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The True Meaning of Digital Citizenship

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The world is now a genuinely digital place. Billions of people worldwide communicate digitally, work digitally, learn digitally, and even play digitally every day. Your students were probably exposed to a tablet or smartphone very early and have grown up using technology. However, for the majority of your students, the digital space is their modern-day playground. Of course, all of our students are already digital citizens. But the critical question to ask is: do they understand digital citizenship?

Without any guidance, we can’t expect students to navigate the far-reaching digital space with so much potential. So it is vital that we, as educators, prepare them for a future where technology is everywhere and help them navigate the digital space positively. This is where digital citizenship comes in.

Digital citizenship is a broad and varied topic that students can interpret in numerous ways. For us at BSD Education, we agree with Richard Culatta from ISTE, who believes that schools need to shift the way they think about and teach students to be good digital citizens.

All too often, digital citizenship is focused just on online safety or what not to do in the digital space. Of course, these are important lessons, but we need to focus on the potential of being a digital citizen. As Culatta says, digital citizenship should use technology to make the world a better place for ourselves and others. 

A ‘good’ digital citizen should see the world as an interconnected community of a range of different people and understand that technology can be used to benefit ourselves, but more importantly, for others.

Digital citizens will have the skills and knowledge to communicate and consume in the digital space. But, still, vitally, they will have the skills and expertise to solve problems and create solutions. 

Educators cannot teach this level of understanding in just one-off classes. Instead, it needs to be explored and explained as a way of thinking and integrated across classes and content areas. 

What are your thoughts on Digital Citizenship? Has your school integrated Digital Citizenship into the curriculum yet? Feel free to discuss with me at cb@bsd.education, and we could feature you in our upcoming articles!

5 Things We Learned From Running Our Own Makerspaces

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The interest in educational makerspaces has seen an explosive growth over the past few years; you can now find them all over the world: in schools, museums, libraries and even in local garages. As a makerspace educator I can testify that these unique spaces provide transformational opportunities for students to get hands-on with learning while picking up new skills. If you are thinking of starting one, or already have one, I have some great advice from my experience. Here are the top five lessons I’ve learned from my experience in designing, maintaining and teaching in makerspaces.

  • Define Your Purpose

When I work with schools that want to start a new makerspace, we start with a school team to help them define a vision and purpose of the makerspace. Some schools want a fully integrated curriculum-driven space, some want an afterschool space, and others just want to focus on robotics. Once you define the purpose of the space, you can start to think about the tools, materials and physical layout of the space. There is no right or wrong way, you just have to design for what is best for your school. If you don’t know where to start, then I would suggest to visit a few makerspaces and look at different spaces. You can even visit professional makerspaces and hackerspaces. Here is another article that I wrote about defining the purpose of your makerspace.

  • Tools not Toys

Once you define the purpose of your space, you will need to think about what tools will be needed. I have found that a wide variety of hand tools and basic tools are more essential than big expensive equipment like laser cutters and 3D printers.  In order to facilitate a safe space with your chosen tools, it is vitally important to stress a safety protocol with tool usage that includes safety demonstrations and tool practice time. In my space, we allowed grade 1-4 students to start using full size hand saws, cordless drills and hammers after tool training and safety demonstrations. Our motto was always to treat materials and equipment like tools, not toys to create a safe space for all.

  • Accessibility

The school that I worked with in Hong Kong was an inclusive school that hosted learners with a wide range of skills, ability and height. Make sure to think about accessibility for all of your students as you design your space, keeping in mind things like table height, loud tools in one area and ease of movement around the space. Also, make sure to have a range of different sized protective gear like goggles, gloves and aprons.

  • Sustainability

A makerspace will need many different types of raw materials to work with, from wood, pvc, cardboard, plastic, sheet metal, styrofoam and others. Try to find a local vendor who can supply your material needs that can hopefully provide bulk orders and delivery to your campus as a bonus. The cost of restocking materials can start to add up quickly, so I recommend that you re-use as much as you can. When we would design something like a large wooden scale model, I would always ask the students to design it in a way that we can repurpose, use forever or disassemble and use the parts for another project.

