What Students Should Be Taught When Working Online?

 Students, especially in young age, should be taught that they may face several problems while working online. However, they should be taught how to act to avoid such problems. 

For example, they should know that they should refer to a trusted person when facing any problem in the used apps. Also, they should be taught how to secure their accounts from hackers. In addition, I think students should know that they are not forced to post everything they think about, they should learn to post what is helpful for us and for others, like sharing a video about something they learned in the class or in certain subject. Furthermore, it is important to teach students what are the safe websites that they can use in different ways, in this way you are avoiding them from facing such problems. 

How To Be A Digital Citizen?

 In the age we are living in, Internet become part of our daily lives and related to everything we do like shopping, banking, studying, connecting with people, making research and many other things. 

Although Internet is very important nowadays, but it have another side that may harm peoples' life. Cyber-bullying is one of the major problems users are facing. In turn, our role as educators to teach students how to use such tools probably and how to create safe online spaces. In several ways, teachers can help students how to be a digital citizen. First, encourage your students' critical thinking skills; for example teaching them how to interact with others online, what to post and what to search for and how, and how to make their accounts safe from stealing their accounts. Second, teach students to use secure websites to shop, to learn, to communicate, etc... Third, teach students to respects other users, their personal information and their privacy. Fourth, to protect their privacy by always updating their privacy and security settings. 

In conclusion, not only using technology and internet makes you a digital citizen, but also by knowing how to use it probably and helping others how to manage settings and control their accounts. 

Tools That Can Be Used In Online Assessment

Different assessment tools can be used by teachers to assess students, either formative assessment or summative assessment. One of the most effective and used tool by teachers is Google Forms. It is really helpful in creating different types of questions like multiple choices, short answers, long answers, tables, etc... And you as a teacher can control the settings as you want. For example, you can make choose the assessment to be automatically graded. Also, you can write a feedback on each answer and it appears to the student automatically at the end.

Mentimeter is another effective tool to be used. It is designed with templates that can be used for different goals like creating quizzes and tests, ice-break activities, and live quizzes. 

Poll Everywhere is also a good choice to assess your students. Teachers can find were students are struggling during answering questions by creating cloud questions, opening students' responses, or by controlling multiple-choices options. 

In addition, Wordwall is another tool that can make assessment more fun and enjoyable for students, by creating quizzes in form of games. Several templates are available, like random wheel, random cards, matching pairs, word search, and many others. 

In conclusion, teachers can assess students by using online apps that are free and available for everyone and are simple in creating with making the subject more enjoyable for students. 

Integrating Technology Into Teaching

People may think that using technology in teaching disturb students and disperse their attention. However, using any type of technology in your classroom, converts all boring subjects into much fun and interaction activities. 

Using new tools in your classroom, will break the ice between you and your students, even between your students and the subject itself. In this way you will build a great relationships with your students. Another benefit, is that students are incorporated in different learning styles, thus they are improving their skills during the learning process. In addition, in this era everything is related to technology, and our role as teachers to improve our students skills, teach them what and how to use everything that is helpful in their future and preparing them for future digital demands.

EDUC561

Educational Media and Technology course is one of my favorite and most interested courses I took. The most thing I like it is that we are learning about new educational tools and how to use each one and applying them step by step. One thing I wish it is different, is to make a portfolio with making an activity on each tool we learned about and assigning it to the instructor.