Digital Citizen (Citizenship)

Digital Citizenship, as the name suggested is NOT a material like Citizenship card or, ID Card. Instead, It Is an exposure with norm of using internet ethics and responsibility while online.

Let me elaborate, most of us use internet to browse news, blogs, use social media to upload pictures, create an Email address to communicate. In this regard, we become a part of internet in different form. At this point thinking, i donot use anything online but only use my smart phone to say: watch YouTube video, is not keeping us isolated from Internet or Online network.

To make this point more simple,

1. When we first setup smartphone, it requires email address !

2. When we download basic apps like YouTube, it requires our age restriction to watch videos, Wohoo our Email address has all the information on age and gender !!!

Thats it, we are not isolated from Digital World. We are associated in different aspects, may that be the email address, social media like Twitter, Facebook, G+, snapchat, whats-app Or Instagram. We do have our digital foot print and presence in internet.

That's where we become Digital Citizen.

Different aspect of Digital Citizenship can be learnt from this video: (Source)

Ten trends 2011: Citizenship from EDtalks on Vimeo.

There are few definitions on norms of digital Citizenship categorized as elements(Source).

Element 1 - Digital Access : Many of our surrounding community or people do not have access to digital tools and internet. Digital access by digital citizen is an responsibility and art of giving to community. This is to ensure, everyone has rights to be a digital citizen.

Element 2 - Digital Commerce: Electronically selling or Buying goods is gaining popularity and holds a huge share of trading around the globe. But to make legitimate buying and selling practice, digital citizen must have ethical practice which shall not harm other community in their religion, gender, status to name few.

Element 3 - Digital Communication: We use email, instant messaging and other chat tools to communicate between our peers. With so many options comes huge responsibility on decision making and choosing the right tool. Being digital citizen should be knowledgeable on using right tool for the right reason.

Element 4 - Digital literacy: One of the most used platform to exchange teaching and learning methodology is internet. The educational model in digital literacy is growing exponentially. To keep up with the pace, one must be aware of the skill required to monitor and train peers and students on effective learning management system.

Element 5 - Digital Etiquette: There is a procedure and policy to use content in online arena. We use what others have invented or produced and that has its own policy of use. Digital Etiquette is a ethics of using technology responsibly.

Element 6 - Digital Law: There are laws and there are consequences of wrong doing over internet. It is the most valued thing to remember while in online presence. Like it deals with same theft law as of stealing physical goods, and stealing digital content of others. Being digital citizen we must have basic idea on Digital Laws.

Element 7 - Digital rights & Responsibilities: We are free citizens of free online world. Everyone has rights to put in their view and opinion online. Keeping in mind the responsible use of content, everyone has space in internet! People around us need to be educated regarding the same.

Element 8 - Digital Health & Wellness: Using digital tools, devices for long time, has its own consequences. Health hazard of using such tools, eye hygiene and stress shall be dealt with good practice and awareness. After all "Health is Wealth".

Element 9 - Digital Security(Self Protection): Like a physical lock at our house, we shall have our protection and security ready while engaging in digital world. When it rains, its our own responsibility to put in umbrella or rain-cover coat, we shall have basic ideas on antivirus, firewall, data backup system before we get doomed online.

Digital Citizen :

Becoming Digital Citizen might be easy, but to produce a mass with basic knowledge on 'Digital Citizen' education is a big task. Unless the education is provided from base level, it will be hard to monitor or create a healthy online environment around us. 

Digital Citizenship is being taught and train in many schools and universities around the globe. Still we lack within huge portion of students, being kept out of basic information on Digital citizenship. As they grow up, innovate and execute, internet and online collaboration will be the first tool to join rest of the world. To show their presence and standout in the crowd.

It is in our capable hands to train and educate the generation around us on being a responsible Digital citizen.

(Pic Source)

BE RESPONSIBLE, BE EDUCATED, BE GOOD !!!

