Google Summit on Digital Safety and Citizenship at Google HQ, Pittsburgh

On March 22, 2018, a group of educators from all over PA assembled at Google HQ in Pittsburgh for the 6th iteration of Google's Digital Citizenship Summit. I was unsure of what I would be able to gain at the summit, as we were made aware that the information would be geared toward middle grade teachers. But the conversations we started and many of the resources we received could apply to teachers at any grade level.

We began and ended with sessions lead by Larry Magid. Mr. Magid has created numerous resources for students, parents, educators and seniors surrounding the topic of digital safety. His first talk focused on connectsafely.org, an organization for which he is president and CEO, located in tech hub Silicon Valley. ConnectSafely offers news, resources, and guides all surrounding the topic of digital safety. Some of the guides Larry shared with us are for parents, educators, and seniors. Our final session with Mr. Magid was a "Fireside Chat," during which a Googler lead a Q&A not only with Larry, but also with the educators. I enjoyed this interactive session, hearing from experts both in the classroom and in industry.

Other sessions included an overview of Google's Be Internet Awesome with Googler Rob, and another was lead by several teachers at McGuffey. The teachers at McGuffey had implemented a number of Be Internet Awesome lessons, including the Interland game, in their middle school. The game is neat, and I imagine middle schoolers would really enjoy the entertaining reinforcement of digital citizenship skills. In Rob's session we had a chance to test out the game for ourselves. I did hear some educators mention that the game may be a little young for middle school and perhaps be even more engaging with elementary-level students.  The age group that I work with, high school students, are not the target audience for Google's digital citizenship resources; however, the other guides and resources we received are relevant at any level.

Overall, it was an engaging workshop that started important discussions on media literacy and digital safety. We all need to be more cognizant that we are incorporating these skills and teachable moments into our digital lessons.

WIRC 2018

Our teams performed so well this year, and I am so proud of how each and every student represented Norwin. As always, we had a blast at what has become my favorite school day of the year. One of our WIRC team members wrote a wonderful article about the competition for the school paper, so everything that follows is her article:

Ribbons for reading

By Madison Stanley

     On March 5, Norwin’s Westmoreland Interscholastic Reading Competition (WIRC) club attended their yearly competition at Seton Hill University.  

     WIRC students spend months reading books from a list of 30 that is released at the end of the previous year.  At this competition, teams are paired up with different teams for 4 rounds. These rounds consist of 30 questions total on any of the various books from the list. If a team misses a question the question goes to the opposing team and if that team answers correctly they are granted a quarter point. This makes the total amount of points available 18.75 per round.

     The Norwin WIRC club met during lunches with more frequent meetings as the competition grew closer. During these meetings the group would discuss books from the list with the intention of giving the entire club a better understanding of all the books on the list. Every student was required to read four books and write question sets on each, which is the only requirement of joining the club.

     Norwin had three teams attend the competition this year. The teams based their names off of books from the WIRC list. The freshman team was Extremely Quiet and Incredibly Nerdy, which is a pun on the book Extremely Quiet and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The sophomore team was Code Name Norwin, based off of Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein.  The senior team, including one junior, was Booking for Alaska, based off of John Green’s Looking for Alaska.

     Extremely Quiet and Incredibly Close placed third overall and awarded yellow ribbons, the highest finish for any Norwin team ever in WIRC competitions.  Booking for Alaska placed fifth overall, which was awarded with pink ribbons.

     “This year’s questions must have been a lot harder than last year’s,” said senior Sebastian Pratt, due to the fact Booking for Alaska had a lower score than the Norwin team which placed sixth in the previous year. 

     Overall, Norwin’s WIRC teams have been improving and expanding over the years and will hopefully continue to do so.

     “We did better than I thought we did,” said senior and Booking for Alaska team captain, Meghan Williamson.

    The Norwin WIRC team hopes to continue improvement next year and awaits the next list of books to dive into.