It is not a surprise that some will place their vote on teaching digital citizenry while others will stand up to ‘protect’ children from harm and school districts from law suits. Passing notes in the back of the classroom while the teacher turns his or her back to write on the chalkboard has become far more powerful with the ability to tweet, to text or to vine.  Teachers are humanly incapable of supervising all computer and device screens and keystrokes in every corner of the classroom. Educators who might want to be socially liberal on device use may take more conservative roles when they are the final decision maker on open internet access and the freedom for children, tweens and teenagers to hitchhike through cyber space.

A teacher may encourage online social interaction among his or her 30 students but a chief technology officer may be less trusting when making decision about the thousands under his or her supervision. While the teacher knows the students well in his or her classroom, the chief technology officer rarely knows those in his or her charge personally. People tend to trust those they know and be wary of those they don’t know. Students tend to behave for those that have high expectations of them but might behave by different standards when they are less familiar with those in charge.

Some say there is a 80 / 20 rule that proposes that 80 percent will always behave but that we make rules for the 20 percent who might not.  Sociologists, behavior psychologists and criminologists certainly know more about social behavior and misbehavior than I do.

Personally, I would like to think that teachers who keep children engaged online will keep children on task and away from danger. I suppose that follows an old adage about ‘the devil makes work of idle hands’. Likewise, one might hope that with more open access to the potential evil that one could find online that the novelty might wear off and leave people uninterested in exploring the seedy side of life, cyber bullying and malicious online behavior. That could be a bit naive when one remembers that adolescent curiosity, ‘mean girls’ and bullies have always existed. Supervising adolescent behavior seems to have become more complicated than ever for educators and parents alike.

When all we have to fall back on as we enter a new era is our own ‘common sense’ and ‘inclination’, caution is recommendable when beginning this journey. Protected educational environments like a closed Google Environment, a closed Edmodo environment, a closed Home Base environment, or a closed Moodle environment seem like the safest environments for students as we take our classes outside of the brick and mortar homes.  Like the person who moves to the big city from the country, it is wise to be cautious when learning the rules of the new environment. At the same time, one needs to be proactive and learn the new rules and recognize, ‘we are not in Kansas anymore’.

Know the Net – Manners Matter Infogram

Aside from  knowing that KF refers to Kenan Fellowship and not KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Kenan Fellowship has made a difference in my role as an educator.

Sitting in the student’s seat for hours on end has taught me what it is like to receive professional development. I have recognized how different all of us are in our interests and ability to grasp new material, especially tech tools. I have revamped the delivery of PD to teachers I support this year.

As a result of my Kenan Fellowship, I am using Edmodo with teachers in our district to provide a platform for sending announcements and for teachers to share what they discover and want to share with their peers at other schools. I have since added the AudioBoo recording app within Edmodo  to see how world language teachers and students can record speaking projects. I have created student and teacher accounts to better understand how it works. At the June Professional Development at NCCAT, Jason Lineburger encouraged me to use Edmodo as a platform for teachers to share resources and to archive my digital newsletter. If teachers become comfortable with Edmodo, they can organize notices, assignments and even student recordings within Edmodo. If world language teachers regularly use a recording device in their classrooms for students to practice speaking and record speaking for oral assignments, this will drastically change world language teaching and learning.

As a result of my externship, I know more about Home Base. I am aware of what resources are there for world language teachers. I am aware of the rubric North Carolina used in rating resources to be placed in Home Base. I have tried to stay abreast of changes in Home Base and look for ways to use some of the features I learned about in Home Base: searching for resources, saving resources to my own account, saving resources so that my school can access them, creating assessments, attaching resources to assignments and my teacher calendar.

I look forward to becoming more savvy as the resources that have been tagged are populated into Home Base. As of this writing, the majority of the resources tagged for world languages have yet to be populated into the database. I look forward to becoming more aware of how to work within Power School. I received my password ten days ago and am just beginning to discover the steps to go from Power School to Schoolnet.

One benefit of my externship has been the discovery of many excellent resources online. This would be expected if one is assigned to research those resources. Nonetheless, it is shocking how many incredible resources are online that one never really finds, unless someone leads you there, unless some website mentions them and unless you just stumble upon them. I will additionally link some of the home pages for some of these resources to the new Google site for the World Language teachers in our district in the hopes that they too will find them useful.

I am trying not to overwhelm teachers with too many tech tools. I have a calendar of what tech tools or what methodology to embrace in a year-long professional development plan. That calendar is much richer due to the tech tool training with Kenan PD.

There is also something intangible about the difference a Kenan Fellowship makes. When someone treats you with such respect, puts you in contact with other educators who are curious and have a desire to continually improve, you are transformed. In this year’s political environment, it is especially rewarding to believe that there is a group called Kenan Fellows Programs that believes in teachers, that believes in supporting teachers and that believes in the importance of ongoing professional development.