Social networking apps and students under 13 – things for parents to consider – an update

Kik is an instant messaging application for mobile devices which is increasingly being used by our younger students. It is similar to the iPad’s iMessage, but with fare less security. To download the app you must acknowledge that you are at least 17 years of age!

Common Sense Media have written a review of the app, which you can read here. While it has some ‘cool’ features (however many of these, such as video and sketchpad are actually other apps that work with Kik and may have fees for premium services) it is seriously lacking security and privacy. The only feature in their privacy settings is the ability to block people.

There was a report in The Australian earlier this year (March 28) of pedophiles using the app to request sexually explicit images from children.

To assist your child in becoming a responsible user of technology and good ‘digital citizen’ you may wish to consider enabling iPad restrictions by going into settings > general > restrictions and selecting what you want to restrict. For example, you can set an age restriction for downloading apps to only allow appropriate apps for the age of your child.

Social networking apps and students under 13 – things for parents to consider

 

Instagram is a photo sharing and social networking app which allows members to upload, edit and share photos with other members. Members have the ability to comment on and “like” the photos of people they “follow”.

 “You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service.” (From Instagram’s Terms of Use)

Full Terms of Use can be found here.  Click here for terms of use in plain English.

The article “What parents need to know about Instagram” gives suggested rules for safe use by teens.

Snapchat is used to send photos to friends. The appeal is that the photo is only available for viewing for a limited period of time (one – ten seconds) before disappearing. This, however, could lead to sending inappropriate images in the belief they are deleted forever after viewing.

 From Snapchat’s Terms of Use: “The Snapchat service is intended for use by people who are 13 years of age or older. You represent and warrant that you are at least 13 years of age. If you are under age 13, you may not, under any circumstances or for any reason, use Snapchat. We may, in our sole discretion, refuse to offer the Snapchat application to any person or entity and change its eligibility criteria at any time.

You affirm that you are either more than 18 years of age, or an emancipated minor, or possess legal parental or guardian consent, and are fully able and competent to enter into the terms, conditions, obligations, affirmations, representations, and warranties set forth in these Terms of Use, and to abide by and comply with these Terms of Use.”

Full Terms of Use can be found here.

The article What is Snapchat? Is Snapchat okay for kids? Explains how Snapchat works and concerns with its use.

Point to ponder: Should the legal age for use of these (and possibly other) apps be lowered to account for students who are considered “digital natives” so they can learn responsible use and digital citizenship rather than having them create accounts behind their parents’ backs?

A guide to organising school work on your iPad

I use a select few apps to keep work organised on my iPad in the school environment: Evernote (of course), iAnnotate, iBooks, and occasionally Pages and Good Reader. Each has a different role to play. This is also how I suggest students keep their work organised.

Evernote

My go-to app. This is the best place to keep any notes taken in class. Students create a ‘notebook’ for each subject and then create a new note for each lesson or topic. I have written about Evernote before, here and here. It is so versatile – as well as being able to take notes directly in the app, it can read multiple file types – PDF, PPT, DOC. I can add images (either from the camera roll or using the camera in the app) to a note, the text of which is then searchable! Oh, I can also record audio.

How does this assist students to be organised? If a student doesn’t copy all the notes from the board before the end of the period, they can take a photo of the notes and have a complete record of the lesson in Evernote. Quite an advantage for students who write slowly, or those with learning difficulties who can then concentrate on what is being said rather than writing it down. The same goes for an audio note, with a teacher’s permission. Students can record instructions; explanations etc. and have the recording for review at home to ensure understanding.

Evernote assigns each user a unique email address, allowing the user to email files to their account, even into to a specific notebook. Although the files are then ‘read only’, it can be extremely useful for some students who need to have all resources for a subject kept in the one place. Just think – course outlines, assignments, notes, all together, not spread across multiple apps. A boon for the organisationally challenged.

Here is a post by the School Library Association of Victoria and the State Library of Victoria detailing how Evernote can be used before, during and after excursions.

iAnnotate

This PDF annotator seems to have so many more features than the others I have looked at. Although the tools seem a little confusing at first, they are simple to use once you spend the time to explore (or have a student show you!) This is the app to use for any workbook/worksheet type files (especially as documents created on a PC in Word don’t always translate accurately in Pages, whereas saving a Word doc as a PDF keeps the integrity of all the formatting).

