Being a Digital Citizen

What is a Digital Citizen?
A digital citizen refers to a person who has the knowledge and skills to effectively use digital technologies to communicate with others, participate in society and create and consume digital content. 
Digital citizenship is about confident and positive engagement with digital technologies. By educating students about digital citizenship, they will have the opportunity to develop an understanding about the following concepts: 

1. Digital and information literacy
2. Internet safety
3. Privacy and security 
4. Cyber bullying, relationships, etiquette and communication
5. Creative credit and copyright
6. Digital footprint

There are around 9 elements of a digital citizenship;

1. Digital Etiquette: Refers to the conduct one uses when interacting with others online. 
2. Digital Access: Technology users need to be aware that not everyone has the same opportunities when it comes to technology. Working toward equal digital rights and supporting electronic access is the starting point of Digital citizenship.
3. Digital Law: Copyright/Plagiarism Students need to realize how important it is to ensure they are producing work that is in their own words, and to be sure to give credit to those they are sourcing from.
4. Digital Communication: How do new communication methods like texting, cell phones, and social networking (twitter, Skype, etc.) fit in an educational classroom setting? What kind of positive outcomes might they enable? makes learning a lot of interesting and interactive.
5. Digital Literacy: Digital Literacy is the capability to use technology and knowing when and how to use it, and can be broken down into three sections.
6. Digital Commerce: “Learning to become an intelligent consumer is an important aspect of good citizenship. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for students to go online and purchase items without thinking about the consequence. therefore it is the teacher's and the parent's responsibility to guide the students.
7. Digital Rights and responsibilities: Students need to follow and use technology responsibility inside and outside school. They should be informed of all the consequences that follows if they ever violet the rights and responsibilities.
8. Digital Safety and security: With the amount of personal information we as a society are putting online through social media sites, banking and online services, it’s important we are all aware of how to best protect this information from being accessed.
9. Digital health and wellness:Physical and psychological well being. Finding balance between on and offscreen time. Protect eyes and ears, posture, proper way to use keyboard. Looking at addictions Computer Ergonomics for Elementary Schools Digital Health & Wellness Visit Common Sense Media’s scope and sequence for lessons specific to the students you are teaching.

Being a digitally active tutor we need to be vigilant and make sure that all the students follow these elements of a digital citizenship. They have to know all the consequences that follows if they ever violet any of the elements. It is not enough to create rules,and policy. we must teach everyone to become responsible digital citizens in this new society.

You all can more about digital citizenship by clicking the following links.

https://digitalcitizenedu.wordpress.com/demo-2/the-9-elements-of-digital-citizenship/

https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/the-definition-of-digital-citzenship/

Camtesia tutorial

Camtasia

Camtasia Studio is a nifty piece of video software for PC and Mac users that allows to record on-screen activity, edit/modify content and then share the video on various platforms. Camtasia provides educators with the perfect solution to easily create videos that motivate students, inform parents and enhance learning. Camtasia screen recording software is feature perfect, smart, and quick to learn tool.

Reasons to use Camtasia:

1.      User-friendly

2.      Easy to share

3.      Beneficial features

4.      Perfect for informative videos

5.      Professional look

Steps to create a video in Camtasia:

Step 1. Start with a plan

If you want to learn how to make tutorial videos or other instructional videos it all begins with with great planning.

Start by spending some time getting to know your audience. Learn how they use your product and find out where they struggle. Then use that information to choose a tutorial topic that will best help your target group.

Once you have your topic, create a storyboard to outline and visualize what you plan to show in your video.

Step 2. Write a script

Here are a few tips to help you write a script.

Use words you’d use in everyday conversations. This will give your script a smooth, natural feel.

Don't just tell viewers what’s going on, show them. Instead of simply saying what's happening on-screen, let those actions speak for themselves and use this time to add context with the voice over or narration.

Practice, practice… and then practice again. Read your script aloud and see how it flows. If you find yourself getting tripped up, go back and make sure you’re using natural language.

Finally, get some feedback. Find someone who’s not afraid to tell you what they really think and send them your script. This might seem scary at first, but once you get used to receiving feedback, it becomes an essential part of the scripting process.

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Step 3. Record the audio narration

The Camtasia video editor makes it simple to record your voice over with built-in voice narration.

When you’re ready, record the script and make sure to speak slowly and clearly. If you make a mistake, don’t start over. Simply pause and start again right before you made the mistake. You can always remove mistakes when you’re finished.

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Step 4. Record video of your screen

The next step is recording your screen video. Start by cleaning up your desktop, closing any applications you don’t need, and turning off any notifications that might pop up.

Open the application you want to record and walk through exactly what you want to show your viewers. This will help you get those smooth cursor motions and, in the end, you’ll have less editing to do. When you’re ready, open the Camtasia recorder and record your screen.

