Practicing on Paper
It’s one way to get connected to a larger community. It can be used for educational purposes. It can be used to establish fleeting, or short-term relationships (”Can anyone out there tell me…?”) or it can be used for longer, mentoring relationships. It can also be a time-sink, abused, dangerous, unsafe.
I could be talking about email, or mobile networking, or IM-ing, or online gaming, or blogging. Pick whichever.
It’s widely available to most of my students, and quite popular.
Therefore, most of my students will learn to use it–whether or not I show them.
What about the other students, who don’t have access? What about the students who do have access but don’t have tech-savvy parents hovering over them and teaching them online safety and savvy?
I devised a safe-chat game on paper, which I posted a little about earlier, to give all of the students in Grade 3 through 5 a chance to practice how to chat online, spot safety issues, and avoid some traps. That practice made me feel good about how the social skills of students transferred easily to the online simulation, so that my youngest and most inexperienced (no access at home) students were very successful in spotting and politely extricating themselves from conversations they should avoid.
I know that it’s good to anticipate, and practice, using any new skill–but I want to do more. I want to give these students lots of successful and confidence-building experiences. Especially the students without access at home. I don’t want those students to feel unprepared and disadvantaged in the online world of their peers. I am keeping my eye out for more “practice on paper” for this young age group. I’ve come across a one paper exercise that I think will transfer well to the students in the Intermediate and Middle School levels:
To provide a hands-on, interactive explanation of (mo)blogging, and the way that blogs can be used in education as powerful learning tools.
Mobile Learning » Workshop Activity: Paper Blogs
(mo) blogging refers to using a mobile device to post your blogs, I believe.
I’m going to try this on paper with the Intermediates, but I think I’ll be trying it in a word-processor with the Middle School level. I want the Middle School students to be thinking about how they compose visual space this week. If it works well, I may try and have the Intermediate students try it on the word processor, too, at a later date.
I will take advantage of the opportunity to have a conversation about passions and learning communities, on-line and in person, too!
Filed under: My Middle School Tech Class, education, media, paper blog, social and
[...] Sue Rockwood at the “No Matter, There” blog has had a go at the paper blogging activity, adding her own ideas to the activity such as a “blog board” which makes for a colourful and interactive display. Her own insights into why paper-based simulations serve as a useful tool in demonstrating and explaining technology concepts, and her own ideas (e.g. for a paper-based “safe chat” simulation), are worth reading, and it’s great to hear her feedback on how the activity went for her classes. [...]
Hi
Thanks for reminding me about “paper blogs”. I am also interested in your chat activity but I looked around your site and couldn’t find it. Can you add a link in this post or add it to the classroom 2.0 wiki?
Thanks
Barbara,
I looked back, and see I spent time talking about why I made the game, but really only mentioned the game in my post http://bookwyrmish.edublogs.org/2007/02/01/can-i-have-a-simulated-virtual-reality-to-go/ I’m glad you pointed that out!
It was a simple game and I will write it up once I get a ‘mo.
But for now, the basic concept was to teach my students to choose “avoiding,” “evading,” “confronting,” “distracting,” or “reporting,” and to practice as many possible responses to scripts of “friendly chat.” We did it as small group work, and I gave each team a group of cards labelled “avoid” “evade” etc. and scripts that represented the beginning of conversations. They were to decide which response cards would work in the situation, and then write as many responses as they might use (I gave them several minutes for that). After, we read responses and gave out points for things like the “most kind” and “goofiest” and “most prolific” teams.
(We first practiced identifying each of the response types before we began the game, by having them try and label some entertaining examples.)
Hope that helps, and thanks again!