Last night, we hosted another “Partnering with Parents” evening at our school. We had our school counsellor Estera Boldut do a presentation on fostering resilience in our children. This session was a follow up to our last Parent Night with Darren Laur and his presentation on social media. Estera presented Seven C’s for fostering resilience to our parents. Her focus was on creating competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control. I have posted her notes for you to go over and learn from. If you have any comments, please post them and I will get Estera to answer them for you on my blog.

Fostering resilience

I am excited to have Jonathan Zuidhof as my guest blogger this week. Jonathan is a Grade 6 teacher at our school; he is helping our Education Forum this year being instrumental in analyzing our student surveys from our special emphasis week in October. Here is his post:

In late October the students of Langley Christian Middle School (LCMS) participated in a Good Digital Citizenship (GDC) emphasis week. Throughout the week, the students had an opportunity to explore our 8 pillars of GDC. After the week was over, the students completed a survey, providing feedback on their experiences. As our Education Forum was analyzing the feedback, we realized it would be beneficial for the wider school community to learn from the survey results.

Throughout Good Digital Citizenship week at LCMS a big highlight for me as a teacher was watching different grades working together. Especially when it comes to technology, the older students typically have more experience and are able to share important aspects of Good Digital Citizenship with the younger students. Another highlight was the evidence that many of these conversations surrounding the digital world are happening at home. Students were able to share with their groups some of the guidelines and discussions that were present in their homes.

The surveys revealed that students highlighted many areas in which they gained more insight, but three areas topped the list. First, the importance of setting up your privacy settings correctly. Second, finding a healthy balance with screen time. Third, using discernment before posting online, sending emails, or sending text messages. These are three very important aspects of being good digital citizens, now the challenging part comes for the students as they work to turn these insights into action.

So where do we go from here? We continue the conversation at home and at school, working to guide young people in our school community towards Christ like discernment. At school, the teachers are striving to incorporate the 8 pillars of Good Digital Citizenship into their curriculum. LCMS will continue to look for opportunities, like the presentation by Darren Laur, to educate staff, students, and parents of the digital world. We also value input from our school community. Please let us know on an ongoing basis of ideas or feedback you have for the staff at LCMS.

LCMS community, we thank you for joining in this journey with us!

Jonathan Zuidhof

Grade 6 Teacher at LCMS

This week we had a presentation for our Middle School student body on personal protection and internet safety. The presentation was done by Darren Laur, a staff sergeant in the Victoria Police Department and a specialist in ‘Internet and Social Media Safety’.  Darren is also known as a “White Hatter”. A White Hatter is a computer hacker intended to improve security.  Darren came into our gym wearing his white hat and he uses the persona of the “White Hatter” to convey a real life and dynamic talk to his audience. Darren is a master at knowing the secrets of creepers, cappers, stalkers, RATs, cramming and sextortionists. He conveys real solutions for our youth to not only be safe and but also continue all the positive things that they are doing online.  His talk hit on the pillars of the good digital citizenship curriculum that our Middle School initiated this year.

Darren also led an evening session for our parent community. Darren was able to convey good strategies for parents in dealing with their children and technology. His presentation offered sound advice for device management, social networking pitfalls and creating healthy home environments.

Darren taught parents a four step approach helping their children. The steps include:

A) Good supervision of child device use by implementing monitoring software. Darren offered several good sources for that like www.spectorsoft.com

B) Good participation with their children on devices and internet, www.grovo.com has videos to help parents

C) Get to know the language of social networks and texting, www.netlingo.com is a site that can aid parents

D) Set boundaries for children around device use, device location, and taking devices out of the bedroom.

Darren has a lot of good resources for parents listed on his blog site, check it out at: http://thedigitalsheepdog.ca/    (just click on the resources tab)

Here at Langley Christian School, we believe that the school and home have to work together to accomplish our goal of creating good digital citizenship in our students.

If you were able to attend the Partnering with Parents Evening session with Darren, I would love to hear what you thought of the workshop. Comment below or send me an email!

I want to continue in my theme of parents modeling good digital citizenship for their children. I believe that as parents we owe it to our children to stay current with trends and technology. I admit that it is not easy to stay current and we at times feel we are unable to, but we still have to try. To help with this, I want to share 7 habits you can model and teach your children. I have modified them from the work of Stephen Covey.

• Be Proactive: teach your children that they can choose their responses to others online and take responsibility for themselves. Reinforce that whenever they are online, the whole world is watching.

