AD4DCSS

(Cross-posted on theAd4dcss blog)

As ad4dcss (Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success) has been up and running now for several weeks, it’s time to really get moving on the online professional development course that we have decided to create. This course will be a free moodle course (generously hosted on one of Professional Learning Board’s sites - full disclosure: I do consulting work for PLB) but we haven’t gotten past adding our names to a list of willing volunteers - this needs to change! I’m currently working on getting the volunteers added to the course so we can begin building it, but there needs to be a LOT of discussion before we can start. Some of the things that need to be decided are:

1) Who is the audience for this course? Teachers, parents, community members, administrators, everyone?
2) Will the course be self-study or will we have volunteers facilitating it?
3) What’s the curriculum?
4) Will there be some form of recognition upon course completion?

These are just some of the things that the we need to discuss - all of which need to be figured out before course-building can begin. I would like to have a real-time, preferably voice, discussion on this with at least a portion of the course volunteers in the very near future - getting the 4 things listed above decided is crucial and would best be decided in real-time (I’m thinking Elluminate) meeting.

As with any larger group project, certain people will rise to the top as leaders and certain people would rather hang back and do the behind-the-scenes work. I completely understand this (and depending on the project, settle into either group) and hope that at least a few of the volunteers will be willing to attend a meeting (or if unable to attend, provide copious input beforehand) - I can NOT make these decisions on my own for the group as a whole as this is much larger than me and my knowledge-base or agenda.

What can YOU do?

1) If you haven’t already, add your name to the course planning wiki page so we know who to contact for planning
2) Add your input in the comments here if you don’t wish to work on the course itself
3) Add your input to the discussion area on the course planning wiki page
3) Attend a meeting (to be announced soon)
4) Join the new Moodlers Diigo group (I just created it yesterday) to share resources for Moodle course creation with the course developers - these can be general moodle resources, not necessarily specific to this course

I’m also trying to determine the best way to communicate with course developers and volunteers - suggestions would be more than welcome! Right now the course planning page is part of the larger ad4dcss wiki page, so messaging within the wiki ends up going to the entire group. I’m thinking of setting up a separate wiki for this project………again, input on this would be appreciated! You can comment on that here as well.

If for some reason you need to contact me directly about this, you can email me at kolson29 at gmail dot com, but it would be best to have all input out in the open so the rest of the group can see it.

Let’s move on this!

I’ve been meaning to write about Melanie Notkin - @savvyauntie, the founder of the site SavvyAuntie (The Supreme Destination for Aunts), for a while now, but her post today inspired me to actually DO this. You can check out her site for all things Auntie - it will be launching its beta soon, sign up for an invite!

Melanie wrote a post today titled “Authentic Auntie. Authentic CEO” in which she states:

“Yes, it’s just my 4th, well actually my 5th, blog posting, and I am already apologizing. You see, dear Readers, I had to take down my 4th blog post entitled: A Picture is Worth…,” by request of my siblings. I had included an image of a drawing that my niece had made for me, where I am wearing the most beautiful rainbow dress, and spoke about how that drawing means the world to me. But my siblings thought that by posting it, even without mentioning her name, it invaded her privacy. And so I respected their wishes and removed it.”

and

“I am now forbidden by my brother and SIL to talk about the little ones in my family in this Blog or on SavvyAuntie.com. “

Doesn’t this sound exactly like what many of us are dealing with as educators?

My response to Melanie was this:

“Melanie -
Wow, this is huge and is something that parents, relatives, and teachers are dealing with everywhere. We want to share so much about the people we love, but so many fear of exposure, privacy, etc. This is a major issue in education today as many teachers are wanting to have student work published online and boundaries are being drawn by all parties as to what’s acceptable. I personally would love to blog about my children, but I have mixed feelings about that and my husband is extremely opposed to it. There’s a fine line that everyone sets for their own children, which gets blurred even further when children become old enough to start sharing on their own online. I’m sorry about your particular situation because you obviously love your nieces and nephews oh so much and just want to share this with the world. I’m realizing this is getting REALLY long, though, so I’ll let others take the floor here :-) I think you may have inspired a post on my blog, though!
I’m so looking forward to the launch of Savvy Auntie! I’ve signed up for the beta :-)
(p.s. I’m @kolson29)”

Melanie’s post really hit home for me because it outlines what so many of us are dealing with as teachers - how do we blog and share our teaching experiences if we’re not allowed to make any mention of our students? How are our students supposed to have authentic learning experiences while remaining completely anonymous? I think it’s important for all of us to know that this “censorship” (right or wrong - I’m not claiming that Melanie’s family is in the wrong by any means) goes well beyond the school walls. As I indicated above, I struggle myself with this as a parent and have been trying to decide how I feel about pictures of my children online. I’m leaning toward a less rigid approach after much of the uproar around the situation with Al Upton and his students, but it’s still something I need to think some more about.

