Welcome Back! Getting Your Year Started...

Hello!  I hope you all had a wonderful summer!  I had a great summer but it definitely ZOOMED by!

So let's talk a little about last year before we talk about this year.  As you know our focus as technology coaches last year was definitely iTeach and providing you with as much integration support as possible with your iPads.  With that focus in mind I definitely ran short of time to keep this blog up to date!  One of my goals this year is to use this blog as a means to share information, resources and ideas with you.  I think I did a much better job of it two years ago.  I'm definitely planning on keeping the blog more current this year.  Please feel free to give me a kick or a nudge if you feel I'm leaving it behind!  

Now let's talk about the beginning of this year.  You might be looking for some resources to get your year started. I'll be sharing several resources over the next few weeks.  Today,  I'd like you to consider squeezing in a little lesson about Digital Citizenship for your students.  In this day and age-- our students need a yearly refresher about the dos and don'ts of using technology on campus and in their personal lives!  Before your students use technology on campus, I'd be sure to provide them with a lesson or maybe even a few.  Here are a couple of resources for you!  The following are free lessons available at Nearpod.com:

3-5 Lesson: Compares Spider Man's motto
(With great power comes great responsibility)
 to student's power when using the Internet.

K-2 Lesson:  Compares going on a a field trip to going
on the Internet

Please note these lessons are the FIRST in a series of 18 FREE lessons.  Take advantage of them as you continuously encourage digital citizenship among your students throughout the year. Common Sense Education partnered with Nearpod to put these lesson together.  Common Sense Education offers a lot of support for digital citizenship including several classroom posters that are available for download and printing.  You will find they also review apps!  

Look at this super cute poster!  And they
have some available for older children too!

Click here to access free digital citizenship posters available for download and printing.  You might consider putting a couple of these in your classroom!  As you can see, commonsense.org is a great resource for digital citizenship!

Another great resource for digital citizenship is Brain Pop!  With our district-wide subscription that will begin this year, it will be easy to access all of the digital citizenship lessons Brain Pop has to offer!  

Online Safety

Cyberbullying

Digital Etiquette

I hope you will find these digital citizenship resources helpful as you get your year started.  Stay tuned for more posts in the next few days!  Have a great week!