  • Purposeful Play 

The Lego Foundation has been publishing research on constructionism-based play-pedagogy for years and I find it to be absolutely essential reading material for any makerspace teacher. I think that a makerspace can be a valuable space to bring learning to life that is curriculum driven, and at the same time fosters exploration, creativity and fun in learning,  as long as they are safe with the tools. This goes for the adults and teachers who are in the space as well, sometimes you’ll just want to play!

No matter what kind of makerspace you have or what kind of tools and materials you have, these lessons learned are sure to spark a conversation with your team. If you have any tips or lessons learned, we would love to hear those too!

Bonus:

Here are 2 invaluable resources that I highly recommend for any makerspace:

Fab Foundation Lesson Plans, classroom-ready lessons designed by makerspace teachers all over the world

Meaningful Making Books -free pdf download that includes lessons designed by k-12 FabLearn Fellows

Passionate Teaching: How to Inspire Students

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What do you remember most about the teachers you encountered in your school days? There might have been the one joke your philosophy teacher made about Immanuel Kant in Grade 11 that still makes you laugh decades after. Or your English teacher who encouraged your Grade 12 class to get through some challenging literature pieces by allowing you to take a chance to connect with it through culturally relevant comparisons. Maybe your Grade 7 science teacher started their lesson by engaging the class in reviewing a recent sci-fi movie. These three teachers are linked by how they care about students’ success in their subject area. They can see the relevance in enhancing their lives – they want students to care genuinely! As a result, these teachers usually like to listen closely too because their passion is infectious.

What makes a passionate teacher?

Effective and memorable teachers are keen to spread positivity and genuinely enjoy teaching and engaging with students. In addition, they are reflective, open to change, and always welcome new ideas. But with all these great qualities, there is one joint driving force behind it – the passion for what they do. 

Robert Fried defines passionate teaching in his book The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide (2001) as “someone in love with a field of knowledge, deeply stirred by issues and ideas that challenge our world, drawn to the dilemmas and potentials of the young people who come into class each day — or captivated by all of these.” 

In Alfred Thompson’s post “Why Passion is Important for Teachers” (2007), he observed how a teacher’s passion is a powerful driver of student outcome and performance in the class. Thompson followed the progression of a mathematics teacher assigned to teach a computer science class. The teacher was experienced, but the lack of enthusiasm in computer science dampened the course’s learning. Thompson also mentions that passion is not something we can fake. 

Then what can educators do if assigned to teach something they’re less passionate about in class? Luckily, passion is something that educators can cultivate.

Just get started – be inspired!

Passionate teaching might be difficult but try starting with simple things such as searching about a topic area. You might be surprised and find something you connect with. You can also watch some Ted Talk videos or podcasts about the subject area to get inspired. 

Find a community

Talk to teachers who are enthusiastic about the subject you are trying to get passionate about. It is helpful to see the subject through another teacher’s eyes. This technique is powerful, as you will find new approaches to passionate teaching that you can try in your classroom. In addition, you can try to see how the teacher sees their subject as relevant to the students’ future. You may also find great communities online in Facebook Groups and especially Twitter under #edchat!

Try new approaches in your own professional development

It is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel when teaching a new subject that you are unfamiliar with. Many educators in your local community share tried and tested classroom approaches. Additionally, you can find relevant workshops, events, or social gatherings organized for teachers through a simple Google search. These resources allow educators to exchange ideas in new teaching areas such as Tech and Computer Science.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Hopefully, they will also get you excited about the new challenges that may be ahead this coming academic year!  Follow us on social media to see upcoming teacher events, ideas, and tips to enhance your classroom. 

If you have any ideas, recommendations,  thoughts, or questions, please get in touch with us at ey@bsd.education, and I would love to speak more about Passionate Teaching.

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How Coding Projects Promote Design Thinking

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When it comes to Technology Education at BSD, we hope to inspire students to create with technology and highlight the importance of developing solutions that solve real-world problems. Making any new technology should be rooted in a solid purpose to help people. We emphasize this by weaving technology education projects into all subjects and infusing them with Design Thinking skills. 

