Engaging Digital Discussions

Class discussions are one of the better ways to help students develop the valuable skills of creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.  Discussions enable students to ask probing questions of each other, listen to and respond to classmates clearly and appropriately, challenge ideas and expand upon observations, and view topics with a circumspect lens.  The benefits of class discussions are numerous; however, there are some obstacles to productive discussions.

One is time.  By their nature, class discussions can take a while to develop.  Oftentimes, the most interesting parts of a discussion are discovered long into the examination of a subject.  A related obstacle is equal time for all students.  Some students speak a lot, and some speak a little, and some might not even get the opportunity to speak.  Also, some students may just be reluctant to speak in front of their peers.

Digital or online discussion boards have been used to mitigate these obstacles, but they can often lose focus the longer they go on and the further they become removed from the discussion topic.  Discussion or message boards make it difficult to retain the context of the conversation at hand simply by the user-interface of the board itself.  This brings me to an excellent solution:  NowComment.

NowComment is a free (yes, free) web app that allows for dynamic and engaging discussions of online documents, articles, videos, and more.  What sets this educational tool apart from the others are its unique user-interface and features.

NowComment uses a brilliant two-pane user-interface that contains the article or video on the left side of the screen and the discussion of it on the right side.  The article or video can be marked with annotations that link to specific discussions and comments about that particular sentence, paragraph, or section.  NowComment keeps everyone on literally the same page, and the discussions become more relevant and engaging.  Here are two short videos that demonstrate NowComment's awesome features.

Don't Fall for Phishing

Hackers and cyber criminals are trying to bait you.  They want to fool you, hook you, and then reel in your private information.  This is phishing - an increasingly common attack that attempts to gain someone's private information and/or credentials through realistic, but ultimately fake, emails.

How bad is phishing?  According to a 2017 report by PhishMe, Inc, the average cost of a phishing attack on a mid-sized company is $1.6 million.  That same report also found phishing attacks had grown by 65% in a year.  The 2019 State of the Phish Report by Wombat found that 76% of businesses were the victims of phishing attacks in the previous year.  Schools are also popular targets.  Just recently, hackers stole personal information of over 500,000 staff and students in a San Diego school district through a phishing attack.  The first line of defense to prevent these attacks is the user.

People must have training to identify phishing attempts and disregard them.  Jigsaw, a special part of Google that researches and develops solutions to technology issues, released a quiz on phishing to help people spot these potential attacks.  I got seven out of the eight scenarios correct.  I'm still kicking myself about the one I missed, which I thought was a phishing attempt, but it turned out to be safe.  Take the quiz here and see how many of the phishing attempts you can identify.

One final resource that can help both teachers and students become safer and more savvy online is Google's Digital Citizenship and Safety course.  This self-paced, online course trains teachers on incorporating digital citizenship and safety lessons in their classrooms, but it also provides many helpful tips on digital security that are relevant outside of the classroom.

Hopefully, these resources can help you to not take the bait.