Educational Technology Websites - EDUC 639 Wk 4

 

Educational Technology Websites - EDUC 639 Wk 3

 

EDUC 639: Security of Student Data

 

Security of Student Data 

The terms data privacy and data security sound synonymous, but they are not. Data privacy is an ‘umbrella term’ that covers many aspects of this issue. Largely it is made up of state and federal laws, and the expectation of the privacy of individuals. Those expectations might be, but not limited to, no unauthorized access, use, loss, or destruction of data. This may seem simple, but when you start thinking about where companies and municipalities, school districts store their data and who they pay to manage it, it can get quite complicated. How do you legislate “The Cloud”? (SPI Briefing Room, 2015) Where are these databases actually stored? Are they in your city, state, or (even) country?

This has been a growing issue for school districts around the world for some time. However, under the conditions that learning has been happening the last year or so of the global COVID-19 pandemic, this issue has blown up to almost a crisis level in many school districts. Matthew Ketchum, director of EdTech, Modesto City Schools, has some great advice for educators. He suggests that we remain ever mindful as we continue to add new technology apps, tools, and programs to our repertoires. Seek out our local and federal state laws for guidance, making certain that vendors have a clear, accessible, privacy policy to avoid the possibility that student data could be sold. (Dyknow, 2020)

Tools to help check student privacy compliance:

Common Sense Education’s privacy evaluation tool.

iKeepSafe Badging System for vendors.

Student Data Privacy Alliance CA & Nationwide Database

Code of Virginia § 22.1-20.2. Student data security.

 

References

Dyknow. (2020, September 3). A Crash Course on Student Data Privacy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4CjhqieFns

SPI Briefing Room. (2015, July 20). Data Privacy vs. Data Security [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frFVppv2Q8k

EDUC 639: Fostering Digital Citizenship in our Students

 

Blog: Fostering Digital Citizenship in our Students                                                  EDUC 639

Digital citizenship is a hot topic in education today. As educators, how can we teach and/or encourage our students to responsibly participate in and contribute to the digital world? The ISTE Educator standard 3b suggests that we “establish a learning culture that promotes curiosity and critical examination of online resources and fosters digital literacy and media fluency”. Okay, that sounds great, but how exactly do we accomplish that? One very vital way to begin to establish this learning culture that fosters digital literacy and media fluency is to get our students’ parents on board as collaborative allies.

Empowering parents with the support they need to understand the importance of digital citizenship will also foster literacy and fluency. Keeping up with their student’s apps and social media can be overwhelming to parents and teachers alike. That is why it is important to become each other’s allies and we can all grow our digital citizenship together as we teach our students how to do the same.

Keegan Korf had some wonderful suggestions in this TEDxOmaha video. 

·                    Listen
·         Educate Ourselves (Parents and Teachers)
·         Seek out resources available to manage digital literacy
·         Investigate digital laws with your child(ren)/students, for example Sexting Laws
·         Explore social media your child(ren)/students are using to better help them navigate those waters more responsibly
·         Set screen time limits, such as charging all devices in parent/guardian’s room at night after 10pm.

References

ISTE Standards for Educators. (n.d.). https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators

TEDxTalks. (2017, November 14). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztgSr42CSEI

EDUC 639 Blog: Digital Rights

 

How do we guard our privacy in this digital age? It is a common misconception that “we” (Americans? Humankind?) have the inalienable right to our privacy. Is this a basic human right? Is it due to the 4^th amendment (search and seizure)? The answer is a definitive, “No.” Privacy is a concept that is protected only by legal fiction. With each advance in new technology our concept of privacy has been and continues to be eroded. In a TEDx talk in 2016, Nicholas Martino said that “If we can not protect ourselves we can not be ourselves.” (TEDx Talks, 2016)

            Five years after the fact, I’m wondering what this speaker would have to say about our new virtual and hybrid classroom environments that have evolved this past year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020? Many questions go unanswered even today as we are screaming up on the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Is it legal (or ethical) to live-stream a classroom? Is remote learning itself legal? Must cameras be “on” for virtual learning?

            I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but I can share with you some of the disadvantages of virtual learning. When we do not require cameras to be on in the virtual classroom we are attempting to protect student privacy, but we are also giving them license to walk away and disengage from the learning content being taught. Many students lay their heads down on the table, lay down in bed, or on the couch intending to ‘listen’ and fall asleep. With cameras off, there is nearly zero connection between students or between teachers and students. No eye contact, and certainly no non-verbal behavioral cues.  