Design Thinking is a process for solving problems creatively. The three core pillars of Design Thinking are: 

  1. Empathy — Understanding the needs of those you’re designing for.
  2. Ideation — Generating a lot of ideas. While brainstorming is one technique, there are many others.
  3. Experimentation — Testing those ideas with prototyping. 

Design Thinking helps capture people’s needs, possibilities, and ideas for an advanced human-centered solution or product.

Let’s see how we prepare students on their Design Thinking skills via BSD programs of learning. 

All of our courses end with creating a project for a specific use. This motivates students to learn about their end-users, their demographics, and how they will use the project efficiently. This helps foster students’ empathy – starting the process of Design Thinking. 

After understanding the end-users, students will start to code their projects. Students learn the basics of coding and other coding topics, depending on the topic and level of the course. Based on the requirements of the project, students may learn additional technical skills like designing characters or logos, understand color theory or branding, or even writing copy for their project. 

Moreover, students should share and test their prototypes with their peers and, if possible, with some end users using an automated URL or QR code. This helps them get real-time feedback and adjust their project based on the response.

For instance, students must share their games with their classmates for testing and feedback in our Game Development course. Based on feedback, students may add new challenges, stages, characters, update the scoring system, or rewrite the gameplay.

As in any game, the experience of the users is key to its success. So, while their peers are trying the game, they are asked to observe how it’s being played and request feedback.

Students will then need to consider the feedback they receive and learn to exercise their judgment as to what will ultimately be a compromise between the features they like versus the feedback they have received on what the users want.

Finally, based on the observations and peer feedback, students can determine how they can continue to improve their projects to test them again. However, this testing and feedback cycle is not limited to a single cycle. Instead, it’s repeated as often as needed to make the game perfect – emulating the Design Thinking process of prototyping -> testing -> tweaking -> testing. This is excellent preparation for their lives as a whole and an excellent exercise in giving and receiving feedback.

With technology becoming ubiquitous, it is an increasing and urgent responsibility to teach our students that technology is not the solution to problems but tools people use to solve problems. Therefore, to effectively solve problems, technologies should be built to keep the people using them at the center; employing Design Thinking skills helps achieve precisely this.

EdTech Tools for the Classroom

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In today’s digital age, an increasing number of schools are recognizing the value of introducing non-traditional learning tools in the classroom – namely, digital and “educational technology” (EdTech) tools. This list includes online learning platforms, mobile devices, web services, even AR (augmented reality)/VR (virtual reality), and more! 

Introducing EdTech in the classroom doesn’t mean relying on technology to teach a lesson for you. Rather, it is incorporating them in such a way that allows you to deliver lessons that enhance student learning and engagement. EdTech also helps students foster valuable, career-ready digital skills, all while learning at school. Embracing technology as a learning tool opens up a vast array of possibilities, especially when teaching curriculum and organizing classroom activities. For example, some students may struggle with the traditional, lecture-based classroom structure. Still, technology offers various approaches to teaching course material and helps to create more fun, dynamic, and social learning environment. 

Let’s look at a few popular examples of EdTech tools used in the classroom.

Gamifying Student Learning

Gamification uses game design and mechanics to promote student engagement and participation.

EdTech tools like Classcraft, GradeCraft, and Rezzly transform your lesson material into a class-wide adventure game. Your students can create their characters and work with their classmates to complete quests! Instead of earning grades such as “A” or “C,” students can earn experience points and badges to level up. Instead of traditional assignments, teachers can transform classroom tasks into “quests” that help students gain experience points and badges.

Using gamification EdTech software means that set-up, management, and assessment are taken care of for you. As a result, you can avoid the headache of creating every element you would need for gamifying your classrooms, such as quests, rewards, challenges, leveling, and progress-tracking.

Game-based Learning

Not to be used with gamification, game-based learning uses games as a direct source of learning material. We recommend embracing games as an EdTech tool by using them as a direct source of course material.

Tools such as Kahoot, Quizizz, and Socrative allow teachers to create interactive trivia games to reinforce or revise course material. After making a game, teachers can use quizzes as a classroom activity by displaying the game questions on a display. Students can use any device to “sign in” to the game to choose their answer and compete against their classmates.