The next wave of change for Rural School Education: Chromebook

Use of computers for a specific purpose has revolutionized since its creation. Yes, the computers were invented to reduce human effort in doing calculations. Later it became a digital device that can be a host of communication(Email & Sharing Files).

Likewise, amongst the huge integration of information sharing in last two decades, Education techniques has shifted to next level by the use of computers. May that be just a device to watch movies, play game or used as a digital workplace, it has always fascinated the way we learn.

Use of Computers has raised the productivity and creativity of Educators. Students are becoming smart and knowledge is being shared globally with just a click. The more we see computing power, the more we prepare ourselves for future revolutions.

Let’s talk about Chromebook, a laptop computer that is portable, cheap, integrated and future ready. Chromebook has its native Operating System called Chrome OS.

[Chrome OS is an operating system designed by Google and based upon the Linux kernel. Google announced the project in July 2009, conceiving it as an operating system in which both applications and user data reside in the cloud: hence Chrome OS primarily runs web applications.]wiki

Chromebooks are being manufactured by many companies. Just like traditional laptops. But, yes Chromebook also come in touch and non-touchscreen models.

Chromebook has paced its market in education sector and uses is growing exponentially. Definitely a new wave of change!!

Chromebook and Rural Education:

Rural areas are always in high risk of education management. The topology or geographical location has a crucial impact on children and their education. Non-accessible roads, high altitude location, poor economy of the community to name a few factors.

To reduce the gap in accessible education and common core for educators, computers can be of great help. And this has been proven over times.

Likewise, Chromebook is emerging as a good device to use in rural education. The long life battery, faster booting capability, compact yet powerful open source Operating system and Work even when Offline, are few great features of Chromebook.

There has been few queries regarding the usability of Chromebook in rural areas, let’s enlighten those points.

Google Chrome Browser:

A browser that holds the core of Chromebook operation. Chrome browser has its own application store, from where we can download and pin the required application. For example: We can add YouTube button at the top right corner of Chrome Browser, so as to access Youtube from a single click. It makes accessibility of any required weblink or apps extremely easy and from within a browser.

GMail Offline:

An offline email application that can be initially downloaded from Chrome web-store. This application within Chrome browser makes it easy to read emails and compose emails even when there is no internet. The new emails and draft emails are automatically sent/received, once connected to Wifi or 3G. This makes it easy to keep up with your emails and communications on the go.

Offline Google Drive and Documents:

Google Drive is a webspace for storing and creating documents. It is a place in web/cloud to store/create documents, videos, photos and personal documents. An archive or vault to store and collaborate.

Google Drive chrome app can be downloaded from chrome app store and easily maintain the Offline availability of documents within Chrome Browser or Chromebook.

This can help Create, Read, Edit documents on the go. Once the device is connected to Wifi or 3G, the Offline edited/created documents automatically sync with Google Drive online folder. Making the whole documentation process easy and accessible.

Security:

Chromebook is the most secure device that only requires our Google or Google Apps account login credentials. NO anti-virus or Third party security is needed for Chromebook. As Chrome browser has the facility to provide numbers of different users and preserve their bookmarks, themes and accessibility, we only need our email credentials to be in our Chromebook screen. Once we logout, another person with authority can login using their credentials. But keeping our data safe/ separate and inaccessible to sharing even within the same Chromebook.

THE NEXT BIG THING in CHROMEBOOK is the accessibility of Android application through android play store, which has been already in rollout phase. This means, Chromebook can now act, behave and feel like our android cell phone/tablet. Playing games, editing pictures and hundreds of apps are landing to Chromebook. Making it the ace device to use anyway and everywhere. Or even integrating our own educational android app for Chromebook.

The demographic to show how access to Google play store within Chromebook can transform the way we teach. In relation with android app compatible mobile phone users. (vertical unit in thousand).

Price:

Although different Vendors manufacture Chromebook Devices, the average price ranges from USD 100 and above. Depending on the features available in the device. Which makes it affordable to rollout throughout school.

Battery:

Chromebook has an average record of 10 Hours on battery. With or without wifi connection and depending upon the hardware configuration. Which makes it more usable in areas with electricity problems.

Google Apps for Edu ready device:

Chrome OS is Google native product. So all the Chromebooks are compatible and ready to roll with Google Apps for Education suite. Likewise Google apps for education is free and unlimited for schools. (More on Google Apps for Edu in my Previous Blog).

Hands-on Table to show how Chromebook is ideal for rural Education:

Online(with Wifi or 3G)	Offline
Create class content in Google documents and save it in Google Drive. Download hundreds of Educational Apps. Access content online. And store it in local Chromebook for future reference. Edit Photo and share it.	Access class content even while offline, edit and save. The sync will start only while online. Start playing with downloaded apps within Chromebook. Access content using intranet address. Open the file, open the application internally. Edit Photo and Queue it for sync.

Conclusion:

Chromebook are revolutionizing the way we teach or learn. May that be for rural or urban schools. It is becoming the first choice as educational tool. The chart shows consumption and use of Chromebook in education, by region.

HAPPY LEARNING !

Restrict With Freedom: YouTube for Education

It is no surprise to us on how students can better react with graphical representation. May it be a picture, a shape or a video, they learn,observe and memorize instantly. Educational videos are even more productive within classrooms. In this blog, i am going to talk about the same. But more associated with YouTube. 

YouTube is a web application/website that helps us upload, search and view videos over internet. 

Can you guess what was the first youtube video about? what was the content? Or how it looks?

Here you go, the first YouTube video, 

shoot on 2005 AD, inside Zoo. (source Wiki)

Things have evolved a lot in video sharing and video making since 2005. Accordingly with Videos related to Education. YouTube has become primary choice website for sharing educational videos, animations and similar content. Mainly because of the collaboration tools, YouTube stands out as number one choice in Visual Education.

What is in YouTube for education:

Before we go further, we must know the category of video placed in YouTube website. When we look for a certain video and click the name of the author(person or organization) displayed below Video, we can see the category as:

• Home: Is the introduction page with videos from author or creators.
• Videos: This is a archive of author or creator personal videos.
• Playlists: This is a group of related/featured videos placed under one place. There can be unlimited Playlist of similar videos bundled by author or creator.
• Channel: This is a place where the author or creator can put subscription video from another author or creator. 
• Discussions: The place where all the comments on video(s) are archived. This place can be used for collaboration.
• About: The place where Description of the video is presented.

We must know that, we have the control over our videos uploaded in YouTube. If we think its not appropriate for Public, we can just keep it for ourselves. The same process can be handled by Admin of Google for Education users.

Similarly,YouTube has a list of preloaded resources that can be accessed quicker Or share with students and peers.

1. YouTube for Education :  This channel is dedicated for popular educational videos that were generated automatically by  YouTube's video discovery system. In this same channel we can discover grade level video list( #Primary and Secondary level, #University Level and #Lifelong Learning). All the playlist and channel were selected by YouTube as appropriate for education.

2. YouTube for Teachers: This channel is created to help teacher integrate their teaching methods with students. Hundred of channel and videos are being put together to ease the task of teacher, for better engagement within classroom activities.

3. YouTube for -Google in Education : This channel is associated with videos on how Google application suit can help transform education. The power of sharing, collaborating and effective practice of Google apps can be found within this channel.

There are many other channels like of Lego in Education, National Geography, Rhymes and lot more that can meet our requirement. We just need to search within YouTube website for educational topics, heading or relevant titles. 

How can we ace the presentation in YouTube Video?:

YouTube Creator Academy is the place where we can learn how to create effective content on YouTube video and more. This is a place where we can learn everything about YouTube video making.

Restrict with Freedom:

It has been a hot topic of discussion on "how to prevent students from distraction contents and adult videos".

Let's checkout a simple process to block videos that are not relevant to our child. Yes, this process can be used for home computer, that has access for your children. 

We can simply goto https://youtube.com, scroll down to end of the page. Select the drop down menu in "Restricted Mode" button, activate and save it. This will prevent your child from unknowingly jump to age restricted videos and non-relevant content.But, they can enjoy hundreds of video of their choice and interest. 

For Schools that have already gone Google, the restriction can be made for segment,group, unit of students from the admin panel. Although, we must also be aware that not all filter are accurate and 100%

For schools without Internet access?

YouTube videos can now be saved offline in our mobile device. That means we can save a video(permitted) in our device directly from YouTube mobile application. This is a great feature to help teaching and learning for schools without internet access. Also a great feature that can be benefited by rural schools and its student.

Happy Visualizing !!!

Educate With Google

Came home to find my 21 months old, trying to open YouTube video on one of the smart phone of his mother. It literally caught my eye and made me rethink the days the child will grow up for further education. The argument which stroke me was: by the time my child will be able to grab the words and rhymes in school, will it be the same as this day when he is trying to open YouTube in mobile device? Will the traditional system of education in school comply with the level of his curiosity to use digital media for education? I became worried and spellbound. These things brought my attention to drop few lines regarding the 21st century learning methods.

Regardless of vendors in internet based education ecosystem, I found it easy to move forward with the accessible teaching and learning methods with Google Apps For Education. For the last four years I have been into Google in Education training and deployment.

What is Google Apps for Education and how this system is being adopted by more than 30million educators and students worldwide?

Google Apps for Education is an cloud based educational ecosystem put forward by Google Inc,  which provides services and tools to equip students and teachers. Software as a service has been one of the key disruptors of technology in higher education. The ability to move applications and services into the cloud frees up IT staff to focus on infrastructure and classroom technology. In the case of Google Apps for Education, it also relieves some of the pressure on colleges’ budgets.

Available at no cost to students and faculty, Google Apps includes cloud email, storage, hosting, word processing and collaboration tools. Previously, colleges were forced to invest millions in these services and struggled to modernize outdated technology, not to mention maintain email servers and data centers.

Schools of developing countries like Malaysia and Philippines have already moved to Google for education and country-wide deployment. One third of the schools and colleges in United Kingdom have also followed the trend and moved to Google for education. Not to forget the countless educators in USA and beyond are practicing Google Apps for Education and growing in number.

The tools that Google has provided for Google Apps for Education includes:

Google Classroom: Virtual classroom to organize assignments, score and grade , collaborate and engage students for everyday task.

Gmail: Emailing service that can be handled with any digital device having Internet.

Google Drive: Unlimited storage in cloud, capability to save and share Documents, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Photos and Videos and lot more.

Google Calendar: Time management and schedules along with calendar dates, can be shared and announced to group of people and lot more.

Google Sites: Unlimited websites to school domain, students and teachers can exchange the information with their own built website(no programming or skills needed).

Youtube: sharing and collaborating videos with own channel and audio-visual teaching methods.

Google+ : Social media designed to collaborate parents and teachers OR students and teachers in a single community page.

Hangouts: Chat with friends, students, teachers in real time with capability to visually talk with more than 24 persons at a time.

As mentioned above, these tools are being successfully practiced everyday by Millions of Educators worldwide. The service and tools are not limited to the above list though; there are ocean of Applications and third party integration possible with Google Apps for Education system. Google Apps for Education has broadened its scope with its own online store, where we can easily find educating tools and services that fulfils our requirements.

How Google Apps in Education works and what are the Prerequisites:?

Google Apps for Education is such designed that, any schools or Colleges can register for free. Which will give opportunity to provide countless identity (email ID and similar) to explore all the services provided by Google for Education. Great, now how can we access the services and what are the software requirements? Well, as said earlier all the Google services including video conferencing works with computer browser (Chrome, Firefox, IExplorer, Safari). So we DON’t NEED Extra Software to get service of Google in Education. To add more to the accessibility, Google Apps for education can be easily accessed with mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.

The only support we require to deploy Google Apps for Education is INTERNET. That’s it and that’s all.

How Google in Education is changing the way we educate?

In a traditional classroom, a teacher thinks he/she is bound to cover the syllabus to prepare student for exam. This model is leaving the gap of educating learners of 21

st century. Even to educate ourselves, we need to research and find more facts on related topics before entering the classroom. That points to the use of online resources and open source to find the right topic. Google itself is a giant search engine and has given an open service to find whatever we want and whenever we want.

It has become a common practice nowadays, that a teacher points a student to do more research with Google. Here we go, the solution itself is in the hand of educators and students do practice online education to broaden their knowledge. Regardless of grade level or age or class divide, students are already making themselves ready to mold for future education.

Every student is trying to update the level of use of digital media, whether they are at home, and school or cyber café. 21st century learning and power of digital blueprint is practiced each day by our students. Using social media to educate and share the assignment has become common practice for students. Google is just helping these trend with managed resources.

Google Apps for Education- for Nepalese educators:

More than 24% of Nepalese citizen have access to internet now(ref: Nepal telecom report 2013). The use of social media and usages of smart phone is increasing exponentially. This is the right time we start making and preparing our educators to move along the trending technology use in schools. It is indeed in front of us that many students are pursuing abroad studies and they are being capable for major change over even for foreign big companies. But, also a fact that preparing student to compete with rest of the world is still not exactly how we are equipped in education system. Here I want to emphasis on the use of technology on classroom and overall digital education transformation.

Google Apps for Education comes with free registration that any Nepalese College or School can adapt. We have the skill and human-resource to push it furthermore and make our own model of application viable for Nepalese students and educators. As mentioned above, Google Apps for Education doesnot require high end software or large scale investment to deploy within the college or school, its only matter of motivation that we should be actually worried for.

More than 50 Schools and Colleges have already adopted the emailing services through Google Apps for Education. But, the lacking point is we are not aware of the scope and benefit of going Google. In my experience and service for last 2 years in Nepal, I have been trying to reach out more and more schools to show how Google in education can change the way we learn. My experience shows that schools and Colleges in Nepal do have the capability and minimum requirement to roll out Google for Education, the only thing we need to keep in mind is that it’s the demand and requirement of students whom we are trying to educate, because they are the future pillars of this century.

The questions that hits me every time I go around counseling the educators are We don’t have electricity, we are busy with our exam and stuff so we do not have time for transformation of online education system, we cannot provide students with internet because we restrict internet use in schools … Ok soo few as of many.. let me put it this way: Electricity is National issue and everyone of us are being slaved to live under dark but, using the hand held devices and laptop computers, we still can work this out. In fact we can make our students more productive at the time of electricity outage, asking them to creatively use their digital device.

Coming to the question regarding ‘no time for transformation’ , lets us wake up for the world

which is waiting for us to make a change. Google in Education is an educational tool that is helping us to grow and flow with the trend in education system of the world. And we don’t want to be kept behind. It is indeed a part of educational tool, Google Apps for education is designed for education to make our(educators) life easy and accessible anytime/anywhere in need.

The last but not the least, ‘restriction’ of internet in schools is a big issue. But, if we look at it this way: Restrict the junk and not the education. Here you go, in today’s world we can make it possible to filter the unwanted junk within the school’s internet and provide students only with educational materials. Easy! Asking a student to report an assignment online but, restricting internet from school does not quite make sense.

Where to get started and how?

Google Apps for Education is a bundled tools service. It is always best to get the right counseling from the experts before migration. There are many Google certified trainers and deployment experts whom we can look for. Even, we can ask our educators to learn the online courses (free) and get the idea on Google Apps for Education and how to use them.

We have more than dozens of Google Groups and Google+ community to look forward to and learn how others are adopting the education services of Google. It is always better to do some research before making up mind.