." Reinforcing this message helps students see how serious it is.

Privacy
Help your child understand that in today's cut-and-paste world, they need to be especially careful about what they 'say' online.

Navigating and setting up appropriate privacy settings on any social networking site they may be using is important, as is having strong passwords and keeping them private.

Resources to support parents

View Pure is a tool to help eliminate comments/related videos from YouTube when showing them to kids. This does require pre-screening videos, however is a much more pleasing interface to view from than YouTube itself.

Have you set up strict filtering as the default option when doing a Google search? This link to a quick video tutorial will walk you through the process.

For younger students, you may find exploring the parental controls available on a Mac to be useful. Parental Controls allow you to limit specific apps, or block access to certain websites, set time limits for usage and/or restrict access at certain times of the day. While these controls can be useful, we do encourage you to talk with your child about any concerns you may have as well.

For older students with whom you think distraction may be an issue, there are a range of tools to help track time and/or manage distractions when using computers. You may like to explore:
Self Control (for Mac)
Self Restraint (for Windows/Linux)
Rescue Time

Here is a blog post from the Digital Literacy team about Safety Online in the Early Years which has some useful strategies including a list of kid-friendly search engines.

Next Year

We are planning more parent workshops for next year, and as always, are keen to get feedback so we can best meet your needs. Please complete this brief survey to help us in our planning.