Teachers will visualize, display, and track analytics in real-time, such as the number of participants, high score, question time, and live progress. In addition to trivia games, many game-based EdTech tools also allow teachers to create interactive questionnaires, discussions, and surveys. 

Creation and Collaboration

Brainstorming, collaboration, and communication can all be made more accessible with tools such as Padlet and Buncee. These EdTech tools are like virtual “bulletin boards” where students can create various projects, such as a storyboard, mindmap, flowchart, bulletin board, scrapbook, newspaper, discussion forum, and more! Additionally, students can add text, multimedia (e.g., videos, images, music, etc.) and invite others to collaborate on a project together.

Other ideas include hosting a live collaboration lesson where students can add their comments to your board in real-time or brainstorming ideas for a group project together.

Implementing EdTech tools in the classroom helps increase students’ digital literacy and fosters valuable digital skills like computational thinking. These tools help them prepare for the future and are all high in demand in today’s job market.

Integrating technology into the classroom can impact student learning in many ways. Echoed wholeheartedly in this article by Top Hat, this sentiment argues that technology has its limits. However, integrating it into the classroom increases learning outcomes, student engagement opens up education beyond the confines of a classroom. It offers many ways for students to interact with course material.

If you’d like to find out more about non-traditional learning tools, you can email us at info@bsd.education.

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Connecting Classrooms to the Real World: Teachers Meet Businesses

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Last month, we ran the first event in our new series: Teachers Meet Businesses!  

Globally, people speak about the need for schools to prepare students for the job. However, there is often a gap between classroom and workplace activities.

What is Teachers Meet Businesses?

Our quarterly events bring teachers into companies to understand first-hand how technology has changed industries and business models.

During each event, a company representative discusses using technology at work, and a teacher discusses using technology in the classroom.

Therefore, this allows teachers to observe how digital skills will improve their students’ future careers.

Hearing from Businesses

Macquarie Group Hong Kong hosted our first Teachers Meet Businesses event. Fiona Yu discussed the significance of machine learning in today’s trading activity. Fiona oversees the “Blocks Desk” team, which employs a proprietary technology to rate possible buyers and sellers.

Moreover, her team uses big data and AI to advise clients on what to purchase and sell. Like how Amazon recommends books depending on your search, Fiona’s team does the same with stock recommendations.

To create these recommendations, Fiona’s team combines huge data about stock features, similar fund manager decisions, and stock screening.

Hearing from Teachers

Providing insight about authentic student learning opportunities at South Island School in Hong Kong, Iain Williamson spoke next after Fiona. The AFP media course has replaced the outdated Media IGCSE. Client commissions are a key feature of this training. They work directly with other companies to meet deadlines and objectives, much as in the real world.

This experience evaluates students’ technical abilities and ‘softer’ skills that employers expect to see, such as communication and time management.

Additionally, introducing a course with real-world application and relevance increased enrollment and engagement.

The first Teachers Meet Businesses event was a truly insightful evening and a great success! The speeches gave a clear picture of how important integrating real-world relevant digital skills in school really is. Especially so as we preparing students for the future. Moreover, Iain’s experience clearly shows that this sort of learning prepares students and makes them more engaged and enthusiastic in the classroom.

Want to learn more about our Teachers Meet Businesses events? Click here or contact me at cb@bsd.education.

Engage Your Students in Reading and Writing in the month of April

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How can I engage my students?

Internationally, people celebrate and recognize the power of books. Reading holds creativity and information from the past and future, allowing people to share ideas and learn new things. But how does this effectively fit into educational technology? With tools like Kindles and iPads, students have access to thousands of books that they can take anywhere with them – an entire library on the go! In addition, the use of technology increases the reading experience by allowing students to explore further with a simple search.

How does technology fit into this?

The rapid development of technology has enabled us to provide more scaffolding in the classroom, such as better personalized learning (platforms and apps that recommend books according to learner reading ability) and gamified learning experiences (achieve a badge for completing a book).

Technology can also provide new ways for students to discover interests they have never considered before.

