Educators throughout Elk Grove Unified guided and supported students through numerous #DigCitWeek activities. Some of the activities represent projects that students will continue their involvement in throughout the school year, while other activities were specifically inspired by the October 15-19 Digital Citizenship Week timeframe.
As you can see from the samples below, elementary, middle and high school students and staff celebrated this national event.
Harriet Eddy and Katherine Albiani Middle Schools – #ICANHELP
At many of our middle schools, students have attended or will be attending, #ICANHELP rallies. #ICANHELP is a national organization dedicated to helping tweens and teens use social media for good. At Harriet Eddy MS, a team of students recently traveled to San Francisco Google Headquarters to participate in a day where “world changers, transformation seekers, and positivity makers” met to celebrate student voice and digital leadership. #digital4good
“During my time at the #digital4good workshop, I learned many new things and was inspired in different ways. I learned that it’s extremely important to be smart and have a positive presence online… During our gathering I thought to myself on how I could bring the positivity kids have brought to their schools, to mine. One example I thought about was sticky noting teachers cars and doors with positive things along with starting a club at our school to overall just spread #digital4good. This workshop also inspired me to bring good to my school because when I saw all the amazing things kids have done to create a better environment, I believed that if they did what I never imagined possible, I must be able to do it too. Overall the gathering for #digital4good was an amazing experience and showed me many different stories.” – Beck, 8th Grade – HEMS
Roy Herburger and Sierra Enterprise Elementary Schools – Stand Up Speak Out! Against Bullying Youth Rally
We had the opportunity to attend this past Wednesday’s 6th Annual Stand Up Speak Out! Against Bullying Youth Rally at the California Museum’s Unity Center with students from Roy Herburger and Sierra Enterprise Elementary Schools.
The Unity Center is a dedicated space for celebrating California’s “diverse people, customs and cultures.” The annual rally has been a long-time priority for Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. His coalition brings together Sacramento school districts to educate students on the importance of taking a stand against bullying/cyberbullying and all forms of intolerance.
Students are greeted by Museum docents as they enter the Unity Center.
Through the center’s interactive media exhibits, advocacy tools and educational programs, visitors are empowered to be Unity Activists, exercising their rights and standing up for the rights of others.
Students from Sierra Enterprise Elementary shared their takeaways from the day…
“It doesn’t matter whether you are black, white, Asian, Arab, Hispanic, gay, straight, bi, Christian, atheist, Muslim, Jewish, skinny, fat, tall, short, male, female, where you live, who you live with, what you like to do, or anything in between – I don’t care, as long as you’re a good person, we’ll get along just fine.” – Miricah, 6th Grade
“The most important thing I learned was that anyone and everyone can make a difference.” – Teresa, 6th Grade
“I learned how important it is to stand up and speak out against bullying. Be kind and treat each other with respect.” – Faith, 6th Grade
“Being there made me think that I’m lucky to be in the school I’m in because in my school they teach all of us how to be kind. I’m glad my school is bullying free.” – Karol, 6th Grade
Markofer Elementary Mustang News – Video Creation
We’ve long recognized that the most powerful teaching method is students teaching students, especially around issues of bullying/cyberbullying. The 6th Grade Morning News Team at Markofer Elementary have stepped up, focusing on digital citizenship themes, to produce a set of videos available to their classmates and beyond via their YouTube channel. Although Markofer teacher Tammy Null is a master at making the best of what equipment she has gathered, her in-classroom studio was given a needed upgrade this year with a SEVA grant through SECC – Our local Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium.
One of the topics Markofer students addressed for #DigCitWeek was the importance of building a positive digital footprint.
Joseph Kerr Middle School – #DigCitWeek Daily Discussion/Action Starters and Video Creation
Joseph Kerr Middle School students participated in daily discussions based on digital/global topics provided by Activities Director Chris Perris.
- Monday – The Power of a Positive Post: Take a minute to tell us why #JKMSRocks
- Trustworthy Tuesday: Take some time and do legitimate research online on something that interests you or one of your friends. Use a reliable news source and tell someone about it.
- World Wide Wednesday: Learn about a problem going on in the world currently and think of ways you could contribute to ending it and if possible put that idea into action.
- Think It Over Thursday: Take only 5 minutes out of your day and learn about some of the positives and negatives of social media to help keep you out of trouble.
- Fab Friday: Leave one of your friends a message telling them how good of a person they are and what they mean to you.
JKMS Leadership students, under Chris’s supervision, took things one step further. They decided to take on rumors and fake news as a topic for their upcoming short film. Below is a behind the scenes photo – we will be posting a link once their editing is completed.
Herman Leimbach Elementary – VoiceThread
The Make Your Mark VoiceThread is from a group of 2nd graders, who reflected on the Peter H. Reynolds’ award-winning story The Dot by creating their own Dot stories, using Google Slides as their drafting board and then importing the slides into a VoiceThread – and in the process, began building a positive digital footprint for their ePortfolios. The students also put into practice, with no prompting from Computer Resource Teacher (CRT) Cathe Petuya, how to respectfully comment and add to an online conversation.
Maeola Beitzel and Irene B. West Computer Labs – Student Activities
CRT Ken Lagomarsino taught Betizel students grade-level appropriate “Quick-Start Activities” from Common Sense, providing every student the opportunity to earn – and proudly display – their “Digital Passport and Digital Compass” badges.
Fourth grade students at Irene B. West had the opportunity to participate in Google’s Interland Challenge during CRT Uyen Villa’s computer lab sessions.
Every student in grades 3-6 explored the four interactive worlds in Interland and earned their certificates, proving themselves to Be Internet Awesome! Each land focuses on a fundamental skill that is key to becoming good digital citizens.
- Kind Kingdom – It’s Cool to Be Kind
- Reality River – Don’t Fall for Fake
- Mindful Mountain – Share with Care
- Tower of Treasure – Secure Your Secrets
Uyen’s students shared a few thoughts about what they learned in the Interland Challenge.
“In Interland, I learned to be kind to everyone and help make the internet a better place by reporting bullying or teasing. I also learned to stay safe online by not telling private information to strangers and to watch out for scams, fake messages, and other suspicious looking games and websites online.” – Leiann May, 4th Grade
“I have learned it’s important to have a strong password. The Kind Land also taught me it’s important to be kind and not a bully.”– Bao, 4th Grade
Monterey Trail High School – Media Literacy
Media literacy was the focus over at MTHS for #DigCitWeek, with librarian Karin Ledford leading the charge. Each day of the week, she provided teachers with links to lessons and resources by sending out a daily template with a media literacy Word/Phrase of the Day, an Article of the Day, a Video of the Day, a Fake Website of the Day and a Fake News Story of the Day for teachers to pull from to use in their classrooms.
Las Flores – Staff Training/Copyright
An email from teacher Joan Siddens reminded us that it’s not just students who need to be aware of digital citizenship issues and resources. Teachers also need training. With fake news being front and center, and cyberbullying on the rise, we all need to be teaching and practicing good digital citizenship. Joan reached out to us for permission to pull some content from our copyright/fair use and media literacy resources to use in her presentation for an upcoming staff meeting.
We at Elk Grove Unified celebrated another successful Digital Citizenship Week. We were happy to share (boast about) good things happening at our schools during a recent national webinar sponsored by EdWeb, Common Sense and ISTE that we participated in as presenters. As we shared specific examples of #DigCit in action, people from all over the world joined in the chatroom, leaving very positive comments and praising our teachers for the work they do. Participating in the Stand Up Speak Out! Against Bullying Youth Rally was the high point of #DigCitWeek for us and reinforced our #DigCitCommit for the 2018-19 school year.
