ruthful

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Working in the library at our school, I have seen many examples of both acceptable  and unacceptable use of computers. We have banks of computers in the library that students may come and use and various times of the day. Most of the screens of the computers are visible from the checkout desk, so it has been fairly easy to monitor. Some of the most common problems have been students going on Facebook or trying to watch YouTube videos which are not related to their education. It has become much harder to monitor students’ use of computers now that our school is going one-to-one beginning with this year’s senior class. Students often sit with their screen away from the desk and will sometimes play games or watch videos instead of concentrating on schoolwork. Students can be monitored remotely while on campus, and they all know that this is part of the computer use agreement. Still, they know that there is a good chance that they won’t be caught, and so far, the consequences for minor infractions are not clear or much of a deterrent.

It is important for every educational institution to have clear rules and regulations regarding computer use and internet access. As technology quickly changes, it is important to keep these guidelines updated. While our school does already have an AUP in place for middle school and high school students, accessible through the online student handbooks, more work needs to be done on these documents to make them more complete. Since there was nothing in place for elementary school, three teachers from our school, as part of the COETAIL cohort, collaborated on creating an Elementary Computer AUP, with a view to add to the existing information available to parents through the school website. Our AUP is viewable here:

CAJ Elementary AUP and Supporting Documents

We worked on outlining a few basic rules for computer use in the library and this will be added to our school’s guidelines for behavior. Most students know the rules pertaining to library computer use, but it helps to have those rules simplified, clearly stated and written down so that they can be referenced should any problems arise. The following “Library Use” topic under the heading “Technology Policies and Procedures” will be added to our staff information database called “Sophie” and will be linked to the student handbooks.

We also created an AUP Commitment Letter to be signed and returned by the parents of Elementary students at the beginning of the year. This letter is included in the document linked above. Realizing that most of the parents of grade school children have many questions and concerns regarding their computer  use and online presence, we are planning to hold a series of parent tech information workshops where parents can be shown exactly how their children will be using computers, the internet, blogging, etc. An outline of the first two planned workshops is included in the above document.

Because many parents have fears and questions about the safety and use of technology in the hands of their children, it is best to address these issues at the beginning of the year. Knowledge is power and it is also a great motivator to encourage parents to become more involved in their child’s education. With their parents gaining tech experience alongside them, students will be able to expand the boundaries of their learning far beyond the classroom.

Even the youngest elementary students are excited by the things that they can do with a computer and with the information that is available to them. They have such a curiosity about the world and they have such a diversity of interests. It is thrilling to me to see students as young as Kindergarten and First Grade take an intense interest in a range of subjects from slugs to bridges to poetry to singularities. Technology provides such a depth of resources for students of all ages; it is our responsibility as educators to help make the bridge to their quest as singularly safe and as poetically rich as possible.

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“Personal branding, by definition, is the process by which we market ourselves to others.” This is the essence of an article by Dan Schawbel called, “Personal Branding 101; How to Discover and Create Your Brand.” What is my brand and what do I stand for? My current job is librarian, but my brand may have more to do with writing for children. Do I even need a brand? While one may question the need for self-marketing, if one tumbles into the adventure of looking for a new job, the value of having a personal brand may suddenly become apparent. An individual may already have a personal brand of sorts, in fact, and not even know it.

This topic interests me, not because I am currently searching for a new job, but because I am launching into the world of digital publishing and realize that, as an author, I am responsible for the promotion and branding of my books. If I want to sell books and reach an expanding readership, I have to build my brand. So far, my children’s sermon website, Kidsermons.com, does have links to purchase my books, but it exists mostly to give pastors a free resource for their time with the children on Sunday morning. The digital book I am currently working on, however, has no connection to the children’s sermon site and I realize that I will have to create another online presence that can highlight a new category of illustrated children’s books. I have a lot of work to do.

One shouldn’t wait to start building a personal brand until there is a desperate need, of course; it should be a process that sculpts itself over time. As soon as a person begins posting content online, in fact, a personal brand is already being developed. In talking with others about our digital footprints, I have often said that the internet makes it hard for someone to lead an anything-but-transparent life. Even previously posted blogs, websites and photos that have been purposefully removed can be looked up again through sites like the Internet Archive. Your digital footprint is pretty much permanent. As Dan says in his article, “transparency and authenticity are the only means to survive and thrive in this new digital kingdom,” so be careful where you step.

Even if you are building on an old “brand you,” there are many things you can do to help your image, as long as everything that you post is true and truly you. If your Facebook page has good, positive content, then that is a good start to “Brand You.” (Students should be reminded of the visibility and permanence of Facebook material before they enter high school as colleges can search these sites as part of their acceptance decisions.) But beyond Facebook, it is even more important to have a personal webpage or blog. While I have and maintain both, I realize that they do need a lot more work.

When I do a search of my name, Ruth Ingulsrud, on the web, I find 86,700 results. The first result to pop up references my wonderful sister-in-law, whose maiden name was Ruth Ingulsrud, and who is now the Chancellor of Kwansei Gakuin and goes by the name of Ruth Grubel. Most of the other references were mine, but I saw one important reference that was sorely out-of-date. I realized that I need to update my online resumé. To help with this process, I can use the helpful information found on another of Dan Schawbel’s pages on building the “Ultimate Social Media Resumé.” I don’t know if I will end up with the “ultimate” but I hope it will be better than what I currently have. I can do so much more now with the ability to embed video and photos and to include links to social networks and forums, blogs and wikis. I’m realizing that a personal brand does not create a brand-new you, but it can show your strengths and gifts in a brand-new way.