• Begin with the End in Mind: let your children know that they can make smart decisions, that they should never give out their personal information online and always ask a parent when they are unsure of anything related to computers and online interactions.

• Put First Things First: teach your children to do their homework and other chores first and then they can ask you if they can use technology of any kind.

• Think Win-Win: whenever you are online on your computer you can solve problems by polite and appropriate communication with others. Good Digital Citizenship starts with you.

• Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood: model that you can listen to and understand more than one point of view. This will translate into problem solving and critical thinking skills that your children need to develop.

• Synergize: a 21^st century fluency is characterized by collaboration and learning form others online. You can accomplish more when you work together and share brain energy and other resources.

• Sharpen the Saw: it is important to demonstrate a good balance between computer time, family time, reading, recreation and work. Working with your children to develop a healthy lifestyle will build them a foundation for success.

Our School will be hosting another Partnering with Parent Evening on January 20, 2014. We are bringing in Darren Laur. He will be sharing with parents on the topic of personal safety and engaging the online digital world. Darren has been travelling throughout BC sharing the message of Internet and Social Media Safety to students, teachers, parents and law enforcement. Please plan to attend our evening. Stay tuned for times and location.

You can learn more about Darren @www.personalprotectionsystems.ca

Modified from Stephen Covey, 2008

At the end of our Good Digital Citizenship special emphasis week, we did a survey of our students. We asked several questions around what they learned, what they talk about at home with their parents, and what they need to change in their current digital footprint. We believe that the school, home and church need to work together to raise our children. To that end, I want to offer a few strategies that will help you as parents’ guide your children to healthy digital footprints.

Thanks to our good friends at West Bend Cares and Covenant Eyes, the following ten parenting tips for raising children in this digital age are:

1. Be good role models for using digital devices.
2. Establish and clarify family rules about devices as early as possible in your child’s life. Changing or tightening the rules is more difficult later in your child’s life.
3. Maintain an open and ongoing dialogue with your children about the internet, social networking, the dangers of cyber-bullying, and the addictiveness of online pornography.
• Cyber-bullying:  Stress how important it is for your children to come to you if they’re bullied or treated disrespectfully online.
• Teach your children healthy sexuality and stress the importance – especially for your sons – of avoiding online pornography.
4. Limit screen time – TV, cell phone, PC, laptop, iPad/iPod, etc.
5. Place home computers in common areas like living rooms and family rooms. Do not allow children to take devices into their bedrooms at night.
6. Delay your child’s access to social networking sites and Smartphones until middle school or high school. If you want your under-age-12 child to have a cell phone for emergencies, consider a basic cell phone and shut off internet access with parent controls.
7. Enable parental controls on all devices (i.e., PCs, laptops, Smartphones). For children 12 and under, consider shutting off internet access on handheld devices. For teens 13 and older, consider using internet blocking/filtering software (i.e.,CovenantEyes.com).
8. Monitor screen time, including email and texts. Randomly reviews apps and internet sites on their Smartphones/iPads/laptops. Establish clear guidelines about your teen having access to and using social networking sites such as Facebook.
9. If problems occur for teens, consider using an accountability service (CovenantEyes.com) to monitor internet use on computers and smartphones.
10. Know your children’s friends and their parents, and know what they’re doing when they’re at their friends’ homes. Common exposure to online pornographic images is likely to occur at a peer’s home.

As a school, we are committed to working with parents and are hosting several “Partnering with Parents” evenings throughout the school year. What are some topics you would want to have us deal with at our Partnering with Parents sessions?

http://www.thesilverlining.com/westbendcares/blog/bid/190248/10-Tips-for-Parenting-the-Digital-Child

This week, every afternoon, our middle school is running Good Digital Citizenship (GDC) seminars, workshops, activities, and lessons. All 26 staff and 224 students are participating in the event. Each afternoon, the students assemble in their Connect groups which is a mix of grade 6,7, and 8 students and they attend sessions that the staff have planned. Each afternoon students will engage in learning two of the eight pillars of GDC we are focusing on this year. Here is a snapshot of each session.

Law and Rights and Responsibilities: students attend four talks on real situations that have occurred recently in the cyber world. Amanda Todd, Rehtaeh Parsons, cyberbullying, sexting, security and privacy are the focus of the talks. The students end the session with a group effort at creating a banner that describes their pledge to being Good Digital Citizens.

Etiquette and Health: Students understand about manners and courtesy in face to face interactions but what do those social norms and expectations look like in a digital world? What does it look like to be a Christ follower when we are interacting with technology? In these sessions, students discuss guidelines for both etiquette and balancing their use of screen time.

