Blogs on Media Literacy

In my last two posts, I detailed the iPad initiatives at Burlington High School. I talked about what we learned after a year of a 1:1 iPad environment and dispelled some myths surrounding iPads in education. Recently, I had the opportunity to connect with two of my elementary teachers at Pine Glen Elementary and Francis Wyman Elementary schools. This year, four first grade classrooms will be piloting a 1:1 iPad environment. The iPads stay in the classroom and are only used during class time. Two of the teachers involved, Irene Farmer and Erin Guanci, sat down with me and answered a few questions about their expectations of the initiative, how they are using the device at the moment, and how they feel it will work in an elementary classroom.

September 17th was National Constitution Day, and with the elections fast approaching, it's a great time to start conversations with your students about civics. Several reports in the last few years have surfaced concerns that civics education is getting the short end of the stick in the American education system (read "Why Civic Education Needs a Boost" by Suzie Boss and "Let's Bring Civic Education to the Front Burner" by Anne O'Brien for more thoughts on this). And I probably don't need to convince anyone reading this about the value -- no, the absolute necessity -- of teaching young people to become engaged and active citizens.

"Digital citizenship" is an umbrella term that covers a whole host of important issues. Broadly, it's the guidelines for responsible, appropriate behavior when one is using technology. But specifically, it can cover anything from "netiquette" to cyberbullying; technology access and the digital divide; online safety and privacy; copyright, plagiarism, and digital law, and more. In fact, some programs that teach digital citizenship have outlined no less than nine elements that intersect to inform a well-equipped digital citizen. It's an overwhelming array of skills to be taught and topics to explore.

I was in a local shopping mall a while ago and two girls who couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10 walked past me. Both were wearing makeup and dressed as if they were about to pose for a soft porn ad in Rolling Stone. I wasn’t even surprised. It just reconfirmed what I already knew about how girls are being sexualized at very early ages.