Tag: rict2021

Ethics & Privacy criteria Webtools catalogue

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

In one of the courses I teach at my university called “Resources and ICT in education” -for students in the 1st year of the Primary Education Degree-, one of the most remarkable challenges is going beyond the instrumental training on ICT and effectively integrating the competencies for helping them to become a real Teacher Competent in the Digital era. And from this challenge, one of the most difficult parts, beyond the use of technology and even beyond the pedagogical implementation of technology, is helping them to address and manage an ethical and critical perspective of the use of technology, and of the technology itself.

Well, with the aim of working on this part of the course’s competencies, this year I propose to my students a specific assignment  (just before the Easter break) in which they explored the relationship between privacy, ethics and the tools they used, or those they intended their future students to use. Let me tell you the story:

After a mandatory introduction to the topic made in f2f class (more regarding the topic awareness than any kind of profound theoretical content), the first thing they had to do individually -and at home- was:

Watching 2 videos :

Then, they had to choose ONE tool (the one they wanted, a game, an app, a web tool) and pass the next two tools to it:

Then in class, in groups (6-7 each), they shared their findings and agreed (they did it, I was just there) on how to convert the results of these tool rubrics into a 1 to 5 stars tools rating (I have to point out the MANY interesting discussions that took place in that session).

As a final task, together they collectively create a GDocs including the analysed tools, with a short description and the tool’s rating from this star rating privacy perspective, and a link to the completed rubric.

Photo of the document in Google Drive with link to Google Drive

Furthermore, from that moment onwards and for the rest of the course, in ALL the assignments (including the exam), they were forced to include every tool they use in the tasks in the catalogue, and reflecting about the ethical perspective, so that it would not only be useful for this course now, but could also be useful for them, and why not for other teachers, in the future.

Until the 25th of May (the day of their final exam), they have included the classification of more than 75 tools and I hope that, having incorporated it into the way they work with technology, it will be useful as a revival of their approach to technology

Do I agree with their classification of the tools? is it correct? I think it doesn’t matter (sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t) but students have made decisions, they have analysed the tools, they have understood how classification works, what a rubric is, what some privacy criteria are… maybe when they finish their degree there will be other criteria or other perspectives… but the most important is that maybe some of those students will consider that these issues are important… and they will continue searching… maybe for some of them, some of this will start to be part of their PLE…

It is important to note that the important thing about this post is NOT the catalogue itself, which may be useful to someone or not. What is actually important is THE ACTIVITY, the TASK and what my students got out of it….

Next year maybe we’ll do another one… but it will be with other people… another river.

Very proud of my students… as always…

Students’Task: A Podcast about The Hour of Coding

Posted on by lindacq@um.es

Computational thinking and developments in educational robotics are part of the content of the subject I work on with students in the first year of the degree in primary education. However, this year, due to the working conditions with the students (blended learning and express prohibition of any kind of physical interaction or exchange of materials in the face-to-face sessions), it was difficult for me to think about how to get them to explore the subject, to see its possibilities and not just a “theoretical” approach to the issue.

So I decided to propose as a weekly task an exploration of the activities of The Hour of Code, a project that is helping teachers all over the world to get introduced to coding as an introduction to Computational Thinking. My proposal (which is framed in the group working conditions, by performance roles that some of you already know) included that they should:

  • try at least three activities from https://hourofcode.com/us/gb/learn. Choose the three of them from those classified on Grades 2 to 5. Choose at least one to be used on Poor or not internet conditions, and another with NO computers or devices; the third one do not have more requirements.
  • Collecting evidences of the process and document the experience in your performance blog.
  • Answer some questions such as: What level would be appropriate for this? What is(are) the objective(s) of this task follow the Bloom Taxonomy? What content/standard from the curriculum would be suitable to be developed with this activity? What is the added value of using digital tools in this case? What ethical problems could you (or your students or the parents) find doing this activity in the classroom? What changes do you need to make to allow your students to do it from home?

All the weekly assignments we do in class are presented to the rest of the class members in big group sessions so that we can receive feedback and also learn from each other’s work, but we try to do each of these presentations in a format that is also set up as subject content. So, this time we tried something different, I asked the groups to create, during the class period (and without any prior training), a podcast about their experience.

When I gave them the instructions for the assignment I told them that they should make a podcast in class but I did not tell them the conditions of the content. The same day of the class, I gave them the conditions which were that they should create a radio programme (in the audio tool -podcast or audio, social network- of their choice) and that this programme should tell the story of the assignment and must include:

  • Welcome and goodbye clips
  • An advertisement for the Webpage “The Hour of Code.”
  • Two main clips:
    • Interview regarding the experience
    • A story about your experience
  • A reflection about the importance of using this kind of activities in the classroom.

The complete duration of the radio program can not exceed 15 minutes and must be of mínimum 8 minutes.

You already know that I am a big fan of my students, so I want to share with you the artifacts they have presented, not only because I have been surprised by their self-confidence and good work, but also because the content of the reflections of my students has pleasantly surprised me (I insist that they are works made in less than 2 hours of work and WITHOUT previous experience in podcasting).

Here you have got some of them to listen to ;-):


Click on the pictures to listen to the podcasts 😉

Congrats to my students!! I’m very proud of you!!

At the end of the course, I’ll publish all the task guides that I have used this year.