The True Meaning of Digital Citizenship

Written by Charlotte Brearley, BSD Education

The world is now a truly digital place. Billions of people from all around the world communicate digitally, work digitally, learn digitally and even play digitally every day. Your students were probably exposed to a tablet or smartphone at a very early age and have grown up using technology. For the majority of your students, the digital space is their modern-day playground. 

However they make use of technology, all of our students are already digital citizens. But the important question to ask is: are they ‘good’ digital citizens? 

Students can’t be expected to know how to navigate the far-reaching digital space that has so much potential without any guidance. It is vital that we as educators prepare them for a future where technology is everywhere and help them navigate the digital space in positive ways. This is where digital citizenship comes in.

Digital citizenship is a wide and varied topic that can be interpreted 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 what we really need to focus on is the potential of being a digital citizen. As Culatta says, digital citizenship should be about how we can 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 for the benefit of ourselves, but more importantly for the benefit of others. Digital citizens will have the skills and knowledge to communicate and consume in the digital space, but vitally they will have the skills and knowledge to solve problems and create solutions. 

This level of understanding cannot be taught in just one-off classes. Instead, it needs to be explored and explained as a way of thinking and should, therefore, be 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!

How Coding Projects Promote Design Thinking

Written by Mo Qureshi, BSD Education

When it comes to Technology Education at BSD, we hope to inspire students to create with technology but also highlight the importance of developing solutions that solve real world problems. We believe that creating any new technology should be rooted in a strong purpose to help people. We help 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. Brainstorming is one technique, but there are many others.
  3. Experimentation — Testing those ideas with prototyping. 

Design Thinking helps capture the needs of the people, gives insights into the opportunities that are available and gives clear ideas for a refined human centred 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 encourages students to listen to their end users and find out who they are, their demographics, why and how will they use the project effectively. This helps foster students’ empathy – starting the process of Design Thinking. 

After understanding the end users, students will start to code their project. Depending on the topic and level of the course, students are introduced to the basics of coding or other additional coding concepts. 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. 

As they work towards finishing their projects, students are guided to share and test their prototype with their peers and, if possible, with some end users using an automatically generated URL or QR code. This helps them get real time feedback and adjust their project based on the response.

For instance, in our Game Development course, after creating the first version of the game, students are asked to demo their game and share it with their peers for testing and feedback. Based on feedback, the students may enhance their game by adding additional challenges, levels, additional characters, updating the scoring system or even re-writing the gameplay. 

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

Students will then need to consider the feedback they receive, and learn to exercise their judgement as to what will ultimately be a compromise between the features they like versus the feedback they have received on what the users want. Based on the observations and peer feedback, students can determine how they can continue to improve their projects to test it again. This testing and feedback cycle is not limited to a single cycle, it is repeated as often as needed to make the game perfect – emulating the Design Thinking process of prototyping -> testing -> tweaking -> testing. This is great preparation for their lives as a whole as 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 problem but tools used by people to solve problems. To effectively solve problems, technologies should be built with keeping the people using them at the center; and employing Design Thinking skills helps achieve precisely this.

Non-Traditional Tools for the Classroom

Written by Gabo Tse, BSD Education

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 includes tools such as online learning platforms, mobile devices, web services, even AR (augmented reality)/VR (virtual reality) and more! 

Introducing edtech tools in the classroom doesn’t mean relying on technology to teach a lesson for you – but rather, it is incorporating them in such a way that allows you to deliver lessons that enhance student learning and engagement. This also helps students foster valuable digital skills that are so highly sought after in today’s job market all while learning at school. You may quickly realize that embracing technology as a learning tool in the classroom opens up a vast array of possibilities, especially when it comes to teaching curriculum and organizing classroom activities. Some students may struggle with the traditional, lecture-based classroom structure, but technology offers a variety of different approaches when it comes to teaching course material, and helps to create a more fun, dynamic, and social learning environment. 

 

Let’s take a look at a few popular examples of edtech tools and how they are used in the classroom:

 

  • Gamifying Student Learning: Gamification is an approach that involves using game design and mechanics to structure your classroom in such a way that it that promotes student engagement and participation.

    Tools like Classcraft, GradeCraft, and Rezzly transform your lesson material into a class-wide adventure game. Your students can create their own 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, and instead of traditional assignments, classroom tasks can be transformed into “quests” that help students earn experience points and badges.

