Digital Citizens and Digitally Literate @ Magnolia

While on a site visit to Magnolia Elementary, I stumbled across some technology savvy kindergartners in the library.  They were working on the Effective and Efficient part of RUSD’s mantra as they worked on right and left hand placement while keyboarding on a web based programed called Keyboard Zoo by ABCya.com. One of the requirements for the Common Core State Standards is for sixth grade students to key a minimum of 3 pages in one setting. In order to prepare our students to be successful, we start them keyboarding in kindergarten. Take a look at our K-12 Keyboarding Standards. Other Kindergarten students were listening to digital stories on Starfall and then chorally reading them with their elbow partner.

The sixth grade students at Magnolia learned about Twitter and how your tweets can positively build an online reputation that future employers or college admissions officers can reference.  First they learned the vocabulary and functions necessary to be a Twitter user.  Then students drafted up a tweet to a classmate that was a simile about their digital life. Some of the sixth graders tweeted, “My media life is like an amusement park because it is so fun. My media life is like a day at school because I am eager to learn new things.” After students got the gist of tweeting on paper, their teacher opened a mock tweeting area on Haiku (our district’s LMS). Students began tweeting to classmates on about what they learned in class. One students online tweet read, “I learned how to make sense of equations and also learned how to protect private information. I am impressed with these sixth graders digital literacy skills and how they are learning to leave a positive digital footprint.