Remember, if you make a mistake, simply pause... and then start right before the mistake. You can always edit it out in the end. You’ll want to make sure the screen recording software you use has built-in video editing.

Step 5. Cut out mistakes and trim extra footage

When you’re finished recording your screen, it’s time to get all hack and slash with editing. 

To start, cut out mistakes and trim extra footage from the ends of your recording. When finished, bring in your audio narration and any other media needed for the project.

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Step 6. Sync your audio and video

With your audio narration on the timeline, use clip speed and extend frame to sync the pace of your video with your narration. 

For example, if you need more time to explain a concept, split the clip and use extend frame to freeze the video. Or if you want to speed up a boring part of your recording, add clip speed, then drag the handles to speed it up.

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Step 7. Produce and share the video

The last step in creating a tutorial is to save the video. Think about where you want this video to live and choose a share destination.

As an extra last step, we recommend sharing your video with a few people to get feedback. This is a great way to make sure your message is clear, and your video is accomplishing your goals

HOW TO CREATE A CLASS IN GOOGLE CLASSROOM

Google Classroom enables us as teachers to create an online classroom area in which we can manage all the documents that our students need. We can make assignments from within the class, which our students complete and turn in to be graded.

To create the google classroom you need to follow these steps:
1. Open a Web browser and go to classroom.google.com. You have to sign in with your Google Apps for Education account.

2   2. On the Welcome screen, click the plus sign at the top and choose Create Class.

3   3.  In the Create a Class dialogue box, type in the Class Name and Section.

4   4. Click Create.

Your new classroom is created. You can see that the classroom has three main tabs. Here’s what those tabs mean:

• Stream: This is where we manage our class assignments and make announcements to the class. We can add new assignments, with due dates and attached materials. Upcoming assignments are shown at the left. Also, just with social media services, we can send message to our entire class — even with an attachment.
• Students: This is where we manage our students. We can invite students to our classroom from here and manage their permissions level. To invite students to our class, we have to set them up as Google Contacts in your Google Apps for Education account or they have to be in the school’s directory.
• About: This is where we can add the course title and description, add a location for the class, and add materials to your class’s Google Drive folder.

TIP: You can take a tour of all of the features to find out how to use Google Classroom. Just click the Start Tour button on the Stream tab.

REMEMBER: After you create at least one class, you no longer see the Welcome screen when you log in. Instead, you see the Home screen. This screen shows all of your classes arranged in tiles. Just click on a class name to access it. Here are a few other features of the Home screen:

• Add a new class: Just like on the Welcome screen, we can add a new class by clicking the plus sign in the top left next to your username.
• Rename or archive a class: Click the three stacked dots next to the class name to either rename the class or archive it. Archiving a class means that, though we and our students can still access the class, no one can add assignments or make any other changes to the class. The class will move under the Archived section of the Home menu. There is nothing to worry, though; we can restore the archived class at any time by viewing Archived classes, clicking the three stacked dots, and choosing Restore.
• Access Google Drive for the class: Click the file folder icon in the bottom right corner of the class tile. This opens the Google Drive where all our classroom materials are stored.

Use of Virtual Learning Centre (VLE)

Virtual Learning Center is a platform for both the students and the teachers to teach and learn online. It is some kind of a learning space which could be done anywhere or at any time. When we were first introduced to the virtual learning center of Paro College of Education, it was a really new experience for all of us. In schools we were not that exposed to online learning thing and now that we have full access to internet and whatever we do are all online. It was a completely new experience for us and also a much better one.

This learning center has made our work much easier and cheaper. Since, the notes and most assignments has to be uploaded we do not have to make an effort to print it or buy it.  It also save
most of our time. Whatever important announcements or information we had it was easily accessible to all of us. VLE had a lot of other options as well where we could have online discussion and even submit assignments online. When we were first introduced to this online virtual learning we had difficulty in using it.

The website for virtual learning center is http://vle.pce.edu.bt/ this is the website for Paro College of Education. In order to login to this website each of us were provided with a student code and we had to create our own unique password. After logging in there are a lot of links for instance home, pce library, time table, online exam results and all. There is even an online library and e-books as well.  Which even makes library, online where we could renew the date and even book it.

There are even links for the courses that we take and it even has an online discussion forum for each course. We could have online discussion about the modules where each and every one of the students can participate and even ask doubts related to the topic that we are learning.  There could be a really effective peer learning as we can even make comments and clear peer’s doubts as well. Virtual learning has been the most effective learning for the students of university and it would even be more effective if this kind of online learning could take place in the school settings too.

Creating blog

Every time we get an access to internet or let’s say while logging in to facebook, we do come across a lot of pages. Some fake and some really useful.  Having said that a lot of you might have encountered some of the most popular pages where people maintain a kind of daily journal or even narrates stories or so. This kind of journal is known as blogs.  Blogs can be maintained either on a daily basis or the other way around.  People all around the world uses this kind of internet tool to be easily accessible and to convey their messages.