For students with certain learning difficulties, the ability to highlight text to change the background colour is an advantage. Typing is a breeze & the icon is easy to identify – for someone who remembers typewriters! Using the ‘quill’ to write free-hand automatically zooms in and enlarges the section you wish to annotate. Quite recently a student showed me how easy it is to add a picture as an annotation, but the feature which really sold me on iAnnotate is the audio note function. Rather than have to write extensive comments on a student’s work, a teacher can record their comment and attach it to the section of the PDF where it applies. What a time saver when marking essays.

iBooks

This is where to store e-books and PDFs that do not require annotation, such as course outlines, task sheets etc. The ability to create different ‘shelves’ means a student can have a shelf for each subject.

Pages

Pages is best used for writing essays, procedures etc. that need to be submitted to a teacher, as it has easy integration with WebDAV – the app we use to access our school network.  I also use Pages for editing simple documents – for me a meeting agenda (which I then email into my Evernote account) – but for students, perhaps a question and answer type worksheet. By simple I mean a document (created on a Windows based computer) without things such as tables and images, as the formatting does not translate well from Word to Pages. Complex documents are best converted to PDF and opened in iAnnotate (as mentioned above).

GoodReader

I only use GoodReader to move files from apps that don’t have WebDAV integration, (such as iMovie and photos) into the school network. For me the main downfall of GoodReader as an annotator is the size of the pop up window when using the typing function. The window covers a large part of the screen, obscuring the text, quite a problem for a student needing to see the text to answer a question.  But that is only my opinion; others may not find this an issue.

I hope you have found this guide of some use. If you have other apps you prefer for organising school work, I’d love to hear about them.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Our Lighthouse teachers

I want to extend a big thankyou to the staff who, over the last two terms worked with Shane (a consultant from Xcite Logic), exploring ways to integrate the use of ‘platform agnostic’ ICT and web 2.0 tools into their teaching and learning programmes.

These people have become lighthouse teachers, following a “each one teach one” philosophy, assisting the staff in their departments with their ICT journeys and showing us that it doesn’t matter whether you are taking ‘baby steps’ or leaping head-first into these new technologies; the important thing is to be moving forward.

This group had the added pressure of committing to presenting their work to our senior administrators at a breakfast meeting earlier in the term, then to the whole staff at our staff meeting last week. As teachers we are comfortable in front of students, but standing in front of a roomful of our peers is a different story. Especially when that has to be repeated multiple times to allow everyone to rotate through each presentation. (Although some said the extra practice meant their last presentation ran the smoothest!) So, thank you Dion, Maria, Peter, Ryan and Tina. Thanks also to Alison & Paul who were away on camp, but organised for Shane to present their work.

I have had positive comments from staff suggesting this is their preferred format for ICT professional development.
“Cally this was fantastic…it’s the type of thing I want for PD…”                                         “That was great to have a taste of everything.”

Below are links to/screen shots of some of the work being done by our fantastic staff.

View Our Amazing Earth on Prezi.com by clicking the link below: http://prezi.com/tglf5rsidx28/our-amazing-earth/

Here is a PowerPoint of Web 2.0 tools used with Italian classes “My Baby Steps to Technology”

Edmodo

Edmodo screen shot

Wiki

Wiki example

Best Practices in Social Networking for Educators | ASCD11 Interview with Eric Sheninger

In this interview the principal from New Milford High School in New Jersey explains how he changed from being anti social media/social networking to finding a

“passionate group of educators in all different corners of the world committed to helping people like me to learn about web 2.0 technology, engaging students and making learning meaningful and relevant in the twenty-first century.”  

This interview is not directed solely at principals, as Eric details how any teacher can connect with other educators to create an online personal learning network to find support to develop their ict skills.

He suggests to just try one or two things to begin with and follow other people who are

“not only talking the talk, but walking the walk and sort of model what they’re doing … get comfortable before you actually plunge in and start to use it on a routine basis.”

Below are the websites mentioned in the interview:

Connected Principals
The Educator’s PLN
Classroom 2.0
 

Google search app updated

The latest Google app update, available for both iPhone and iPad has an audio search function which could rival Siri. You just need to press the microphone icon on the search page then ask your question.

You can even ask Google to “Play the trailer for….” And it will take you directly to YouTube. (I tried “the new James Bond movie” and even “the new Twilight movie”!)

Perhaps my Australian accent is a little difficult for Google to understand at times. “Weather forecast for tomorrow” was translated as “with a full cost for tomorrow a”!

I had better luck with “weather”, with the result for Perth weather appearing almost instantly.