Communication and Literacy: students discuss different ways in which they can communicate digitally, and how to choose the correct mode of communication to accomplish the desired task.  Students are given a school email account and taught how to use it correctly and responsibly.

Commerce and Security: In digital safety and privacy they define and evaluate their own digital footprint. Students discuss the importance of online privacy and safety and are asked to consider what information they are willing to put online. They look at settings on social networks (like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc) and evaluate their own privacy settings on devices. They focus on understanding that their information can be tracked and taking precautions so that they are safe in what they display on the Internet.

Our middle school is paving new ground in education. We are helping students become Good Digital Citizens in our world.

“The essential 21^st Century fluencies are not about hardware, they are about headware!”

I love this statement! As we forge ahead in our teaching students for this century, the accuracy of this statement becomes more and more clear. Successful students need fewer skills centered in technology prowess, and need more in critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, innovation and good digital citizenship.

We need to develop student skills in solution fluency, information fluency, creativity fluency, media fluency and collaboration fluency, centered in good digital citizenship (GDC). Solution fluency is about whole-brain thinking, creativity and problem solving applied on demand. Information and media fluency are about extracting the essential knowledge, authenticating it, and distill its meaning and significance to the student learning.  Creativity fluency is about artistic meaning, design, art and storytelling. Collaboration fluency is about team work, developing an unconscious ability to work cooperatively with virtual and real partners.

Recently I walked into Mr. Turkin’s Grade 7 classroom to see an innovative collaboration table in action. Mr. Turkin painted a table top with white board paint, here, students are able to gather around, work together, be creative, share their knowledge, engage in critical thinking and develop awesome group work. What happens with the produced work is amazing. Mr.Turkin takes a photo with his iPad and downloads it into Edmodo where all the students have permanent access to the great collaborative work they produced.

This picture exemplifies team work and collaboration. Would you like to be in school all over again and be able to learn in this type of environment? Please share a comment.

www.fluency21.com

Welcome back to the new school year! Our Good Digital Citizenship (GDC) Curriculum is in place in every class of the middle school. We are planning a Good Digital Citizenship Theme Week in October in which the whole middle school will participate. All of our teachers will be  involved in teaching one of the eight pillars of GDC. This special emphasis week will occur every afternoon from October 28-31, 2013.

One question I have been getting is: “can we bring our own device to school?” The short answer is yes, but we do want you as parents to read through the document called ” Bring Your Own Device” and” Acceptable Use Policy” that we have put into the student handbook this year. You can find the handbook listed as a resource on your son or daughters class Edmodo page. Please take time to have your child open up the handbook in Edmodo and review it with them. You can also ask them for the parent Edmodo code that allows you to view their homework and assignments. These documents are posted below as well, under my May 31 blog entry.

Tuesday September 17 @ 7:00PM is the middle school meet the teacher evening in our middle school gym, please come out and see what your child will be doing in their classrooms.

Recently one of our parents passed to me a link to a media group called Common Sense Media. I immediately went to their website because the article Tim linked me to was about Good Digital Citizenship. I was pleased to discover a host of other good resources for teachers and parents. I am sharing this with you and hope you will check them out. I have included their mission statement and top 10 beliefs to share with you.

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/

Our Mission

Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.

We exist because our nation’s children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development . As a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, we provide trustworthy information and tools, as well as an independent forum, so that families can have a choice and a voice about the media they consume.

Our 10 Beliefs

1. We believe in media sanity, not censorship.
2. We believe that media has truly become “the other parent” in our kids’ lives, powerfully affecting their mental, physical, and social development.
3. We believe in teaching our kids to be savvy, respectful and responsible media interpreters, creators, and communicators.  We can’t cover their eyes but we can teach them to see.
4. We believe parents should have a choice and a voice about the media our kids consume and create. Every family is different but all need information.
5. We believe that the price for free and open media is a bit of extra homework for families. Parents need to know about the media their kids use and need to teach responsible, ethical behavior as well as manage overall media use.
6. We believe that through informed decision making, we can improve the media landscape one decision at a time.
7. We believe appropriate regulations about right time, right place, and right manner exist. They need to be upheld by our elected and appointed leaders.
8. We believe in age-appropriate media and that the media industry needs to act responsibly as it creates and markets content for each audience.
9. We believe ratings systems should be independent and transparent for all media.
10. We believe in diversity of programming and media ownership.