In this episode of The Good Life EDU Podcast, we spotlight the upcoming Nebraska Digital Citizenship Symposium taking place on October 16th, 2024. Peg Coover of ESU 10 joins us along with the event’s keynote speaker Jen Casa-Todd as we dive into the history and evolution of the annual NE DigCit Symposium event. In the episode, Jen previews her message, highlighting her LEAD framework, which emphasizes learning, empathy, awareness, and digital role modeling as crucial elements of student leadership online. Listen to learn how students will grow as digital citizens while engaging in hands-on activities that empower them to create positive change in their own schools.
REGISTER YOUR STUDENTS FOR THE EVENT and access the NEDigCit online resources and competition at https://bit.ly/NEDigCit
Save the date for our in-person event on October 16, 2024! Our theme is “You’ve Got the Power to Lead!” and our focus age group will be middle and high school.You may choose from any of the five locations for in-person participation, even if it isn’t your ESU. ESUs 3, 5,7,10 and 13 will be hosting schools.
We invite you to send a team of students and teachers. We recommend a team of one teacher or librarian and five students, but you may customize your team to fit your needs best! You may also choose to send more than one team!
Teams of students and adults will work together to formulate an actionable plan to take back to their school aimed to implement the use of technology for good. We are excited to bring author, newly retired teacher, and speaker Jennifer Casa-Todd to facilitate the day and help students from schools across the state connect and learn!
Important Details:
Date: October 16, 2024 10:00 to 3:00 CST(lunch provided)
Cost: $120 for each team up to 6 (or $20 per person if teams are larger)
Who: Middle School and/or High School Students and a sponsor
Where: Join any of our host sites at ESU 3, ESU 5, ESU 7, ESU 10, or ESU 13
In addition to our in-person event, we will continue to provide online content on our website throughout the year! We will also be hosting our poster and PSA contest again! All school districts in Nebraska are eligible to participate in the online content, at no charge. Stay tuned for more information.
We are looking forward to working with schools in person and throughout the year! This will be a great way to celebrate Digital Citizenship Week October 14-18.
The Nebraska Digital Citizenship Symposium, hosted by the Nebraska Educational Service Units (ESUs), was held in person for the first time since 2019 on October 16. Students and their teachers joined at five ESUs across the state. The five sites connected virtually through Zoom. You can also see the participating school districts by viewing 2023 Nebraska Digital Citizenship Symposium Participants.
Twenty-two school districts with approximately one hundred sixty participants heard from national speaker and digital citizenship advocate Marialice Curran. Her message focused on being a digital impactor by being alert, balanced, engaged, informed and inclusive. Essentially the theme for the day was promoting the use of technology for good. More information on this topic can be found at her Digital Citizen Institute’s (DCI) website: DCI – Digital Citizenship Institute (digcitinstitute.com).
The teams also were privileged to hear from Heather Callihan, a technology integrationist at Northwest Public Schools. Heather presented information on how she has social media and content creation teams of students who work together to tell their district’s story.
After hearing from Marialice and Heather, the school teams had time to build on the inspiration by creating a school vision, plan, and/or call to action. Each team worked on this plan and then shared their ideas with the other teams. But the vision didn’t stop that day, as the teams will be working on this throughout the school year, documenting their progress, and coming back together on Zoom in April to celebrate with their fellow Nebraska teams, AND with others across the globe during the second annual Global Student Showcase.
The collaboration and learning will also continue in a unique and fun way, as a plush toy named Mundo will travel to all of the participating schools this year! The goal is to have Mundo learn about the different Nebraska communities it visits! Marialice’s team created an AI assistant for education and named it Mundo. She encourages the teams to use the AI assistance to learn more about Nebraska communities, and then share with others across the state, and eventually the world.
“Mundo means earth in Spanish and at the DCI, we model how to learn about the world, with the world to create safe spaces for ourselves and others, to solve problems, and ultimately to be a force for good both on and offline.” Marialice Curran
This week on The Good Life EDU Podcast, the global connector behind the DigCit Institute, Dr. Marialice B.F.X. Curran, joins us to talk about Digital Citizenship and how we can support learners in these ever-changing, tech-forward times.
This week’s guest, Eirik Hernes Berre, joins us to share all about Curipod, an interactive instructional tool that uses artificial intelligence to save educators design and research time while also promoting a more collaborative and engaging learning experience for all. Eirik is Curipod’s co-founder and our conversation delves into his experiences working with schools around the world, some potential implications of AI on the future of education, and his personal love for all things Harry Potter! We certainly enjoyed this fun and insightful episode and hope you do as well!
For more, visit Curipod.com, create an account, and begin designing your own AI-enhanced lessons.
Also, be sure to stop by Curipod’s vendor booth at this year’s ISTE Conference!
This week features the first of three episodes dedicated to previewing featured speakers at this year’s Future Ready Nebraska Conference. Tom Bober will present on June 12th, speaking from his role as a school librarian and as a former teacher in residence at the Library of Congress. Tom joins The Good Life EDU Podcast and shares some of his experiences along with insights regarding primary sources and news literacy.
The Nebraska Educational Service Units (ESUs) held the annual Digital Citizenship Symposium online again this year. The outreach was impressive because of the flexibility of the online delivery of digital citizenship content. The website was visited over 4,700 times from October through April by people from all over Nebraska and included visitors from 8 other states and 5 countries!
The online content included information and activities for grades K-4, 5-6, and 7-12. Heather Callihan, Technology Integrationist at Northwest Public Schools and teachers/students from Lincoln Public Schools recorded videos that HS students and teachers could access online. ESU staff also curated content for grades K-4 and 5-8. Students had the opportunity to earn a certificate of completion for their grade level content, which included Media Balance, Making Good Decisions, and Creation Over Consumption. Almost 600 certificates were awarded to students successfully completing the unit assessments!
The ESU group also hosted a statewide Digital Citizenship Message Contest. Students were invited to submit a Digital Citizenship poster or a Public Service Announcement communicating something they had learned. Students in grades K-12 submitted entries online and were judged in four grade group categories. Of the 132 contest entries, 21 award winners were selected and announced in April.
This week on The Good Life EDU podcast, we are joined by Jaime Donally, an expert at the forefront of augmented and virtual reality in education. Every March, Jaime dedicates herself to blogging daily about the latest and greatest AR/VR tools as part of her #31DaysofARVRinEDU effort.
On the pod, she shares a number of the tools, sites, and software highlighted in those blog posts, paying special attention to the impact that generative AI is having on the tech available in that space. Near the end of the conversation, she also speaks to the heightened role digital citizenship plays in a world with AGI.
Katie Novak joins us for a great conversation on Universal Design for Learning and the role those practices can play in the MTSS model in this episode of The Good Life EDU podcast! For more on UDL and the work Katie has elevated, check out her site at https://www.novakeducation.com/
This week, Dr. James Rickabaugh, the Former Director and now Senior Advisor for the Institute for Personalized Learning, joins us for a fascinating conversation that takes a deep look at personalization and its place in education today and moving forward. In this episode, Dr. Rickabaugh also entertains the future impact of virtual reality and artificial intelligence on education as technology continues to advance.
