Promoting Digital Citizenship through Edmodo

This session was given by Sophia Mavridi, a Teacher Trainer, EAP Lecturer, and Joint Coordinator of the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG, who I had not come across before but obviously I should!

First of all Sophia gave us a quick overview of Edmodo, which is a social learning network, where students and teachers can collaborate online and it is sometimes called Facebook for schools.

As sign up and personal information is not required from the students it is particularly useful for younger learners although it is used by learners of all ages. It is useful to teach digital literacy as it is necessary to create online communities to teach this subject in context. Digital Literacy Skills include online participation, netiquette, quality commenting, copyright and setting strong passwords.

We can encourage online participation by adding a picture, text or audio and asking students to post comments. This activity encourages netiquette, and quality comments as well as language use. Sophia then gave us an activity that we can use in class. She asked us what we know about digital footprints and whether it is a good or a bad thing and then she showed us the following video.



After the students have watched the video they are asked how they will express themselves, what they will do to protect their, and others, digital privacy. There were also some follow up activities including writing definitions and giving advice. This activity would easily lend itself to use in an online learning environment. (I like it!)

She then explained why we should do this activity on Edmodo rather than real life and there were various answers including ease of access, the fact that it is online - but it actually teaches digital literacies as well - online community, quality commenting and some others too.

Students are often banned from using tech in the classroom, but surely it is better to allow this tech so students learn digital responsibility in context.

She then went on to tell us other things that we can do with Edmodo, the first one was a webquest.

But she pointed out that especially for young learners that the teacher should provide the links, so we know they are safe. They will obviously learn about the topic, some language and also some digital literacy skills.

As it says in the slide the students can be taught to evaluate the source by asking the 3 questions, again another digital literacy skill, before going on to the follow ups. The first part is also part of critical thinking which is another skill which is essential in the digital world. At this stage in the chatbox Peggy put up a link to a site by Kathy Schrock which apparently has some good materials.

You can also use Edmodo as a repository for files and links.

We can also use the internet to educate students about the modern version of plagiarism and copyright abuse, they can be taught how to paraphrase and cite references as well as licensing their work online too.

You can ask students to post pictures to show changes in their lives and ask others to comment, you can also use polls and surveys, badges can be used to encourage learners too.

As parents get a code they can be kept in the loop about their children's work, they can be sent messages about events. There is also a free app for the phones.

She left us with this thought.

This was a useful webinar, even though I don't teach children as it opened my eyes to another tool as well as another useful person to follow online (to add to my PLN!) Thank you Sophia.