    Using gamification edtech software means that set-up, management, and assessment are taken care of for you, and you can avoid the headache of creating all the elements you would need for gamifying your classroom, 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. There is no doubt that students respond well to games, but rather than shunning video games as a distraction or reprimanding students for playing games in class, you can learn to embrace games as an edtech tool by using them as a direct source of course material instead.

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

    Teachers will be able to visualize, display, and track analytics in real-time, such as the number of participants, highscore, time taken to answer each question, and progress. In addition to trivia games, many of these game-based edtech tools also allow teachers to create interactive questionnaires, discussions, and surveys. 

 

  • Creation and Collaboration: Essential classroom activities such as brainstorming, collaboration, communication, and sharing ideas can all be made easier with tools such as Padlet and Buncee. These edtech tools are like virtual “bulletin boards” where students can create a variety of projects, such as a storyboard, mindmap, flowchart, bulletin board, scrapbook, newspaper, discussion forum, and more! 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 have students brainstorm ideas for a group project together, where they can see each other’s changes and comments.

Implementing non-traditional tools in the classroom helps increase students’ digital literacy and fosters valuable digital skills like computational thinking and collaboration, which not only help them prepare for the future but also which are all high in demand in today’s job market.

Integrating technology into the classroom can impact student learning in many ways, and this sentiment is echoed wholeheartedly in this article by Top Hat, which argues that while technology does indeed have its limits, integrating it into the classroom increases learning outcomes, student engagement, opens up education to beyond the confines of a classroom, and offers a multitude of ways for students to interact with course material.

If you’d like to find out more about non-traditional learning tools, or even try BSD’s very own online learning platform, you can email us at info@bsd.education.

BSD at ISTE 2019: Highlights

Written by Mike Dixon, BSD Education

The ISTE conference is a wonderful time of year where educators from around the world gather to discuss the latest trends and technologies impacting education. It’s a time to look forward to the new challenges and opportunities that face students with a positive attitude and an open mind. This year, BSD was fortunate to have the ISTE conference land straight on our doorstep, here in the city of Philadelphia.

During the weekend leading up to the conference, BSD hosted nearly one hundred educators onsite at our office atop the String Theory School in Philadelphia. The teachers in attendance represented states from across the US as well as multiple countries including Nigeria, Singapore, and Brazil. Over the course of the day, teachers shared experiences, built their personal networks and engaged with interactive workshops, lead by the BSD team. Here are some of the highlights!

Why Code? The Student Advantage

To kick off the day, teachers gathered in the assembly hall at String Theory School to learn about the current innovations and future trends that are most impacting the modern workplace. We reflected on how the exponential growth of Big Data has thrust the world from a manufacturing centric economy into the Innovation Economy where information is king. Thinking ahead, we discussed how Artificial Intelligence is poised to challenge the idea of human employment and what it means to add value to society and fulfillment to your life.

As part of the opening remarks, we touched on two major benefits of students learning code: practicing Computational Thinking and Design Thinking. In many ways, Computational Thinking is problem-solving and fits nicely into many existing school subjects. Conversely, Design Thinking is an emerging focus for industry as a process for solving real-world problems for others. Coding can help to bring this aspect of learning into the classroom experience.

During the presentation, several insightful discussions arose from teachers including thoughts about Machine Learning and the future role of the computer as well as the negative consequences of under-represented minority groups in the development of Artificial Intelligence. As one teacher noted “Computer programs are a reflection of the human who coded them.”

Interactive Workshops 

Next, teachers broke up into smaller groups to participate in hands-on workshops where they had the opportunity to experience real world coding using BSD Online. Just as with our students, the experience level amongst teachers ranged from absolute beginner to experienced coding teacher. With the help of BSD Online’s guided projects, everyone was able to take something away from the experience.

The first session revolved around the challenge of incorporating technology into traditionally non-tech subjects. BSD’s platform was able to scaffold teachers to build a website about their chosen subject using real HTML and CSS code.

The second session examined the benefits and limitations of block-based coding platforms such as Scratch and Tynker. We concluded that they serve an important role in getting young students, K-3, engaged with computational thinking but suffer when students try to apply their skills beyond games. Teachers experienced how BSD Online’s guided projects make the learning of JavaScript programming accessible, even for early readers.