So, go read the rest of Melanie’s post - she details a lot more of the issues around being an auntie and family relationships and I have a feeling there will be an outpouring of opinions on this topic (child privacy online) from a slightly different viewpoint than we usually get to see in the edtech world.

If you’ve been online at all since early Sunday morning (CST), you may have seen the acronym ad4dcss thrown around with abandon on twitter and in diigo - if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s your introduction!

ad4dcss = Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success

Our group’s description for the ad4dcss Google Group (you can join!):

“This is a grassroots efforts started by educators to promote the active instruction of students, parents, and administrators on topics concerning digital citizenship, safety, and success.  We want to mobilize ONLINE but take our actions OFFLINE into our own communities and schools.  We’re a group sick of talking about it and ready to DO something.”

Vicki Davis wrote a post yesterday detailing a lot of what was discussed at the original planning session (I attended for a portion of the discussion), I suggest heading over to her post to see the original ideas presented.

The ad4dcss wiki page for Advocates (you can join!) states:

“We are educators who wish to work with others to create information that may be widely disseminated about best practices for digital citizenship, safety, and success. We will volunteer some of our time each month (it may be 30 minutes, it may be that we bookmark with standard tags, or it may be that we promote the activities of ad4dcss through twitter, but we will participate in promoting and aiding these efforts.)”

The ad4dcss Diigo group (you can join!) description begins with:

“Grassroots effort of educators, parents, and teens to promote digital citizenship, safety, and success. Advocacy for wise, balanced, researched based actions in the offline world to promote…”

This movement is still in its infancy, but the main push right now needs to be getting the word out and getting advocates to join. Here’s what you can do RIGHT NOW to get involved in the movement:

1) Read this post (wow, you’re almost done with one task already!)
2) Read Vicki’s post about the origins of ad4dcss
3) Join the ad4dcss Google Group
4) Join the Diigo Group and share your related resources with the group using the group’s tag dictionary (this pops up when you select “share with group” and choose ad4dcss)
5) Request membership on the ad4dcss wiki so you can help form the movement (to request membership, click on “join this space” in the left-sidebar of the wiki)
 

6) Tag your blog posts about this movement with ad4dcss
7) Tag your tweets about ad4dcss with #ad4dcss

Using tags will allow your thoughts and resources to be added to the Netvibes aggregator for ad4dcss - head on over and check it out! 

Now, the real challenge with this, as with any other movement formed online is moving it OFFline.  This is where we need to go beyond tools that most people in society aren’t using. To use a phrase I normally avoid, we need to stop preaching to the choir. Too much in the edtech world ends up being talk, talk, talk and never having it go beyond this niche group of devoted educators. How do we get this offline? How do we educate people wary of this entire topic? We need to reach out to the people who make the decisions and unfortunately, they’re not sitting around watching our twitter stream and joining Diigo groups.

What am I doing to help?

Well, I’m helping get the word out, helping with organization, and have formed a project to create a free online course (hosted generously by Professional Learning Board) to educate people (parents, teachers, administrators, politicians, policy makers - this all needs to be decided yet!) on our “curriculum”. You can find out more about this project and volunteer to help out by visiting the planning page.

The most exciting part about ad4dcss is that it’s not one group of people with a few leaders telling everyone else what to do. You can see on the wiki and from Vicki’s post that you are invited to come up with your own projects and own ways of helping. Everyone has different areas of expertise, we need EVERYONE! An example of another project being created is Stephanie Sandifer’s Blocked Blogs Week that she references in Vicki’s post and on the wiki.

Now, if you’re thinking that you’re still confused and want to help but are SO overwhelmed that you don’t know where to start, don’t worry! Just take a minute to read some of the materials listed above and please comment here if you have any questions. We really need people working with PEOPLE, not just computers, so there’s a place for everyone here - tech skills are NOT mandatory. Let us know how you can help!

(Note: on the Netvibes page for ad4dcss, Vicki Davis has listed an email account, saying “You may e-mail the organizers at ad4dcss [at] gmail [dot] com to find an advocate in your area.” - you might have to click on the ad4dcss tab in the top left corner for the group page.)