I found it a little frustrating, but also quite amusing seeing how Google interpreted some of my questions. “The next QANTAS flight departing Perth” became “The next QANTAS flight departing Butthead”. I am now asking myself why I didn’t choose to see the search results for this query! Still, it is worth investigating if you own an iPad or iPhone, and if you can enunciate more clearly than I seem to.

Download the free Google Search app from iTunes.

So many tools and don’t they all do the same thing?

First I found Livebinders, then there was Scoop.it, Symbaloo, Evernote and Diigo. But don’t they all do the same sort of thing? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, and no. There are certain features that are common to all, but each has unique features as well.  I will attempt to explain my experience with each of them as a method for curating websites in the hope it will help you decide which one you might prefer, if at all.

Livebinders  

  by  livebinders 

 Pluses

Livebinders allows you to create collections of resources containing websites, PDFs, Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, images and videos. You can search public livebinders for content (without having an account) which you can then add these binders to your own collection. After downloading the ‘Livebinder it’ toolbar, collecting web pages is a breeze. The toolbar works on PCs and mobile devices. You can creat tabs and sub tabs in each binder to organise your information. Editing your binders is straightforward. You can give students the URL to your binder of resources for a topic. The URL remains constant regardless of changes you make to the binder – no need to reissue/alter the URL.A Livebinder can be a collaborative effort. 

Minuses

The very ease of adding web pages to binders can make binders unwieldy, because you can inadvertently add the same web page more than once and tabs and sub tabs can get disorganized. This requires visiting your binders frequently for maintenance if you are using the ‘Livebinder it’ book marklet. You cannot immediately see the content of your binder, only the cover and the titles of the tabs, until you open the binder. 

Read my previous post on Livebinders here. 

Scoop.it

  by  AJC1 

 Pluses

Visually appealing, magazine like format – you can see a snapshot of each web page that is included in your Scoop.it. You can set Scoop.it to send you content on your set topic from social media sites, so it is always up to date. You can ‘re-scoop’ other people’s content. Provides content for your twitter and Facebook accounts. 

Minuses

The page can be indefinitely long – you have to keep scrolling down to see all the content. For more information on Scoop.it, read this post. 

Symbaloo

  by  abbyladybug 

 Pluses

Visually appealing – webmixes appear as small tiles with icons. Would appeal to students. You can give students the URL to your webmix of resources for a topic/task. The URL remains constant regardless of changes you make to the webmix – no need to reissue/alter the URL. You can set Symbaloo as your homepage. 

Minuses

It can be time consuming to create tiles, especially if there isn’t already an icon for the website and you have to create one yourself. The search function can be frustrating – I have searched for public webmixes that I know exist, but sometimes can’t find them. (User error?)  For more detailed information, read the post on Symbaloo here. 

Evernote

 

  by  /Sizemore/  

Pluses

Evernote is much more than a tool to curate websites, it can hold images, files (PDF, docs, presentations, spreadsheets) and audio recordings. Once you have downloaded the ‘webclipper’ which works on any device, you can ‘clip’ the whole or part of a web page. Evernote creates a unique email address for you so you can forward email directly to your Evernote account and into specific notebooks. All text is searchable – including inside images, making it extremely easy to find what you’re looking for. Evernote syncs across your computer, phone, tablet and the web, so you have access to your data wherever you are. Notes and/or notebooks can be shared with others. (Premium version needed to allow editing, otherwise, view only) 

Minuses

I can’t really think of any for Evernote as a whole package, but as a way to curate websites, other tools do this better. You need a premium account to have off-line access to notes and notebooks. Read my previous post on Evernote here. 

Diigo

diigo notes (Photo credit: AJC1)

  by  AJC1 

 Pluses

Annotate, archive and organise your web favourites and share them with others. Teachers can create private groups for students with an educator account. Student profiles are private, so no cybersafety concerns. You can create and join groups of like minded people, sharing the content you find. You can add images. Everything is organised with tags to make searching simple. You decide how often you want emails with updates of activity in the groups you join. You can import your browser favourites & Delicious tags. You can add highlighting and ‘sticky notes’ to web pages that can only be viewed by members. This allows you to point students to the most relevant section of a webpage and pose study questions. The Diigo Diigolet can be loaded on any device. This allows easy collecting and annotating of webpages. 

Minuses

You need to remember to do ‘housekeeping’ on your tags to keep them consistent. You must search by tags to find websites, as the collection is linear. The iPad app only shows your library, you cannot add to your library from it. You need to do this from Safari, where the Diigolet is installed. Adding the Diigolet to the iPad is a little complicated. View this video from a previous post to see how some students are using Diigo to collaborate. 

