Cyberbullying is probably the number one area for young digital education.

In the UK, a reported 22% of children and young people claim to have been the target of cyberbullying making this one of the most important new areas of behaviour to understand and to equip schools, carers and young people with the ability to respond.

– 2006 Research carried out by the Anti-Bullying Alliance

The Anti-Cyberbullying video produced by Digizen.org is one of the best I have seen. It has many subtle scenes that even elementary students will pick up on. A great place to start a discussion on bullying and/or cyberbullying in the classroom or technology lab.

Viral emails, spam, identify theft and cyberbullying are identified by security guru CISSP and its band of volunteers as areas for zero-tolerance and an effort initiated in the UK and now in North America is taking shape. To help create a better and safer world for our children – go to (ISC)2 and help make the world cyber safe.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Dr. Harold Koplewicz: The Psychiatric Issues Behind Cyberbullying (huffingtonpost.com)
• When Your Child Is the Cyberbully – Well Blog (momblognetwork.com)
• Who Should Punish Cyberbullies? (patspapers.com)

The current generation will do a quick search on YouTube to troubleshoot a hard level on their video games. They live in a video world and love to share their thoughts in pictures, video and sound. To support a more engaged learner on your next reading project – consider a book trailer. It’s like a movie trailer but it’s about a book.

After we completed our historical fiction unit, my fourth grade students created 30 second video trailers on the book they had read. They included the title, author, and comments on why the book was part of the historical fiction genre. Further, they included a tease or shared an exciting part of the book – all using a simple microphone. Later we added pictures related to what we were saying and even background music from the public domain. If they write their script for homework, this can be achieved in two classes.

Here are a few:

Journal of Ben Achida – Trailer by Alex 4MR

A Long Way from Chicago – Trailer by Eden 4MR

Year of Impossible Goodbyes – Trailer by Kevin 4MR

We store them on our school library server, but these could just as easily be saved as regular podcasts on iTunes. We used GarageBand using MiniMacs and USB headphones with a microphone; but PhotoStory for the PC would work just as fine (and for free)

Here is some more information about Book Trailers and other software that can be used (even some image and sound libraries)

Go figure, I wait until Easter; the time of the returning from the dead, that I use my VPN subscription to good effect.

Many expats working in China have had to resort to VPN private network (a yearly subscription will run you around $50) to tunnel through the filters the government has implemented.

Enough said, I look forward to keeping this blog updated regularly. Cheers.

Video on Goods and Services

BrainPopJr’s Goods & Services

Producers

Consumers

BrainPop’s Supply & Demand

Online Reading

Should kids get pocket money? (from CBBC) with comments

Top Tips for kids on saving money (from CBBC)

Goods & Service Flash Games

Ten colorful pictures to be sorted

Ten colorful people to be sorted via Consumer or Producers

Online Quizes to test your knowledge

Goods & Services Quiz

Supply & Demand Quiz

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Earth Day. As my wife and I explained it to our daughter last night — we referred to it as Earth’s birthday or celebration of all its beauties. It’s also a time to discover things about our planet. My son’s PreK3 teacher, Maliha Iqbal, has run an amazing compost program all year and I know all those students feel they are saving the world.

Here are some things to do with your child or students:

• Discover your Earth Day IQ
• Another quiz – How Green are you living?
• Online game – Michael Michael go recycle (Thanks to Ms Hossack for sharing this)
• Online game – Clean Up Your World
• Online game – Free the Beach – learn types of recycling
• BrainPop – begin watching cartoon video on human effects on the environment
• Online Concentration Puzzle
• Dr Suess Online game – Lorax Save the Trees – requires latest version of Shockwave

It makes for many colorful math displays too – always nice with spring and parent conferences coming.

Alright everyone. We have two busy sessions planned so let’s get started. Can anyone tell me WHAT IS the Internet?

My favorite answer is from here – http://www.davesite.com/webstation/inet101/net01.shtml

Now, what is both scary and exciting is that the Internet doesn’t really have rules. There are no Internet Police. Yes, you can get put in jail for some things, but that depends on the laws of the country you are living. Now the Internet is one of the closest things to magic in our world – it’s full of amazing facts, video and people. But, we have to be careful because it also has words and pictures from people who aren’t very nice. So, when you encounter inappropriate stuff, just move away – often they are doing it to get a reaction. Don’t let them control you. Today we’ll begin learning how to use the Internet safer and better. Before we start, let’s take some guesses for how old the Internet is.

Here is my favorite answer – http://www.howoldistheinternet.com

So the Internet is new technology. Let’s have a quick review with a technology we are all familiar with. Now, it’s not in English, but it does have subtitles, but I think you’ll figure it out very quickly.

