Personal Interests and EdTech Trends – Part B

     In the search to find resources that would be useful in better understanding my chosen topic of digital citizenship, internet safety and online awareness, I first needed to consider all of the clientele that the library learning commons serves including staff, parents and students. Next, I wanted to thoughtfully consider and choose different types of formats that I thought would best suit each different group of users. Therefore in this blog post I will highlight and review an informative journal article for staff, eye-opening video presentations for parents and an engaging digital platform for students, each revolving around the importance of digital citizenship, internet safety and online awareness.

     With this weeks course readings centred around researching district resources, policies and procedures, when selecting my resources it was important to me that I follow policy #6.55 of the Burnaby School District regarding the Selection of Learning Resources seen here. My choices would need to:

1. Support and enrich the curriculum while considering the varied interests, abilities, learning styles, and maturity levels of students.

2. Stimulate an interest in acquiring, testing, and applying knowledge.

3. Present various aspects of controversial issues so that students may have an opportunity to develop, under guidance, the skills of critical analysis as a basis for making informed judgements.

(Burnaby School District Policy #6.55 1)

Furthermore, this policy states that “recommendations from curriculum specialists shall be sought where possible”(Burnaby School District Policy #6.55 2) and so I also referred to the new Burnaby District EdTech Plan seen here to ensure my resources would address the curricular competencies outlined by the district team. In particular, I am focused on the competencies that refer to:

Digital Citizenship

(Image from Burnaby School District EdTech Plan)

Internet Safety

(Image from Burnaby School District EdTech Plan)

and Online Awareness

(Image from Burnaby School District EdTech Plan)

Staff Resource

     Inspired by Helen Crompton’s research article Evidence of the ISTE Standards for Educators Leading to Learning Gains from the Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, I was intrigued that students had learned about safety and digital citizenship through digital based learning methods (through a digital game-based learning environment). The article outlined a study which compared an experimental group of students learning through a game-based environment of an app and a control group who covered the same content while learning through a traditional “chalk and talk” activity. The findings revealed that the experimental group achieved significantly better scores on digital citizenship than the control group. Their understanding led to decreased concerns about online harassment, victimization, and perpetration behaviours as students had increased levels of understanding of how to avoid and safely navigate those negative situations and to practice good behaviour in a safe environment” (Crompton). This kind of engaging digital learning sounded motivating to me and especially when considering students with different learning styles such as visual learners, hands-on learners and those with aural attention difficulties. I was keen to find other articles or studies to support this way of learning and present this research to staff, many of whom admittedly aren’t very keen on providing screen time for ‘game playing’ during school hours. They feel that the majority of students have enough gaming playing time on screens at home and this was fairly noted.

     However, the Canadian School Libraries document Foundations for School Library Learning Commons in Canada: A Framework for Success clearly outlines that a library learning commons “is designed to engineer and drive future-oriented learning and teaching throughout the entire school” (CSL 6). I knew that if I could find more research to support this kind of engaging learning through gaming, that staff may be more likely to be on board with this ‘futuristic approach’ to learning versus the more conventional lecture-based strategy where teachers would directly deliver content to students and ask them to discuss situations concerning online behaviour. I was thrilled to find that another experiment specifically in regards to learning digital citizenship through a digital game-based learning environment was conducted in northern Thailand to evaluate its effectiveness. The article “Effects of a formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach on students’ digital citizenship behaviours, learning motivations, and perceptions” can be read here.

     “The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only enhanced the students’ digital citizenship behaviours, but also promoted their motivations and perceptions” (Tapingkae, P. et al. 1). This learning approach was an “effective teaching and learning process to trigger students to learn and to make learning more meaningful through actual practice with authentic problems” (Tapingkae, P. et al. 1). The three research questions posed were:

• RQ1: Do the students who learn with the formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach show better digital citizenship behaviours than those who learn with the conventional learning approach regarding self-reported digital citizenship behaviours?
• RQ2: Do the students make significant improvements in their digital citizenship behaviours after learning with the formative assessment-based contextual gaming or conventional learning approaches regarding self-reported digital citizenship behaviours?
• RQ3: Do the students who learn with the formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach show higher learning motivation and learning perception than those who learn with the conventional learning approach?

