Virtual Learning Network

Just added this as a group discussion but didn't work so perhaps will try here...I've been reading with interest the discussion in the Whakatu Cluster around digital citizenship started by Isaac Day. We've included cybersafety here at Hanmer Springs School as one of our school goals this year as part and parcel of development of web 2.0 skills and strategies for learning in our classrooms. This is heading towards a full school wide programme of digital citizenship. There is a wealth of excellent material to help resource and support this and 'Hectors World' has been a great place to start for the juniors and middles. The netsafe resource is excellent too. Cyberpigs from media Awareness has been a great interactive resource and Jo Cool or Jo Fool has been more suited to our older children.

With staff here we ran a session last Thursday evening for parents on how wikis are being used in the our classrooms and to help our community understand what a wiki actually was. They had a go at interacting with the presentation which was a wiki. In terms of digital citizenship I can see that we have much work to do in helping our community first with their understandings of how children are working in online spaces and communities. Unfortunately the evening we held on wikis wasn't well attended numbers wise so I'll have to work on this for next time.

The area of digital citizenship is important if we are getting our children to participate in online spaces and communities. I'm interested in the points in the Whakatu discussion around what are the differences between 'digital citizenship' and plain old 'citizenship'. Take a look.

Here's a voice thread of some of our children's thinking on cybersafety. Just subscribed to a full subsription to voice thread to manage our users. Excellent reflective tool.