Key Takeaways

The full day workshop was a powerful experience, not only for the teachers who participated but for BSD as well. We exchanged insights and experiences with teachers from around the world, received an inside view of the concerns and struggles that teachers face in an ever-changing world, and built relationships that will grow to impact students around the world!

If you are a teacher or school administrator and would like to learn more about using technology in the classroom, please reach out to us! We can help you prepare your students for the ever–changing challenges of tomorrow and help them gain digital skills that will follow them into their future ambitions.

Student Agency in Educational Technology Integrations

Written by Mo Qureshi, BSD Education

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

Written by Charlotte Brearley, BSD Education

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. Some common challenges we hear are: there is already too much curriculum to get through, staff find it challenging, and resources are too expensive.

Fortunately, there is more than one way to integrate technology learning into school life, so no matter what challenges may appear initially, you will find a way. We know all schools are 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 can be taught as a stand-alone subject. This works well where a school is able to or has already carved out dedicated time, perhaps in a computing class or STEM class, with the sole objective of teaching technology. This approach ensures that students get the opportunity to focus purely on their digital skills.

In this space, we have our TechReady courses, which focus on bridging the gap between age-appropriate learning and developments in the real world, such as AI and big data.

Integrated into other subjects

Integrating technology can help make learning in other subjects more ‘real-world relevant’ or help bring subjects together to create exciting cross-curricular learning opportunities. Many schools do not have the available time to teach technology as a stand-alone subject so this enables integration without having to find lots of additional hours. It also allows you to align vital skills with the interests of your students. You can think about small or large scale technology projects and bring in different approaches depending on the topic that you are teaching. For example, why not get your students to create a blog instead of writing their next story in their textbook or perhaps you can think about 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 continue with your teaching almost as normal and simply bring in an activity that combines subject and technology learning. Through this approach, the subject becomes the context and 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 during the school day to bring in technology learning, you can think about 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 can be built upon.

Out of school learning should be more open and exploratory so our Technovators program for after-school activities focuses on giving students the freedom to work with technology in a more creative way.

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 and, in an ideal world, the school environment must reflect this. At BSD we advocate for infusing technology learning across everything so that students can make connections, follow their interests and understand how to use and apply technology to build solutions across contexts and you as a teacher can help enable this. We believe that regular exposure to technology in a range of different contexts is the best way to prepare students for using technology in their futures and to understand how to apply it in connection with their interests.

However, it is also clear that implementation across everything can rarely be the first step. 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

Written by Gabo Tse, BSD Education.

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.

Ways to Use Technology In Your Subjects: History

Written by Scott Peterman, BSD Education.

Continuing with our series of Reasons for Bringing Technology Learning into Subject Areas, today we look at how the right infusion of technology can transform student learning in any History class.

When students study history the typical end product is too often something static such as a diorama or poster. Despite schools recent embrace of technology, this too often ends up as internet research, video watching in history class.  

However, the right infusion of technology can transform the existing curriculum of any history class into an active learning experience that exposes students to the real-world application of technology in different contexts and scenarios. When properly incorporated into history class, technology can empower learners to understand concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequences, similarity, difference and significance. These critical thinking skills can then be applied to frame historically valid questions and create structured accounts including written narrative

Here are 3 examples of how technology can enhance history class:  

Curiosity – Active Artifacts

With BSD’s TechConnected curriculum, students can forgo writing yet another research report and instead create their own interactive, virtual museum! Students can select and research an artifact then, use the design thinking process to draw connections to the people who used them. Students can then visualize the relationships and dependencies between their artifact and the time period, linking online content and resources.  The project will culminate with students showcasing their Artifact research through a real web page they will individually build from scratch using HTML and CSS.

  • Adapted from Haverford Ancient Egypt Project

Creativity – Interactive Timelines

Historical events rarely unfold in linear progressions. Big or small, the overwhelming majority of milestones throughout history are caused by a combination of direct and indirect actions taken by a slew of actors. Yet, more often than not history is taught in the classroom as one event after the next. One solution is too use technology to better understand the complexity of historical events with an interactive timeline where students can visualize the interconnections within the time period. Approaching history as a vibrant web of actors and actions can help students make connections, draw contrast and analyze trends that have directly influenced the world we live in today.