Consider trying these activities with your class:

  • Challenge students to keep a reading blog to share and reflect on a book of their choice.
  • Encourage students to practice giving constructive feedback and recommendations by keeping an unplugged reading review forum on your class bulletin. Teachers can suggest books and post them on the board. This will encourage students to post their ratings when they have read the book!
  • Have students collaborate by choosing chapter from a book and to create their own version by making a video.

If you’ve tried these activities with your students or have a question, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Please send us an email at info@bsd.education, and our team will get back to you ASAP!

Student Agency in Educational Technology Integrations

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Earlier this month I was invited to present at the ACAMIS Spring Leadership Conference on Student Agency in Educational Technology Integrations. This article summarizes the key points from my presentation – definition and importance of student agency, concrete examples of student agency in action with teachers taking a lead in enabling this; and some tips school leaders can take back to school.

As Head of Learning Experience at BSD, a huge part of my job is to deliver professional development and coach teachers, as well as observe a wide variety of classroom settings.  During coaching and classroom observations, I get the opportunity to see a wide variety of student agency in action.

But what is student agency? Eric Sheninger’s definition in his article, Student Agency: Moving from Talk to Action, captures the essence of what it’s about – “Student agency is about empowering kids to own their learning (and school) through greater autonomy. It is driven by choice, voice, and advocacy.”

Access to Internet-enabled devices in and outside the classroom has encouraged and allowed students to take control of their own learning. As educators, it’s now up to us to help students take responsible ownership of their learning as well as provide the right environment and support to nurture this.

In my visits to schools, I have observed that those which best promote student agency in technology settings have these common traits:

  1. They invest time and resources to develop clear and strong objectives and outcomes for teachers and students. After this is defined, choosing the right devices, infrastructure and software become easy.
  2. The school leadership supports the decisions made by the teachers and promotes buy-in from the teaching community. Developing agency in students is, in fact, starts with giving the same autonomy to teachers to make their own decision.
  3. They promote interdepartmental collaboration. Bringing together teachers with a wide range of skill sets and from different backgrounds helps bring out and inspires the best in everyone.
  4. They listen to the student and parent community and involve them in the decision making process.

Now, if you are a teacher who uses technology in the classroom and wants to develop agency in your students here are some handy tips:

  1. Give up control: When you bring in technology and the internet in the classroom you open the world of new possibilities. This makes it impossible for you to plan every detail of your lesson plan so I recommend carving in ample time for exploration and tinkering.  
  2. Let students decide: It’s time for the end of term project presentations? Encourage students to be creative and let them choose what they want to do – shoot a video, create a website, even enact it or just stick to a slideshow – the choice is entirely up to them!  Doing so helps build confidence and bring out students’ hidden interests and skills.
  3. Engage your students by asking for suggestions and feedback: Ask students to peer review their work by giving each other “three stars and a wish” – three things you liked about your colleagues’ work and one thing you wish they would do next time.
  4. Solve open ended problems: Ask big questions to solve big problems. Questions like – “how would you decrease traffic congestion in X city?”, “how would you improve the food and water distribute chain so everyone gets equal access to it?”, “how would you incentivise people to pay their taxes?”, etc. Asking such questions opens the doors to a series of follow up questions encourages students to gain a deeper understanding of how complex systems work, which in turn helps them to potentially discover the root cause of the problem.
  5. Be a coach or facilitator for learning: When it comes to technology, students need a supportive and experienced adult to guide them. They also need an environment where trying, learning-by-doing, and not being afraid to make mistakes is encouraged.

If you would like to see my entire presentation and would like me to share it with you, get in touch with me at mq@bsd.education.

Four Ways To Integrate Technology Learning at Your School

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Many schools recognize that bringing technology education into their offering is vital to ensuring the future success of their students. However, the practicalities of this can be challenging. We hear common challenges: too much curriculum to get through, staff finding it difficult to integrate technology, and too expensive resources.

Fortunately, there is more than one way to integrate technology learning into school life. Regardless of how challenges may appear initially, you will find a way. Every school is unique with different objectives and challenges and, for this reason, we have outlined four approaches to integration that might work for you.

