Infographic by Easel.ly

In my Leading Edge Certification course, one of the assignments was to create a poster or infographic to address the topic of cyberbullying. At the Common Sense Media site, I found an information dense chart that explained the steps an administrator would take after a report of cyberbullying. Using Easel.ly, I migrated the information from a dense chart into a more simple infographic. Technologically, it wasn't that complex. Cognitively, I was surprised at how demanding it was to identify only key terms, synthesize the relationships, and re-imagine the chart in a new way. I liked my result - I hope you do too!


easel.ly

Dysfunction

In educational technology, we've been dealing with this for years. "Curriculum" people get upset when we talk about curriculum, or standards, or anything else that falls into "their" territory. Now it seems to be all about ownership of the Common Core, and whether those of us in educational technology are allowed to be part of the conversation. We ARE curriculum people, every bit as much as the ELA, Math, Science and Social Science folks are. We are not about devices. We are about learning, and teaching, and achievement, and engagement.

The battles right now in many district and county offices are about who "owns" Common Core. The territorialism inherent in individuals wanting to be THE CCSS expert is unfortunate. Certainly, there is enough work to go around, and increasing the number of experts and acknowledging that expertise is vital to successful implementation.

Get Your Learn On!

Well, I've made it to CUE 2013! This year it seems that the majority of the sessions reference Common Core - I'm not sure if that's because CCSS is the buzz word for the year, or because there are a lot of CCSS experts at the conference. While a lot of my time will be spent presenting and supporting my team as they present, I'll get to attend a few sessions over the next couple of days.

I'm  still managing to keep to my goal of tweeting when I'm at conferences. I'm following a few more people, and I've graduated to re-tweeting. It's good to grow the PLN - if only Twitter wasn't blocked at work!

So, let the professional learning commence!

Think Before You Post!

I don't care what your politics are or whether you are conservative or liberal - check the story before you repost it on Facebook! Over that past three days I've seen otherwise reasonably intelligent people share posts that they got elsewhere that are easily checked and have been found to be false.

One recent story claims that Fox News is reporting that children of members of Congress get their student loans forgiven. Apparently, because the story says that a news agency reported it, that part "must" be true. Except that Fox News never reported it, and Politifact and the Annenberg Public Policy Center found the statement itself to be false. Families of those in Congress are eligible for the exact same student loan programs that you and I are eligible for.

The other post that keeps coming around is some child with cancer who will receive a donation based on number of reposts and likes. Snopes.com shows the photos and debunks the story. Snopes.com is a pretty easy way to check on Facebook stories that are not political, and see if they are hoaxes.

We, and our students, need to start double checking our facts. We expect students to cross-reference information when they do research in high school; let's help them make that a transferable skill. We don't want another generation that posts everything that matches their politics whether it's even remotely true or not, nor do we want another generation that forwards emails to everyone they know about how onions cure the common cold and then become toxic! As we talk about digital footprint with our kids, let's talk about the concept that re-posting biased and untrue information reduces your credibility factor, and that fact-checking is a responsible part of living in a democracy.

Image credit: By User:Husky (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons