Using Avatars to Teach Internet Safety

 Using educationally appropriate online tools with students opens up a world of possibilities, but it's important to communicate a clear and consistent message about Internet safety every time you introduce a new tool. If students hear about Internet safety often enough, hopefully they will start thinking about it themselves.

Creating an avatar is a really great way to teach students to protect their identities on the Internet. Avatars provide students with a safe way of representing themselves while also providing opportunities for creative writing experiences. So why not start out the school year with this simple but powerful learning opportunity?

A good idea for a lesson is to start by asking students to create an avatar of their own, complete with a pen name. After that, students can be challenged to write a narrative from the avatar's point of view, without giving out any personal information. The final student products can be published or turned into a podcast and the avatars and pen names can be  used when students contribute to wikis, blogs, glogs and more.

Suggested tools to choose from:

BuildYourWildSelf.com
This kid-friendly cool tool was certainly the most popular choice among innovative D97 teachers this summer. Users can release their creative spirits and go wild as the title suggests. As an added bonus, no login is required . Find out what some of our very own teachers had to say about this tool, see examples of avatar stories created by some teachers and a student, and also take a peek at the avatars themselves by viewing a VoiceThread they created.

ReasonablyClever.com
If your students are Lego fans, this tool is a good choice. This block-head iconizer is as simple as can be and it is appropriate for the youngest students.

DoppelMe.com
This popular tool provides users with plenty of choices to create a unique and attractive avatar; however, teachers this summer were a bit weary about the use of fig leaves as clothing on the generic model. This is bound to cause students to giggle and also spark some conversation, so please do check out DoppelMe for yourself before you decide to use it.

View VoiceThread: Using Avatars to Teach Internet Safety

Updated: 3/2011 - Get a complete lesson plan. Go to my Cool Tools wiki.

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Back To School: Cool Tools Preview

It's time to get back to school, which means it's time for me to start blogging regularly about Cool Tools again. I spent a good chunk of my summer using cool tools with fabulous teachers who were eager to use the tools in innovative ways. We discovered that the tools are indeed easy to use, but perhaps the most difficult part of using them is to identify the safest and most effective way to use them with students. It's all about management and there is a lot to consider when choosing appropriate online tools for education.

Before I start blogging about each of these tools, I'd like to point out that I have created a home for information about Cool Tools with management tips on my website, just to keep things organized. I've named this section Online Tools.

Since I haven't wordled even once this summer, I've decided to create a Wordle to kick off the new school year with a sneak peak of the Cool Tools I will be blogging about early this fall.












Go to the Online Tools section of my website.

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VoiceThread - Online Conversations Around Media

VoiceThread is an online tool for having conversations around media. The possibilities for use in the Classroom are tremendous. This powerful tool is not free, but you can sign up for a trial account to get your feet wet.

Internet safety is a very important issue to address when using this tool for learning. A good way to protect students' identities is to have them create Avatars to use in place of actual photos. Also, please remind them not to give out any personal information about themselves.

You can check out this tool by contributing to the amazing VoiceThread below. All you have to do is click on comment, then register by providing your name and email address when prompted. You can record your comments, then upload your photo, an avatar or symbol. When you're done, take a look at all of the other VoiceThreads out there and let your imagination run wild!

View Examples Published on WallWisher


Access VoiceThread at http://www.voicethread.com

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Classroom 2.0

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Glogs: A SlideShow of Samples

We have created several glogs as samples for teachers and can think of many more to create. These launchers are easily accessible tools to guide and differentiate student learning in a variety of ways. They are visual, fun to create and extremely versatile.
Glogster's education section allows glogs to be private.

Google Presentation was used to create a slideshow of glog samples. Please remember to use caution when streaming in D97.
View slideshow

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Glogs as a Collection of Resources

Glogs offer educators the opportunity to collect carefully chosen web resources and create an attractive package for students in order to guide the learning.

Here is a Memorial Day Resources blog.







View the Memorial Day Resouces Blog

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Glogs as Curriculum Launchers

Glogs seem to have many uses in the world of education. In this case a glog is used as a curriculum launcher, to help build background knowledge through video, and guide student learning. It includes a WebQuest for differentiated learning opportunities for students, and a Google Earth Lit Trips to provide students with visual experiences to enrich the reading. This glog serves as a cool tool for teachers to collect and organize web resources and deliver them to students in an attractive and convenient passage that's ready to use.


View The Orphan Train Glog

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Glogster: Online Multi-Media Posters

Glogster is a cool tool that lets you create online posters, rich with multi-media. Instead of using poster board and ink, creators gather information, synthesize it, remix it and then create something of their own that is environmentally friendly.

Glogster is visual and exciting. The uses in the classroom are seemingly unlimited. Students can certainly make a statement with this tool.

Learn more

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Jing Video Tutorials

Jing is a free tool from TechSmith that allows you to capture the screen on your computer to create a video tutorial. You do have to record your voice to narrate your video tutorial, but after a little practice this becomes more comfortable.

Here is a Jing tutorial created to demonstrate how to upload a PowerPoint slide to a shared GoogleDoc Presentation.


To learn more about Jing, go to
Jing, by TechSmith

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Develop Keyboarding Habits with Three Cool Tools

Effective and efficient computer use is essential to students today and keyboarding skills provide an important foundation. For this reason, I am focusing attention and effort and helping teachers and parents assist students in developing keyboarding practice habits. The Cool Tools used are the blog, GoogleDocs and Custom Typing.

Help Students Develop a Practice Habit
A habit takes about five weeks to develop, which means this is the perfect time to help students develop one. There is plenty of time between now and the start of next school year to make a huge difference in the development of good keyboarding skills by engaging in regular Custom Typing Tutorial practice sessions. Children will thank you for this one day!

Teachers: Sign up to be guided through the process of helping students develop a keyboarding practice habit:

Parents: Sign up your children up and you will begin to receive a slow and steady stream of information designed to help you support your child by encouraging home practice habits.

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Google Reader: A Closer Look

Google Reader is a cool tool that allows you to collect information posted on your favorite blogs and keep it organized and updated until you have time to read it. Here is picture of the Google Reader screen.

Please notice the option to Add a Subscription in case you don't see a visible Subscribe to Blog icon on the blog you want to subscribe to. All you have to do is copy the webaddress of that blog, then paste it into the box you see.

On the left side of the Google Reader page a list of all of your blog subscriptions is displayed. If you click on one of the links, you can read the updated information right from your Reader page. To view the full blog, just click on the title and you will be taken to it.

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Subscribe to Blogs: Let the Information Come to You

For a brief moment, I'm going to elaborate on an idea introduced to me by Helena Bowers at the Illinois Computing Educators conference. She described The New Digital Divide in great detail, but the one idea that encouraged me to start this blog can be found in her description of the difference between "Those who know who to get info to travel to them vs. those who don’t." Blogs allow us to let the information travel to us via subscription to RSS.

How does one get the information in blogs to travel to them? Look for the Subscribe To icon in the sidebar of this blog and click on it. You will be walked through the steps of adding the blog to a familiar personalized page you may or may not have already created, or you can take my suggestion and choose to add the blog to a Google Reader page.

The Google Reader page is handy if you use Gmail because access to it can be found right on your Gmail screen. This is where you'll find the link to Google Reader.

Hopefully I've encouraged some of you to let the information come to you. The choice is up to you, but it sure beats having to remember to check all of those blogs every day! If you need more detailed directions for subscribing to a blog using Google Reader, click here.

View Helena Bower's presentation The New Digital Divide and while you're there, why not subscribe to her blog?

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