As a focused course

Technology is often taught as a stand-alone subject like computer science. However, technology integration works best where a school can or has already carved out time, in a computing class or STEM class, with the goal of teaching technology. This approach ensures that students get the opportunity to focus purely on their digital skills.

Our TechReady courses are in this space, which focuses on bridging the gap between age-appropriate learning and developments in the real world, such as AI and big data.

Integrated into other subjects

Teachers that integrate technology can help make learning in other subjects more ‘real-world relevant.’ It also helps to bring subjects together to create exciting cross-curricular learning opportunities. Many schools do not have time to teach technology as a stand-alone subject, enabling integration without finding lots of additional hours. It also allows you to align vital skills with the interests of your students.

Think about small or large-scale technology projects and bring in different approaches depending on your teaching topic. For example, why not get your students to create a blog instead of writing their next story in their textbook. Another option is using data visualization to demonstrate migration trends over time in geography.

At BSD, we have curated TechConnected projects that can be brought into any core subject. We focus on enhancing what is already happening in the classroom. This enables you to integrate technology into teaching almost as usual and introduces an activity that combines subject and technology learning. Through this approach, the subject becomes the context. The projects create a more engaging way for students to either learn the concepts of the subject or become a content vessel to present and reinforce what they are learning in the class.

After school activities

For those of you who do not have time to integrate technology learning during the school day, consider running an after-school activity focused on technology. In one of our previous issues, we explored why enrichment programs are so powerful and the benefits they offer students. Integrating in this way is an excellent starting point that the curriculum can build upon.

Out-of-school learning should be more open and exploratory, so we designed our Technovators program for after-school activities to focus on students working with technology more creatively.

Do all three

Technology in the real world touches everything and impacts everyone. It cannot be isolated to one area or a group of self-selecting people. In an ideal world, the school environment must reflect this. We advocate for infusing technology learning across everything so that students can make connections, follow their interests and understand the application of technology. We believe this helps students to build solutions across contexts. You, as a teacher, can help enable this. Regular exposure to technology is the best way to prepare students for using technology in their futures.

However, it is also clear that implementation across everything can rarely be the first step. Instead, start with what best fits your school’s model and build from there. For more information about any of our curriculum offerings, contact us here. 

Project Highlight: Mathematics Trivia Game

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BSD Education’s comprehensive teacher training and support, ready-made curriculum, and online-learning software platform (BSD Online) allow us to provide project-based technology education like no other! Our online platform offers projects with step-by-step guides which allow students to code and create a variety of projects including their very own website, 2D mini game, or even a mobile app.

One example of a great project is our Mathematics Trivia Game, which is currently available on BSD Online. It is one of the many projects housed under our TechConnected curriculum for students aged 8 to 14, and also includes tech projects for English, Science, Geography, Humanities and Languages. Our projects are
aligned to US/UK/IB curricula, and are also mapped to ISTE/CSTA standards.

Now let’s look at the Mathematics Trivia Game in detail:

What is it?

The Mathematics Trivia Game is a short 8-step project on how to create a trivia game. Using a list of multiple-choice questions, it is designed to test a player’s math knowledge. Students are guided on how to add their own questions, as well as program the correct answers that players need to provide in order to score a point.

What do students learn?

To create their trivia game, students first need to learn how to use JavaScript – a coding language used to make a webpage more interactive. Learning code and immediately putting it into practice with a fun project develops students’ computational thinking, logic, and problem-solving skills. It also encourages them to pay attention to detail and be creative.

How can students use it?

This project is a unique and creative way for students to summarize their learning, or as a fun way to review for a test – students can even play each other’s trivia games to reinforce new concepts learned during math class!

After completing the project steps, students are offered the opportunity to further customize their Mathematics Trivia game – they can add more questions, add additional answer options, change the visual display of the quiz itself, and even change the topic of the quiz from math to history!

If you’re interested in bringing the Mathematics Trivia Game project into your classroom, or if you’d like more information on our tech curricula, feel free to contact us! We offer prep guides which assist teachers on how to use and teach this project in class without requiring any prior coding experience.