  • Adapted from Book of BSD – Timeline Builder (History) Project

Critical Thinking – Separating Fact from Fiction

Understanding the difference between objective (cited) and subjective (uncited) research has always been a core piece of history class. While Student’s today have instant access to unlimited research and resource at their fingertips, it has also brought about an influx of bad information.  At it’s best, this material can be viewed as subjective opinions but more and more we see the dissemination of misinformation for malicious intentions. One strategy we’ve found effective for reinforcing research best practices is to have students create their own digital scavenger hunt games.  This fun approach empowers students to compare and contrast information, ask perspective questions, weigh evidence, develop insight into the complexity of different factors and better Understand the wider world.

  • Adapted from Book of BSD – Fact or Opinion Scavenger Hunt Project

Incorporating Technology into Non-Tech Classes

Written by Mike Dixon, BSD Education.

BSD works with core subject teachers around the world who are tasked with weaving technology into their classroom experience. In many cases, there are no guidelines for where to begin or metrics provided for measuring impact. To help navigate the challenges of tech integration, we’ve outlined 4 tips for creating meaningful technology experiences that will engage students and enhance learning.

1. Ditch the Gadgets

All too often, we see schools attempt to meet technology requirements by purchasing the latest smart board or 3D printer. There is a notion that learning naturally follows after the acquisition of these devices. However, even when a motivated English teacher elects for her students to use a 3D printer during her poetry unit, how can she be sure that learning is happening? Are students gaining real world technology skills? Is the presence of 3D printing enhancing the existing poetry curriculum? How can we be sure?

Inevitably, without regular professional development, tech support and integrated lesson plans, we find that these devices go under-utilized.

2. Embrace Computational Thinking

Counter intuitively, the key to successful technology integration is not technology! Rather, students must learn to think in a way that empowers them to use technology to create real world solutions. Computational Thinking is a method of problem–solving used by computer scientists that breaks down into Decomposition, Pattern Recognition, Abstraction, and Algorithm.

Let’s expand on the example above of an English teacher who aims to bring technology skills into her poetry lessons. The goal of this project is to analyze a poem and extract insights.

Decomposition – Students choose a collection of poems and identify specific properties within each work, such as author details, number of lines, rhyming schemes, syllables, tone, etc.

Pattern Recognition – The class determines various connections that can be made by noticing patterns across works. Do certain authors reuse specific metaphors? Do distinct vocabulary words appear only within the work of a defined time period?

Abstraction – Challenge students to decide which properties are important to solving the problem and which are not? If your goal is to determine whether or not a poem is a haiku, then syllables are quite important. Whereas, if you’re hoping to surmise the poet’s gender, then syllables may be irrelevant.

Algorithms – Using what they’ve learned, each student will now design a reliable method for extracting specific insights from a poem. Notice, that students have not necessarily used technology up to this point! The final product can take the form of a flow chart or survey that asks relevant questions about any given poem in order to determine something about it. Examples could be “Was this poem written by Emily Dickinson?” or “Is this poem a sonnet?” or “Was this poem written before 1900?”

By following the Computational Thinking process, students are thinking deeply about the core subject matter while gaining 21st century problem solving skills.

3. Leverage Real-World Data

Teachers know that students learn best when they feel that the learning applies directly to their real lives. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to illustrate real-world connections using real time data!

A classic word problem in math asks students to calculate the exact time and place that two trains traveling in opposite directions will pass each other. Perhaps the updated version requires students to plot the route using Google Maps and incorporate factors like train delays, weather, and holiday scheduling.

Consider a US history assignment that prompts students to write an essay about their favorite president. By leveraging 70 years of free detailed presidential approval ratings online, teachers can challenge students to map their chosen president’s approval rating to significant historical events and use those insights to make predictions about the future.

4. Share Student Work Online

Finally, one of the simplest ways to bring technology concepts into non-tech classrooms is by publishing student work online. Regardless of their future endeavours, curating an online presence is an unavoidable part of being a member of the innovation economy.

In addition to popular tools such as Github, Behance, and Linkedin, the BSD Online platform provides all students with a place for showcasing real-world technology projects that can be shared with college admissions and even directly to employers.

If you are a teacher or school administrator and have questions about integrating technology into your classroom, please feel free to reach out to BSD Education. We can help you prepare your students for the ever–changing challenges of tomorrow and engage them with projects that combine core subjects with 21st century technology skills.

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