View A monk learning ‘new technology’

This playful skit pokes fun at people struggling with new technology, but we all have to push through it and realize the benefits of learning something new. Now, when you use the internet with your ‘browser’ which is a program that helps your computer understand the information on the Internet – you have to know how to open, close, and go back. Let’s have a quick review of the browser (FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari) that your school uses. Also, take time to enjoy the ‘refresh’ button which tells the computer to ‘look again’ at the page because it may have changed. This is useful if the webpage loads slowly or you’ve made changes to a website in another window.

Now, some things you will encounter on the Internet will be so amazing, you will wonder if they are true.

Watch Flying Penguins

The BBC is one of the top providers of real information. Why would they spend money to produce this kind of video? How do you check if something is not real on the Internet? Well – it may sound silly – but I use the Internet to help me. For the penguins – I type “flying penguins hoax” and hit enter – the second choice indicates it was an April Fools joke. The word hoax means lie or trick. Actually, if you go on YouTube, they have a great video showing how they made penguins fly.

Often people will get emails that are trying to trick them. My family is convinced that freezing water or microwaving water in a plastic bottle will give them cancer. Even though I show them when I google “freezing water bootle hoax” the whole page is full of links to show it’s not true and they are safe. Even big people get fooled. My wife’s former high school students emailed her to inform her that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed it’s name to KFC because it was no longer using real chickens. She believed it. Not true as I showed her with a quick search. But, she insisted they were now college students at the highest level of school. Even the best fall. Whenever you are not sure of something, add hoax and search the Internet for what is real.

Even when the information is true, it’s not the best.

Watch this video on how to avoid being Misinformed – a video designed and produced by a student.

Three key concepts came up in this video:

1. Is the website the best authority on the topic?
2. Is this website biased?
3. Is this information correct or outdated?

The first, we’ll discuss next session. Biased means the website is trying to push a particular opinion. In the video, it implies a building company may say it’s product is the best, but maybe that’s not true. If you visited the websites of America’s top restaurants, they’d all say they have the best hamburger or ribs or chicken wings, but obviously they can’t all be right. Some fact quotes are really opinions or the person/company may have a desire for you to believe them so they can get rich by your actions (you buy their product) so we have to be careful with the information we read. Finally, the information could be inaccurate.

Look at these two websites:

Pluto is a planet (from Space.com, June 6, 2008)

Pluto is not a planet (from UniverseToday.com, April 10, 2008)

The most recent article is that Pluto is a real planet. They both can’t be right. So who is right??

Finally, we have some homework. Humans are expanding and ruining the homes of various animals. Our school has some money and we can support one animal. Use your research skills and select one animal that we will ‘save’ before the actions of humans cause it to become extinct.

Will we save the ‘Tree Octopus‘ or the ‘Mountain Walrus‘ or the ‘Sabre Tooth Salmon‘? [I open each window for a few seconds so students can get a quick peek at each - please be sure to later on correct their beliefs, else we'll have a whole generation of folks vehemently believing a hoax 'because it was on the Internet']

2nd session:

I begin with a quick review of last class. We discuss which creature we’d try to save and discuss why someone would create a website on something like a ‘tree octopus’

So being able to determine the validity or truth/accuracy of a website is an important skill.

Watch this 6 minute video on Evaluating a website.

Now, on with being a better searcher of information. My favorite video for instructing this is Common Craft’s 3-min video: Web Search Strategies in Plain English.

Finally as this library ninja will attest, don’t forget that books have valid information and can sometimes you can find the information there faster than with the computer.

If time permits, I have an open discussion or in small groups discussing what we have learned from these two sessions.Technorati Tags: informationliteracy, “evaluate a website”, “digital literacy”

Not only did I beg my administrators to give one to each teacher in my division, but I’m picking up two for my own kids. My three year old son learned the flip camera in ten seconds. It was insanely easy. His face lit up when he saw what he could do with it. It’s the #1 AV device to be signed out in our library, we can’t keep up with the demand.

The ease to record and save your videos on a PC or Mac computer will have teachers quickly saving conversations, reading circles, fun activities and assessments. Here are two quick examples of how it was used in our elementary division. A grade 2 science tech animation reflection and a grade 4 literature circle discussion recorded in three six minute videos with one sample here.

All the big media companies are covering a positive story on Pure Digital. The New York Times stated that Pure Digital was one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley. I would take it step further to say, besides picking up a Flip Camera for your loved one, to also pick a 100 shares during this tough economic time because this gadget will be selling this holiday and I expect in the future as well. It has a future in the classroom and the playground.