HTTP and ME 2023: DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP CHALLENGE
Students Celebrate
4th and 5th grade project culminates with a celebration after presenting to the community.
This winter, our K-5 Instructional Technology Specialist, Tiffany Bucko, spearheaded a new offering for our elementary students at Mile Creek and Lyme School along with support from Olivia Hersant (MS Social Studies Teacher), and Erin Hrinak (K-5 Speech and Language Pathologist). HTTP and ME 2023 was a new program that provided the opportunity to explore and use digital technology with an emphasis on digital citizenship. This learning experience allowed students to create, collaborate, and innovate with the purpose of creating a final product to demonstrate understanding. Hear from our experts below how this new initiative leveraged technology to engage students and encourage critical thinking.
Q: What specifically are you trying to accomplish with your students and how are you integrating technology into this process?
A: (Tiffany Bucko, K-5 Instructional Technology Specialist)
This after-school program was held every Tuesday for Mile Creek students and every Wednesday for Lyme School students from January 24th through March 1st, 2023. The program met from 3:30 - 4:30 pm for five weeks. After the first introductory class, students interviewed an adult about how technology has changed over their lifetime and how it impacts their daily life. The interview concluded with a discussion about at least one current digital tool the adult would like to be improved upon. From the information collected during the interview, students then created a presentation utilizing one or more of the computer programs they were introduced to during this after-school program.
Students were then tasked with presenting what they learned from their interview and/or about the digital tool they improved upon.
Q: What specific technology are you using and what does this technology do?
A: (Tiffany Bucko, K-5 Instructional Technology Specialist)
Forty-three 4th and 5th-grade students were part of the program and utilized the following digital tools for their projects:
CoSpaces EDU: CoSpaces Edu lets kids build their own 3D creations, animate them with code and explore them in Virtual or Augmented Reality.
Book Creator: A simple tool for creating awesome digital books. Incorporates images, text, video, and voice.
Screencastify: A screen recorder that allows video to be captured, edited, and shared easily.
STUDENT INTERACTIVE CREATIONS
Click on the image above to view the interactive student library.
Q: Can you provide any feedback or reflection from students or other participants?
“I like how we could create our own work and use our own ideas. CoSpaces was also something I liked because it was 3D and the animals moved around in a world I built on my own.”
“I liked that we learned more about technology and how to be safer online. And we were able to choose different programs that we haven’t used before.”
“Allowing students to explore various tools to accomplish their goals was probably the most rewarding part of this experience because there were no limits to their creativity. Also, they collaborated through much of the project and I believe this helped contribute to more overall confidence when presenting to the community.”