     The students’ scores of digital citizenship were analyzed through a digital citizenship questionnaire and this gaming approach was recognized as an effective approach that can improve students’ learning performance. (It should be mentioned that this experiment involved upper intermediate classes of grade 7 and 8’s. I am considering my final project to focus more on the early intermediate grades of 4 and 5, however I do not think this is entirely significant as the Burnaby EdTech Plan’s curricular competencies are written as a whole for all of the intermediate grades 4-7 inclusively. This discrepancy in grade may affect the developmental level of the digital games and resources that I choose but it should not negate the outcomes of the research showing that learning gains were made through this type of engaging instruction.)

Parent Resource

     When contemplating a resource to include and inform parents of the digital citizenship and internet safety curriculum being taught, I took into consideration that this resource needed to be short and sweet, succinct and clear, in very simple everyday language that everyone could understand. Parents and families come from all different walks of life and unlike teachers who have an ongoing responsibility to professional development, a lengthy journal article given to parents would likely remain unread while they are experiencing the busy-ness of lives with young children. Therefore, I decided to opt for a few short videos that would inform, encourage and empower parents to be involved in their child’s online safety and digital citizenship learning. Both videos below are very brief and provide realistic advice to parents that centres around communicating with their children regarding their online habits and providing some tips and advice for setting good boundaries.

The first video gives tips to parents on how to engage in conversations with their children around internet safety:

The second video provides a light-hearted TedX Talk about realistic communication regarding digital citizenship, followed by practical parenting tips:

Student Resource

     When searching for an engaging digital learning tool for students, I chose the interactive game “Interland” supported by Google and seen here. This online game is designed to teach children about digital safety and citizenship and to help students navigate the internet safely and responsibly. Comprised of four distinct lands, the students learn through play about the importance of kindness and respect online, as well as caution around sharing information and personal data while avoiding scams, phishing attempts and other forms of misinformation. All of this learning is in direct correlation with the Burnaby EdTech Plan and its curricular competencies outlined above. The game is colourful and attractive, with up to date graphics and it includes all different kinds of challenges and puzzles to keep the learning fun. This kind of future-oriented learning supports the research that states that the use of digital games has “great potential for helping students enjoy learning and gain knowledge owing to the provision of interesting and interactive learning contexts” (Tapingkae, P. et al. 1).

     I feel that each of the above resources has “met high standards in terms of their substantive content and general presentation, having aesthetic, literary, and or social value” (Burnaby School District Policy #6.55 2) and that they are “appropriate for the targeted subject area and for the age, emotional and social development, ability level, and learning styles…for whom the resources are selected” (Burnaby School District Policy #6.55 2). It is my hope that these resources help “motivate both students and staff (and parents) to examine their own attitudes and behaviours” (Burnaby School District Policy #6.55 2) as well as help the community develop “a set of skills for thinking critically, behaving safely, and participating responsibly in the digital world” (Common Sense Education). I am looking forward to more detailed explorations around this area of interest for the final project of this course!

Works Cited:

Burnaby School District. Burnaby Schools Education Technology Plan. Burnaby School Board, 2024, https://edtechplan.burnabyschools.ca/. Accessed 26 May 2024.

Burnaby School District. Policy 6.55: Selection of Learning Resources. Burnaby School Board, Sept. 1979, https://burnabyschools.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/6.55-Policy-Selection-of-Learning-Resources.pdf. Accessed 26 May 2024.

Canadian School Libraries (CSL). Foundations for School Library Learning Commons in Canada: A Framework for Success, 2023. https://www.canadianschoollibraries.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/CSL_Foundations-Frameworks_ FINAL_ Nov2023.pdf. Accessed 26 May 2024.

Common Sense Education. Everything You Need to Teach Digital Citizenship. Common Sense Media, https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship. Accessed 26 May 2024.

Crompton, H. “Evidence of the ISTE standards for educators leading to learning gains.” Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, vol. 39, no. 4, 2023 pp. 201–219.

Tapingkae, P. et al. “Effects of a formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach on students’ digital citizenship behaviours, learning motivations, and perceptions.” Computers & Education, vol. 159, 2020. 

TEDx Talks. “Kid, you posted WHAT?! How to raise a digital citizen | Keegan Korf | TEDxOmaha.” YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 14 Nov 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztgSr42CSEI.

Netsafe. “NetSafe Episode 15: Tips and Tools for Parents (All Ages).” Youtube, uploaded by Planet Nutshell, 13 June 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plRkcQF5cC0&t=1s.