Empower educators, leaders and students to make informed decisions to protect their personal data and curate the digital profile they intend to reflect.
Cleaning Our Your Google Drive Assignment
Professional Experience
One of my pet peeves about technology integration is that I believe there is very little being taught in the early grade school years about anything that has to do with technology "soft skills." This generation is referred to as being digital natives. In my experience, they're only digital natives from the perspective that they were born in an era when technology is readily available. Many students don't know the first thing about how to handle or store organized personal data. They don't understand cloud versus remote storage, and they struggle with concepts on how to share documents properly. Unfortunately, I believe this may be the case with some educators as well.
The first few years I taught my digital design class, one of the biggest struggles I had with students was having them turn in picture files correctly. Frequently, I would work one-on-one with a student trying to find where they had saved the completed project. It occurred to me that time was being wasted on technical skills instead of working on curriculum-related projects.
As a result of this experience, I insist that my students be organized from the start of the school year. One of the activities I have students do is cleaning out their Google Drives. I make them sort and categorize their existing data. This activity might involve deleting files or creating folders in some manner that reflects organization. Students have to provide visual proof by taking a screenshot of their clean Google Drives. I hope that doing this activity will help them see the importance of staying organized as it involves all their files and not just items from my class.
Because students started virtually this year, it was also essential to teach them the difference between storing data in the cloud as opposed to storing it locally on your computer. When students returned to the classroom and began working in my Mac lab, they needed to understand that it was vital for them to save their projects they were working on and upload them to their own Google Drive. This way, students had access to them when they were at home. Learning these skills, along with the concept of creating a Dropbox, has helped students to stay organized with their data.
I don't know if I have a solution to these issues, but I feel these concepts should be addressed in the primary grades. I know K-4 students attend technology classes in our district As part of their regular six-day cycle rotation. I have never observed or been a part of any of those classes, but I have received feedback from students confirming my suspicions about not being taught these skills. I believe this needs to be added to the curriculum as basic skills students should be learning.
Professional Experience
One of my pet peeves about technology integration is that I believe there is very little being taught in the early grade school years about anything that has to do with technology "soft skills." This generation is referred to as being digital natives. In my experience, they're only digital natives from the perspective that they were born in an era when technology is readily available. Many students don't know the first thing about how to handle or store organized personal data. They don't understand cloud versus remote storage, and they struggle with concepts on how to share documents properly. Unfortunately, I believe this may be the case with some educators as well.
The first few years I taught my digital design class, one of the biggest struggles I had with students was having them turn in picture files correctly. Frequently, I would work one-on-one with a student trying to find where they had saved the completed project. It occurred to me that time was being wasted on technical skills instead of working on curriculum-related projects.
As a result of this experience, I insist that my students be organized from the start of the school year. One of the activities I have students do is cleaning out their Google Drives. I make them sort and categorize their existing data. This activity might involve deleting files or creating folders in some manner that reflects organization. Students have to provide visual proof by taking a screenshot of their clean Google Drives. I hope that doing this activity will help them see the importance of staying organized as it involves all their files and not just items from my class.
Because students started virtually this year, it was also essential to teach them the difference between storing data in the cloud as opposed to storing it locally on your computer. When students returned to the classroom and began working in my Mac lab, they needed to understand that it was vital for them to save their projects they were working on and upload them to their own Google Drive. This way, students had access to them when they were at home. Learning these skills, along with the concept of creating a Dropbox, has helped students to stay organized with their data.
I don't know if I have a solution to these issues, but I feel these concepts should be addressed in the primary grades. I know K-4 students attend technology classes in our district As part of their regular six-day cycle rotation. I have never observed or been a part of any of those classes, but I have received feedback from students confirming my suspicions about not being taught these skills. I believe this needs to be added to the curriculum as basic skills students should be learning.