I used to and still follow few blogs of some of my friends and also of famous writers, but never really gave a thought of creating one. I was aware of blogs and I envy those who take out sometime to scribble something in their blog.  I find some blogs so inspiring that I even try and adapt or even analyze the things they have written. They are so much captivating that I make sure to recommend or even share it among my friends. It could be even kept as a source of information where people can refer it for some academic purposes.

Being introduced to the ways of creating blogs and why should it be created we learnt the process of making our own blog. It was new to most of us and we were quite excited about that. To create any kind of blogs we first need to have a google account by going through the website www.gmail.com  which is a must. After that we had to go the blog address which is www.blogger.com  then create a title (Teacher as an ICT facilitator) and then an address to that title. For example, teachersasanictfacilitator.blogspot.com.

We were then asked to change the theme and make the blog attractive. There were a lot of links one of them was ‘tags or labels’ which was for us to view the key point and also for the audience. We even have the full control of who all can read or view our blogs and regarding the comments as well.  We now have to maintain the blog and write reflections regarding the ICT module. This is one of the blogs and I hope it would be helpful to those reading my blog. Happy reading!

Introducing ICT in the lesson

Activity using ICT tool

For the past few weeks we had been introduced to ICT as a module. After taking all these classes we had been introduced to different ways and means of using ICT in the classroom setting. Anyone asking this module especially the teachers is way more beneficial than the normal classes that we take. Although we had been introduced to this module most of us would not be aware of its benefits. This module has been talking about all the types of ICT tools we as a teacher can use to make our teaching more understandable and also accessible not only to the classroom but also to the other parts of the world.

Having introduced to all the type of tools we were asked to prepare an activity using one of the tools. We had to choose an activity from one of subjects from grades three till six. I decided to choose a science subject of grade five and the topic was "Connection in series." What i liked about this topic is that there was a simulation for this topic. The website for this simulation was 
file:///C:/Users/TRAINE~1.LAB/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EXa1972.45234/Suniti%20ICT/circuit-construction-kit-dc_en.html
I personally found this tool a lot more relevant than the things we had been doing in the past. First it not only stimulates their cognitive thinking but it also integrates ICT in the learning.

The children would get to experience learning in a whole different way. They get to learn not only about the type of series but also get to do a lot of interesting activities. Learning is diverse and they also learn a lot of technical terms using that simulation. There are a variety of options for the students, if they want to learn about the flow f current, or want to do experiment using different objects its all easily accessible. There would be a lot of earning taking place through single topic.

Unlike the experiments we had been doing when we were in our fifth grade there wasn't much freedom in doing so. Everything was limited, the equipment and the experience and everything we did was solely reliable to the teacher. But now these ICT tools have been a kind of blessing in disguise for both the teacher and the students. It would not only save the time but also would make a very safe environment for the learning. I believe that the students would learn better using simulation as one of the tools in teaching "Connection in series" topic. Not only this, there are a variety of simulation we as a teacher can use to make learning more relevant and meaningful.

Reasons for using ICT in the classroom

The first month of the ICT class I had a little knowledge on how technology can be used in the education. Most of us were not that aware about the ICT usage and how it would make everyday teaching a lot more effective. Since first year itself we had been learning about ICT and now that I reflect on it we were unaware that it would have helped us in so many ways. Keeping in mind all the benefits of the ICT usage I am glad that could make use of it during my teaching practice.

During the six months of teaching practice I tried to make my class as digitally active as I could. For most of the lessons I planned included some sort of technology, be it power point presentation, video lesson or audio lessons. Since the children are mostly exposed to technology nowadays, most of the students find the usage of ICT in the class really effective. The students were more attentive when i showed them the video lessons and i noticed that they could recall the lessons well. Due to which i was more motivated to teach children using the ICT.

Furthermore, I was more aware of both positive and negative uses of ICT in the class. It happened to me that in one of the class I was supposed to take the students in the IT lab. I gave clear instruction on what they were supposed to do and which cite they were supposed to browse. But the moment I took them in the lab they were acting restless and also found out that they were not at all interested in learning the lesson. The exposure made them browse information which were not at all related to the lesson. After that class I had a feeling that I should not have taken them to the IT lab.


Based on what i have experienced during my teaching practice i would say that usage of technology is good to most of the extend. But I should also be careful as to what kind of information the students are exposed to. Acting as a facilitator but remaining dormant might not only harm my lessons but it might mostly harm the students learning. I learnt that exposure is really good while teaching but what I should be more careful is the kind of information students are exposed to. Introducing ICT in classroom  made the lesson more effective and as a future teacher I should make a really effective use of ICT in the class.