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“Inanimate Alice represents a paradigm shift in how we approach reading and writing instruction,” states an article posted on the National Writing Project website. I’m reading this piece that reviews and promotes a book it touts as “the leading example of this transmedia phenomenon is the born-digital story.” Really? Haven’t they ever heard of hypercard? Wow; maybe I’m just too old to be reading this article. Twenty-some years ago, I remember purchasing and playing with quite a few interactive stories with my three-year old son. He loved them. He could make different things happen in the stories by clicking on various choices. There were several options on many of the pages and the story had a variety of endings.

The stories used a very neat piece of software called “Hypercard” which was pretty simple but worked quickly and worked well. Amanda’s Stories was one of the early examples. The stories were simple, creative and interactive. Manhole was a more sophisticated later example. The brothers who designed Manhole went on to create Myst, a virtual, explorable world with countless adventure permutations. These are just a few early examples of transmedia storytelling which invite (and actually require) reader participation. Hypercard was simple enough for my four year old computer-loving son to make an interactive story of his own with some help from techie-hubby.

Here is one area where computers are encouraging more brain activity instead of passive consumption. This is encouraging. In the school library where I work, many students come after school to use the computers to access games. They tend to gravitate towards the less mentally-demanding games that involve shooting some sort of missile, balls or birds or what-have-you, at a moving target. Although I have explained to them again and again that the only games they are allowed to play in the library are educational ones, they still try to justify their choice by explaining that they have to aim correctly to shoot the object. “And is your brain working hard? Are you having to think to figure things out and solve problems?” I ask. “Not really,” they usually admit, and then they find a more challenging game that involves logic or physics puzzles like Civiballs, or teaches typing skills like Super Hyper Spider Typer, or encourages them to practice math problems like IXL Math.

I have started to set up links that they can easily access through the CAJ library site that takes them directly to games which exercise their brains. The typing links are up, but I have more to do in this area. It would be fun to set up some interactive computer stories accessible through the library website as well. In the past, students have requested “Choose Your Own Adventure” type stories, but we only have a few of these in the library. In paper form, they are a bit cumbersome and awkward to read, but the digital platform is perfect for this sort of thing. I expect to see more of these books with embedded, applicable links becoming available in the future, and would hope that many new offerings would become available that challenge readers to exercise many different skills and areas of learning: physics, biology, math, literature, history, etc. In order to bring the story to a satisfying conclusion, for example, the reader would have to solve problems or figure out the optimal storyline choice. Interactive stories and texts that exercise the brain and teach curriculum would be a welcome addition to our school library and textbook resources.

Update:

Here are a few resources that I was guided to after posting this article … (thank you Lorraine Hopping Eagan) :

Interactive MathStory-Game:  http://www.kosjourney.com/

Blog about Transmedia:   http://www.transmediakids.com/

Robot Heart Stories project:  http://www.indiegogo.com/Robot-Heart-Stories

Laura Fleming’s Blog:  http://edtechinsight.blogspot.com/

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As of this year, 34 of the United States of America have laws in place that relate to cyberbullying, electronic harassment or bullying among minors in a school context. Every state has some sort of law in place that addresses related issues such as cyberstalking or cyberharassment, which do not necessarily relate to students specifically. Details of these laws and links to their respective codes can be found at the NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures). It’s good that these laws are in place, but students need to know what these laws are and what, if any, consequences or teeth that they might bear or bare, as the case may be. The laws are there, but often the awareness is not. It’s a bit like the intergalactic hyperspace highway plans stored in the basement of some government agency in Douglas Adams’”Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” explaining to the public that their planet would soon be removed as part of the construction process and that they had better find another place to live. When the earth residents seem affronted at the inevitable and precipitous destruction, they are calmly told that the plans had been there for decades; they merely had to look at them if they wanted to be informed.

We want our students to be informed, even if they don’t know that they should be. The consequences of bullying (for both victims and perpetrators) are too serious and potentially permanent to be ignored. There have already been many cases of cyberbullying that have led to suicide. We know that much. We also know that material flung into the sticky web of the internet has a way of hanging around for a long time, and possibly permanently. The spoken word or the physical push does not usually leave a traceable and permanent record. Barbed words and malicious images downloaded into cyberspace, however, can replicate at an amazing rate and be stored forever.

Every school should have a visible and intentional policy in place that relates to cyberbullying. Students should know in detail what sort of behavior is unacceptable and what are the immediate consequences of that behavior. They should understand that what they do in high school in cyberspace can follow them to college and on into their early job searches. There are many good things about being able to quickly connect with the rest of the world, but students should also be aware of how visible their online activities are.

My daughter in high school was not aware of any cyberbullying incidents at her own school, but she knew about the sorts of things that had gone on in other areas. At our school, we do have some specific policies in place that address this sort of thing, but the information should be more visible and accessible, and the parents need to be better informed. Misuse of computers needs to have definite consequences as well. Currently, a student may lose a cell phone or iPhone for a day if it is being misused, but when caught computer gaming on a laptop, for example, on school grounds during the instructional day, there is no real consequence besides being asked to stop. Perhaps we need to have some firm rules and consequences in place. This is one area that will be addressed by the colleagues from my school in our final project for this current COETAIL course.

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