Sylvia’s Super- Awesome Maker Show (sylviashow.
com) is an excellent example of how one student
saw a challenge and took
concrete steps to address it
(see the Student Profile on
page 47). Seventh grader
Sylvia Todd exemplifies
ISTE Standard for Students
5: Digital Citizenship,
which challenges students
to “understand human,
cultural, and societal issues
related to technology and
practice legal and ethical
behavior” ( iste.org/stan-dards). Todd demonstrates
several performance indicators for Standard 5 with her
video-based science lessons,
including exhibiting a positive attitude toward using
technology that supports
collaboration, learning, and
productivity (5b) as well
as leadership for digital
citizenship (5d).
Though Sylvia is clearly
demonstrating good digital
citizenship—the focus of this
issue—along with a high level
of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge
through her videos and website, she has not been officially
recognized for those achievements in school. It is a labor
of love on her part.
Kristin Fontichiaro and
Angela Elkordy highlight this
inconsistency in their article
on digital badging (see page
12). They point out that if a
student acquires new knowledge somewhere outside of
school, such as programming
a robot in an after-school
club, there is no clear mechanism for sharing that accomplishment with her computer
programming teacher at her
middle school, so that he
could provide her with more
challenging work instead of
repeating what she already
learned elsewhere.
That is why to be good
digital citizens, students
not only have to manage
their digital footprints but
their e-portfolios as well.
This allows them to show
accomplishments from a
variety of sources and help
teachers better personalize
instruction and acknowledge achievements in the
absence of a more seamless
recognition system.
If I had known that my
Girl Scout badges could
earn me credit in the classroom, I might have acquired more of them. They
may have gained me street
cred on the playground, but
they did not help my teachers understand all I could
do and be in the classroom.
—Kate Conley is ISTE’s periodicals
director and the editor of L&L. She
holds a master’s in journalism and
was a high school English teacher.
She has been with ISTE for nearly
15 years.
Badge of Honor
❝
❞
If we want our students to use powerful learning tools in a responsible way,
I believe it’s best to introduce technology early, teach students how to be
good digital citizens, and bring parents along on the journey.
See page 32
connect
www.facebook.com/likeISTE
Look for links to L&L articles
and the latest Point/Counterpoint
questions.
iste.org/counterpoint
Join ISTE’s LinkedIn group to
participate in Point/Counterpoint
debates.
Follow L&L’s editors
Senior Editor Diana Fingal
@dianafingal
Managing Editor
Paul Wurster @Paul_Wurster
Associate Editor
Andra Brichacek @andramere
letters@iste.org
Send letters to the editor,
and we may publish them.
iste.org/LL
Find L&L and other great
ISTE resources online.
tech we like
Check out the useful resources the L&L team
discovered while producing this issue.
ISTE Standards Essential Conditions:
goo.gl/0SwGtV
Kate Conley was reminded of the importance
of keeping these in mind when planning for
effective technology use (page 4).
Scratch: scratch.mit.edu
Andra Brichacek is excited by this easy-to-use
programming language that lets students learn
by doing (page 16).
Google Hangouts: goo.gl/qLcXMh
Diana Fingal likes all the features, such as
videorecording, available for free in Google
Hangouts (page 26).
TodaysMeet: todaysmeet.com
Tamara Kidd loves that this free backchannel
lets even shy kids get involved in classroom
discussions (page 30).
