Turning Boredom into Brilliance: Digital Wellbeing in the Classroom
What would a “bored and brilliant” school community look like, and what could it achieve?
Looking Back Over a Decade
A reflection on the last ten years….
Teaching Kids How to Validate Information on Social Media
Too often, when we teach research skills to students, we focus on articles, blogs, Wikipedia, and other resources. However, many of our students are getting their news and politics and other information through social media. We need to include analysis of social media posts and tips and tricks for validating information on social media just as we do for traditional websites.
Why Teachers Should Think Twice Before Selling Their Content Online
Over the last few weeks there have been a number of conversations centered around who owns the content that teachers create for their classrooms. Anyone in the teaching profession knows that part of being a teacher is actually not that different from being an artist. Teachers have to think outside of the box about how…
Free Study Guide for Digital & Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet
Just in time for the holiday season, a new study guide for the book is available!
Why We Need to Teach Kids to be Skeptical of Everything
Just last week, a relative of mine posted an image on Facebook that grabbed my attention. I teach juniors and seniors in a Media and Design class, and our first project was based around image editing. At first glance, the photo just didn’t look right. The next day, I showed the image to my students,…
Teaching Kids About Healthy, Responsible & Impactful Uses of Social Media
This post contains excerpts from my newly released book, Digital and Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet: Practical Classroom Applications, which is now available on Amazon. Social Media and Mental Health A 2017 Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH) social media study of 1500 young people in the UK from ages 14 to…
Student Online Privacy
What Educators Need to Know About How Companies Track Their Students This post contains excerpts from my newly released book, Digital and Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet: Practical Classroom Applications, which is now available on Amazon. In the classroom, there is not much that individual educators can do about how companies and ISPs track their students…
Growing Up Online
This is second post in a series related to the content in my upcoming book, Digital and Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet: Practical Classroom Applications. One thing that I have learned from working with young people in a technology classroom for the last decade is that we both overestimate and underestimate the…
Teach Kids How the Internet Works
Welcome to the first installment of my blog series focused on my upcoming book, Digital and Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet: Practical Classroom Applications. I always start the year with my freshmen making sure that they have a basic, underlying understanding of how the Internet works. I ask them to explain how…