Digital Citizenship vs Lock It Down

Time to Learn All this Stuff

Share vs Microsoft Office

Should We Allow Students to "Chat" While Working in the Portal?

Since the dawn of time, students have socialized while working in groups. The Student Portal gives tremendous scope for collaboration, but it also offers another way for students to socialize and waste time. Is it a problem? When is it a problem? How can we prevent it becoming a problem?

Youtube in Schools

The bottom line is it should be open and most of the time it isn't open. There are all kinds of legitimate academic and learning reasons to open it. Khan academy is probably the best Math tutorial site - the video's are housed on Youtube, there are fantastic science videos from leading universities, the video's are housed on youtube, one can find several tutorial's and how-to's on any subject, the video's are housed on youtube.

The barrier to opening youtube is two-fold:

1. Bandwidth concerns
2. Student safety and security (bad stuff out there/time wasting)

The principal is the key, convince him or her and they have the power to open Youtube by providing the following solutions to their concerns:

1. It turns out the bandwidth should not be a concern. Most schools have 25Mbps access. Until there is a problem, if there is responsible use, there shouldn't be a problem. The district is prepared for use to go up, and this problem is not as legitimate as you may think (unless you are a big high school, but centre high 2000 + students is open and running).
2. It is up to use to teach students responsible use. Through Modelling and Supervision - we ought to be able to combat the concern of student access.

The point to be driven home to get your principal to ensure access is to provide real examples of how it can be used for learning!

When you are done making this easy to see logically sound argument ask your principal to email Jamie Hermans with EPSB, find his name in Outlook. 

One very important Caveat:
Make sure you have in place a responsible way of making the transition. Educate the staff, educate the students. This is a powerful tool, but it can be easily abused. Keep the two arguments against in mind and have in place a method for dealing with 1) Bandwidth abuse and 2) Inappropriate/Off task behaviour.

It is easy to see how students will abuse the openness that we advocate, thus proving right the nay-sayers. Allow it to stay open through responsible use in the entire school.

Time Issues

Office vs Portal

We discussed issues of using presentations with google vs Microsoft Powerpoint. One solution is to introduce web 2.0 tools.

Some schools are using the portal exclusively for student use and are rethinking this. They may be asking to have Microsoft Office available as well as the portal.

Facebook Issues

We need to educate students at an earlier age regarding facebook issues and we need to discipline students accordingly for misuse.

Legal & Ethical Issues with Portal Access

PROBLEM - Is Gmail being used for educational purposes....and how do we ensure that educators have support?


Scenario - A parent discovers that his/her child has GMAIL account. After discussion with the teacher, the parent realizes that the email is not being used in the classroom to support curriculum. The parent want the benefits of Portal but does not want the child to have access to individuals/groups that are negative or harmful.


Solution(s) - To safeguard students online (inside and outside of school) certain precautiosn have to be made.

-Students have to be taught digital citizenship
-teachers have to model appropriate digital skills
-restrict the domain that students can have access to (can this be done by school/grade level/teacher)
-call Jim Davies, Darwin, Glenn, Terry, Lea Bekken, Jamie Pallett and be aware of teacher expectations and responsibilities


Other Questions that arise

-What mechanism is there for the teacher voice to be heard (Technology Teacher Advisory Group)

-Teacher support - If gmail is an ‘all or nothing’ feature..if teachers are confronted with requests by parents to remove the feature what then? If misuse of gmail (cyberbullying) leads to a loss of gmail privelege, why can’t a parent/teacher/school not request this function to be removed? What is the policy for informing parents about issues that arise from using the gmail? Is it the students intellectual property or do teachers have the right to alter settings of account?

-What happens if students/parents do NOT complete a school’s “Acceptable Use of Technology Form”?

-Should students have the ability to use the “call phone”? The students have access to outside sources

-Can schools change/alter their online use policy? Does someone downtown in the legal department need to be contacted

-Can a formal process be created to be submitted by parents to inform district on interests regarding the use of gmail?

Kids "Leading the Charge"!

In many schools, students have picked up Share and run with it. How do we control how Share is used or misused at the school level?

• What are potential problems that could take place via Share?
• cyber-bullying
• malicious e-mails
• video chat negative interactions
• Is Share still safer than alternatives?

These are some problems that Share, if misused, can enable. However, it is ultimately far safer than the alternatives that students can access freely on their own.

This is a tool of communication and collaboration that has many benefits that significantly outweigh the costs. Share is a medium of communication among many options to any student. If students choose to behave poorly within Share, this is a behaviour issue as opposed to a "Share" or technology issue. It is in fact, a safer medium of communication than alternatives that can not be monitored and are widely available.

Click here for presentation.

Outlook VS Share

Our brainstorming for the issue of using Share versus Outlook...how to get staff buy-in for using just Share.