            It has been my practice to ask for cameras to be on to take attendance, and then I encourage them to stay on so that we stay engaged in our learning together. I do not require the camera to stay on, mostly because that is not a hill I’m ‘willing to die on’. Pick your battles, but encourage that visual interaction!

Resources

TEDx Talks. (2016, January 21). Privacy in the Digital Age | Nicholas Martino | TEDxFSCJ [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuhifEL5VsU

EDUC 639 - Blog: The Importance of Teaching Media Fluency/Literacy

Promoting Media Fluency in the Classroom

        We all can recognize the fact that the number of hours most of humankind spends a day in front of media of some sort has skyrocketed in the last decade, the amount of time our children and youth spend, even more so. I can not imagine how those numbers have multiplied over the last year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The face of our work and school lives has transformed this past year into something we could not have imagined just 12 months ago. What we have found is that we are no longer merely consumers of media but producers as well. In order to continue to excel in our work and school lives, humankind has a deep need to become fluent in all avenues of media literacy. “Today we need to be able to communicate as effectively with graphical and multi-media formats as we do with words and text. Media fluency helps us to develop these abilities.” (Wabisabi Learning, 2016)

            As educators, we have a weighty burden to not only provide media literacy education for our students, but in many cases, we must bridge that gap for ourselves first! Becoming media literate means we must teach students to “apply critical thinking to media message and” “use media to create their own messages”. This is “a key 21st-century skill. Media Literacy is critical to” students’ future educational endeavors and their “future participation in the civic and economic life of our democracy”. ("What is media literacy?", 2014)

            Media fluency demands critical listening skills, the ability to analyze, verbalize and verify information, separating facts from opinions. We need to be fluent also in the ‘wrappers’ the information reaches us in, the specific medium utilized. Acquiring next the skills to respond or communicate using that media’s form, flow, and align it correctly for the audience at hand. Becoming media literate means we have the ability to interpret the media message (wrappers and all), evaluate the impacts of those messages on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and then be able to produce our own media thoughtfully and diligently. ("What is media literacy?", 2014)

            Becoming media fluent or literate is imperative for students as they approach their future educational and civic endeavors, it will empower them to engage in a global media environment. “Today’s messages come in many forms and literacy can no longer refer simply to the ability to read and write.” ("What is media literacy?", 2014)

(Media Literacy Now, 2017)

References

Media Literacy Now. (2017, January 17). What is Media Literacy? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIaRw5R6Da4

Wabisabi Learning. (2016, February 16). Media Fluency [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myYUGyAjqII

What is media literacy? (2014, January 28). Media Literacy Now. https://medialiteracynow.org/what-is-media-literacy/

            

 

EDUC 639 Wk. 3 - Blog: Learning Culture

 

One thing that remains constant in this world of ours is change. Hand in hand with this truth of humankind is that when it comes to change, we always struggle against it. We go long stretches of time and we get comfortable and complacent with how we live, work, or worship. Then something big comes along, like a world-wide pandemic, and we all must learn to approach our lives work differently to survive.

In the past, we have been known to take a very one-dimensional approach to learning ‘from’ technological sources. We cannot simply read excerpts or watch video clips and answer multiple-choice questions to demonstrate authentic learning. This ‘learning’ is only in our short-term memory long enough to pass the quiz. Learning ‘with’ technology perpetrates a much different outcome. One where people can use technology as a cognitive tool and complete authentic tasks with the learned skills and solve problems that occur in real-world scenarios. (Carr-Chellman & Rowland, 2017)

Nigel Paine reminded us this week in our video content, that no matter where we work it is far better to establish a learning culture within our workplace, rather than to take that one-dimensional approach of the read/watch + multiple-choice quiz to demonstrate learning or knowledge. This approach might be appropriate for formative assessments to inform instruction, but not summative assessments where we need to see knowledge and skills demonstrated authentically. Paine describes learning culture as managing change and transformation, that can take insight from an outside source and quickly incorporate it into policy, and quickly acting on it. This produces workers who feel confident in their growing skill sets, and therefore, more competent. Paine implies that having confidence in your ability to execute your duties then creates an ongoing culture of competency as your working skills improve and increase.  (Paine, 2019)

Resources

Carr-Chellman, A. A., & Rowland, G. (2017). Issues in Technology, Learning, and Instructional Design. Routledge.

Paine, N. (2019). What is a Learning Culture?
. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9AAw3vcXs.