Conclusion 

New tools will constantly be developed, but there is no need to jump on the latest ‘band wagon’ and switch tools every time you hear about a new one.  If you find a tool that you like, that works for you, use it. Don’t change until it no longer suits your purpose.

November in September

Alan speaking to our parents

“You don’t know what you don’t know.” Alan November

 A group of parents found out some of what they didn’t know at an evening talk given by Alan November this week. Many left with possibly more questions than answers, but also a desire to know more. Alan showed parents how to help their children think critically about digital content, including search engine results using Google operators and how to prepare them to have a global work ethic by using tools such as Google Docs, Wolfram Alpha, MathTrain and Khan Academy.  

Below are some parent comments on the evening:

How lucky our children are to attend a school that offers those kinds of learning experiences and a principal who is willing to discuss how to position the school to evolve with new learning practices.
I strongly urge parents to take advantage of these opportunities that our children’s school offers to expand your own minds and also to reinforce at home what your children are being taught in school.  To have the opportunity to listen to an international speaker on the same day that he has already spoken to my child and then come home and discuss that learning is a very inspiring and motivating experience.  It closes a loop of learning, so perhaps that was what Mrs Rodrigues was referring to when she described Alan November as an expert in hula hooping!
Alan November taught me to use operators in search strings to get better search results and filter out biased views on the internet (e.g. link:, site: and using .edu), rather than attempting to do this manually.  I also learnt about the Wolfram Alpha, which was on my child’s iPad all along – if only I knew earlier.

I “dragged” myself there after a long day at work almost groaning as I entered the room.  All I could think was “I have made a terrible mistake; this is going to be so boring”.
How wrong was I? I found myself looking at the clock and wishing we had one more hour.  Not only was Alan an entertaining speaker; the things that I learnt seem to me to be almost invaluable … how did I get along using the internet before last night?
What a shame more parents didn’t avail themselves of this valuable learning opportunity.
Bravo to Chisholm College for including the parent body in the learning journey as active participants and not just observers.
 Also I would like to add; as the parent of a current year 8 student I am fully supportive of them being included in the iPad program.  I think in fairness this learning opportunity should be available to ALL Chisholm Catholic College students.
 As a footnote I came home to share my new knowledge with my children and when I showed them what I could do they laughed and said “we learnt that in library years ago mum.”

 All I can say is WOW!  Last night was the best $10 I ever spent!!!  Mrs Rodrigues was right when she said as you find out about the internet you realise just how much you don’t know.  My mind is completely blown away and I feel that there is an INFINITE amount of learning to be done.  Yes, it will definitely take much time.

Alan challenged teachers’ and students’ thinking about what is possible in the world of digital and online teaching and learning. He had a breakfast meeting with a small group of students from Years Seven to Twelve, followed by workshops for staff on Monday. Tuesday saw all Year Ten students spend two periods with Alan exploring a range of powerful online tools such as diigo, Twitter, Google Docs, Wolfram Alpha, MathTrain and Khan Academy, as well as showing them how to use Google operators to search critically and efficiently.

Alan was keen to emphasize that these tools shouldn’t be used for their own sake, but rather to enhance the effective learning already taking place in the classroom. For example, these tools can allow students to work collaboratively with others in schools all over the world; can take a revision course in chemistry and create their own video and audio tutorials to charge their knowledge.

Our real work begins now, continuing the momentum that was begun this week, supporting staff in applying these new tools and sharing this information with our parents. Small shifts are all that is needed to begin. Everything starts with that first step. Happily many staff now seem ready to begin the journey. Exciting times are ahead!

 

Organise your information: Scoop.it

  by  AJC1 

Scoop.it presents another way of collecting and organising websites. Gina will be running the Scoop.it workshops next week. The list of all workshops can be found here. Session dates and times can be found here.

Here is Gina’s summary of Scoop.it:

 If you want to be able to find ready-made information for your interests, organise it, share it with others, build networks and contacts, provide content for your twitter and Facebook accounts and present it all in a very attractive, magazine-like format then Scoop.it is for you! Scoop.it specialises in content curation: ‘the act of discovering, gathering, and presenting digital content that surrounds specific subject matter’. (http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=79167)

Scoop.it scours the internet for you to find information on the subjects you want to know about, saving you hours of searching time. If someone else has a Scoop.it on the same topic as you, then you can ‘re-scoop’ their material! It can also be used as a great tool in the classroom.

This video is a general introduction:

Scoop.it in the classroom: