Trolls, Internet Tough Guys, and Digital Citizenship

During last week's online session I was surprised at how many people in the class had never heard the term troll with regards to on-line behavior. But with a little further reflection I guess I really have only come across the term when I'm doing something probably not many in this class do, and that's online gaming. So I thought I'd take a different approach to my blog this week and write about my experience with internet trolls.

Having played online games for years such as World of Warcraft and now Dota 2, you really get a good idea of a lot of internet slang. And the trolls, oh my the trolls. It is unfortunate that when I do actually have 30 minutes to unwind these great games are usually taken over by trolls and you basically have to ignore chat altogether. To show examples of this I literally only had to go to my last game played and take some screen shots.

If you can't make it out, "tunker" asks if a player doing poorly is from poor country (he knows he is because you can check in the profile even in game) and harasses him about being from Peru and that he hates having "banana farmers" in his games.

As you can see in the chat in the middle of the screen our troll "tunker" is unhappy that he is losing.
Often times when a player is doing poorly or hurting the team he is harassed in the worst way possible. In Dota 2, which takes place on the Steam gaming network, people can see what country you are from. In this case "tunker" decides to make fun of the country the player he is trolling is from. The harassment can often be done with swearing, with extreme racism, and basically anything one could type to get someone else angry.

There isn't a lot someone can do to fight back this harassing in game. You can ignore all chat, but sometimes that leaves you in a tactical disadvantage. Thankfully they implemented an ignoring a specific player feature which blocks all communication from them. You can report the offenders in game, but the worst penalty I've seen handed out was a 24 hour ban from the game.

With the anonymity of the internet you almost daily see people act totally differently than how they would act in real life. It's unfortunate but it's a reality.

We all know the extreme pains that bullying in any form can cause, and online bullying is no exception. In our school division we are required to teach "Digital Citizenship" lessons each year to our students to show them how to properly behave when online.

This poster basically sums up the main ideas of the lessons. It's a great resource and the lessons we have are fantastic. If you would like to take a look at the lessons they are available at http://elementarydigitalcitizenship.weebly.com/

When looking at what people were adding to the last slide Tuesday about what they would like to imprint on their students, someone shared they would like to create respectful and caring digital citizens. This is an area that is truly important with our children spending more and more time online and making sure they know what's appropriate in their "digital lives".

Google Doc's Vs. Office 365

Last Tuesday's session was an extremely interesting one. I loved actually getting to work together on on-line documents and testing out the software first hand. After the session I was convinced of it's value, but had to start to weigh the benefits against what our school division has to offer. The school division is using Microsoft Office 365 as a comparable software to Google Docs.

I decided to wait on posting this because I wanted to talk to a couple people in the technology department at Regina Catholic. I talked to two people directly, our supervisor of IT and our supervisor or digital design. After talking with them here was some information that I came across that I thought was important for me to weigh when looking at the software I was going to use with my students:

• Microsoft Operating Systems, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Office 365 were all purchased by the Ministry for school division use.
• For a school division to use Google Docs and google to house student accounts there is significant corporate fee.
• Just because it was free didn't mean our school division just jumped right into 365. The IT spent significant time doing a comparison of the two products (Docs and 365). Google docs was ahead of it's time 3 years ago. However with the newest version of Office 365 there was no significant differences in functionality. Microsoft had taken the best of Docs and incorporated it into 365.
• Using Google Docs as a corporation as opposed to 365 would result in significant back end problems with the technology department. It just doesn't have the complexity of the Microsoft software. This includes security features.
• Using Google docs is certainly an option separate from the school division, as it has many great features. A hindrance to this is that google docs users need to be 13 years of age. If they are not they require parental permission. A lot of extra work for teachers to get no extra functionality out of the software.
• The student accounts in my division are now linked through Microsoft 365 and sharing files, collaborating on-line on a document, and emailing them all is only clicks away and all this software is supported by our IT.

In the end I love google docs and the pioneering they did in this area. However, it doesn't make sense to use docs when 365 does everything I need it to......


Google Doc lovers, let me know what I'm missing and change my mind in the comments!

Week 2 Thoughts and Rick Schwier

Week 2 already! The past week flew by for me and I managed to post about my thoughts on week 1, find a couple MOOC's that I was interested in and then skim through the courses. More MOOC's to come later in the week as I get more time to explore.

On Tuesday one of the "set" slide to our lesson was about our earliest memories of educational technology (ET). From my days as an elementary student in the mid to late 1980's I remember the slide show with cassette tape to tell stories. It made such an impression on me I still remember hearing the story of "Rumpelstiltskin" for the first time. I also enjoyed the classic title in our new computer lap in 1992, "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego".

While these memories are early uses of ET, I enjoyed the historical reference to the earliest mass production printing presses, and how that to is considered ET. I had to agree with Rick that while our discipline is changing rapidly, it's hardly new. It makes sense when you think about it, teachers have been using the latest technology to enhance learning for a long time.

I was also interested in Rick's analysis of the new types of ET, with social media and social software to enhance group learning being the current focus...... I found myself interested in what software in particular could be useful with students and what form that would take.

I also enjoyed rick's obvious knowledge and enthusiasm for the ET and took some valuable knowledge away from the session.

So far I've enjoyed the online class learning feel and it's flexible learning times. The connections are useful PD (on twitter especially). It's only been two weeks and I feel I've learned a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing what the MOOC's I take have to offer as well and look forward to blogging about that experience!

Thoughts from ECI 831 Week 1...

I decided to enroll in this class because of recommendations made from excellent colleagues of mine. I've seen several of my colleagues in RCSD start making significant connections through this course and via twitter and other social media, and in doing so, enhance their professional reputations and more importantly connect with other professionals to further their own development.

After I read the initial class email, I installed Java, joined the google plus community and took a look at the class documents.

My immediate first impressions was that I could see that the class would be a breath of fresh air compared to my previous masters courses. There is merit to the lecture/seminar/paper/presentation/final paper course set up and significant learning can certainly take place, however this course represents a greater feeling of choice of what topics we can explore, and in doing so experience the online learning community first hand.

After the online session I felt even more comfortable with the course. I was looking forward to picking out a MOOC, setting up a blog, and diving in, which leads me to the epic conclusion of my first blog about EC&I 831!