Third grade is a big year for digital literacy. It's the first year the kids have Chromebooks and Google accounts. We have been learning lessons on digital literacy mainly through the "Passion Projects" I have been teaching the students how to do. They are done through Google Classroom on Google Slides. When we begin the project, I remind students that they are only allowed to use the internet to find information about their topic. I let them do their passion project on the topic of their choice, as long as it is not violent or inappropriate in some way. Once they have their topic, they have to stick to it. The lesson here is to teach kids that in school we use the laptops as tools for study. They do not have the freedom to look at anything they want. Some kids do not follow this rule. Sometimes, they get told on by their peers. Other times I can tell that they are off task. Usually there is a group of boys huddled together staring at a screen with fascinated faces. When I approach, the page is exited out of. I do a history search, and find out if they were on a page they should not have been. It's an important lesson to know that your search histories are not private. (If your teacher is not checking to see what you are looking at, you can be sure that advertisers are.)
Another important lesson that students have learned so far this year is how to chat. In Google Classroom, unless the instructor turns off the option, students can chat with each other. I do not tell them about this option, but they typically find it pretty quickly. They like to chat little shout outs to each other. Some get carried away and it's pretty obvious they get off task chatting with each other. I let them know, respectfully and discretely, that all of their chats are visible to the teacher. So this important lesson in digital literacy is to be careful what you chat because it is visible by more people than you think. By experiencing the slight embarrassment of discovering this in this way, I think it makes a mark that will hopefully stay with them and make them less prone to chatting TMI (too much information) in the future.
1 Comment
Megan Burton
2/23/2020 09:25:22 pm
It's a great reminder to read what 3rd graders are experiencing with technology. By the time I see them in middle school, students have gotten good at doing what they want and hiding what they know they shouldn't be doing. At the same time, so many students are either interested enough in what they're learning or understand the consequences well enough that I don't have to deal with the drawbacks so much anymore.
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AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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