21st Century Citizenship

Here is a link to my 21st century citizenship lesson:
21st Century Citizenship Lesson

Reflect on how one establishes a classroom culture where students respect themselves and others and interact safely on the Internet. 

Establishing a classroom culture where students respect themselves and others on the internet starts with information and modeling.  In a classroom with young students such as mine, it is very important to model safe and respectful behavior directly for the students.  With the use of our new interactive whiteboards, it would be easy to demonstrate this for the class.  I would show examples of appropriate, respectful and safe internet behavior for my students with this tool.  Then, I would continue to monitor my students' internet use as much as possible.  I would display examples of my students demonstrating this type of responsible behavior on my interactive whiteboard for the entire class to view positive practice of these internet interactions. 

Wiki Relfection

Here is a link to my classroom wiki.  On this page, students should be looking for the space shapes they are learning about at school at home and listing the objects under each space shape.  This will give a real-life application to our upcoming math unit.

Ms Heuberger's Wiki

I can definitely see the use of wiki's for older students at home.  It would provide an easy way to collaborate with their peers.  It would also give the teacher an easy way to assess by observing which students respond and post to the wiki.  I do not really see this as a useful application for my first grade students, however.  They would need a lot of guidance and support from parents to access the computer, the internet and the wiki.  This would make it a difficult and possibly frustrating task for our families and students. 

Digital Storytelling

Here is a link to my video introduction on youtube:

Lisa Heuberger Introduction

Weigh the benefits and challenges that you anticipate from integrating video into your classroom. How can you best leverage this original content to provide your students with enhanced learning opportunities? How can you integrate these resources into your curriculum in a meaningful way for your students?

I don't mean to be negative but I don't really see any benefits of using this digital storytelling with my first grade students.  First of all, I don't even have the technology in my classroom to make this activity happen.  Secondly, I get such a reaction from seeing and hearing myself on this sort of medium, I can't even imagine the disruption it would cause with my very young students.  I feel that it would be much more of a distraction than a benefit for my first graders.  I can see that it would have some value for older students.  It would provide a more creative outlet for these students to respond to classroom learning and create assignments in place of actual report writing.   I can also see some benefit with English Language Learners as this sort of activity provides visual cues along with the audio which is extremely helpful for these particular students.