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This study highlights the potential of using comic-based digital storytelling as an instructional strategy for digital safety education. Guided by the multimodal literacy theory, the study employs character analysis and biterm topic modeling to identify prevalent themes within the curated Pixton comics of 20 students. The study revealed digital footprint, netiquette, and privacy as key themes in student's comics. Comic characters represented students' self-inserts and revealed expressions of their understanding of the topics. 

Digital Safety refers to the knowledge and skills needed for the intentional protection of users in the digital environment. With children having access to digital devices at a young age, it has become essential for them to be educated on how to be safe in the digital world. Through a week-long summer camp on digital safety, elementary-age learners were introduced to four topics (digital identity and digital footprint, cyberbullying, netiquette, and digital security and privacy). This study found that the digital safety immersion camp was beneficial to elementary school learners based on the achievement, attitude, and behavior data that were collected. Posttest scores were statistically significant from the pre-test. Cyberbullying topic had the highest pre- and post-knowledge, whereas netiquette and online behavior, and digital security and privacy had comparatively lesser scores. Students demonstrated positive attitudes in the post-camp survey and they also included several lessons learned from the camp in the Pixton comic strip, which they created as the final project from the camp. The findings from this study contribute to the current literature on preparing elementary school students’ knowledge and skills related to digital safety and have implications for students, teachers, administrators, and parents. 

Digital safety involves protecting oneself, and one’s personal information to mitigate the risks that are inherently associated with using digital technologies. This study employed a multi-method design to explore 26 in-service and pre-service elementary teacher experiences from attending a professional development on digital safety and facilitating a digital safety immersion summer camp. Data was collected through pre- and post-test assessments, surveys, and interviews. Findings from knowledge assessments indicate no significant difference in pre- and post-test assessment. However, elementary teachers displayed high motivation, valuing the critical need for ongoing digital safety education and opportunities for collaboration and self-reflection from the survey and interviews. Teacher challenges included teaching students from different backgrounds with varied expectations and engaging the learners. This study provides recommendations for teacher professional development and has implications for designing teacher professional development on digital safety and for administrators to offer support on digital safety topics amidst the challenges the teachers discussed. 

K-12 schools utilize a growing number of technologies to operate effectively, ranging from technologies for learning to technologies that manage student and personnel data. We share findings from an analysis of 23 school district websites for technologies used in a number of K-12 school districts surrounding a public, research university in a southeast region of the United States. In addition, we also share findings on technologies used in K-12 school districts from interviews with 12 technology directors. We propose a technology classification framework including educational technologies, management technologies, support technologies, networking technologies, and security technologies in addition to identifying various technologies that are currently used by school districts based on this framework. This framework has implications for K-12 technology adoption and clarifying the roles of school technology personnel. 

Based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between a southeastern public university and a state virtual public school in the United States, ten high school teachers from a virtual school who teach Computer Science (CS) online participated in a summer workshop to collaborate through a participatory action research project regarding design, facilitation, and evaluation strategies to be included in effective professional development. The questions were posed through an online collaborative Jamboard during the summer workshop. The teacher posts were qualitatively analyzed to identify common themes. Recommendations for professional development on design included CS content, how to teach CS, and CS tools and activities. For facilitation, they recommended resources for supplemental instruction and feedback tools for providing feedback in various modalities and a tool repository. For assessment, they recommended content knowledge assessments, including lab assignments, single and pair programming, and coding assessments. Overall recommendations for a professional development course to teach CS online were also offered. 

Creating effective professional development is critical to support high school teachers who teach computer science (CS) online. The context of this study is based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the United States and North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). Ten high school teachers from the NCVPS who teach CS online participated in a summer workshop and recommended design, facilitation, and evaluation strategies to be included in effective professional development (PD). The summer workshop was conducted synchronously via Zoom. It provided the opportunity to discuss teacher perceptions related to the research questions "What design, facilitation, and assessment strategies are helpful to include in an AP Computer Science Advanced course?" and "What recommendations do you have for designing an online professional development course for high school teachers to teach computer science online?" The questions were posed through an online collaborative Jamboard, and the affinity diagram method was used for data collection and document analysis was conducted. The teacher posts were qualitatively analyzed to identify common themes. Findings for professional development on content design included CS content, how to teach CS, and CS tools and activities. For assessment, they recommended content knowledge assessments, including lab assignments, single and pair programming, and coding assessments. They recommended tools for supplemental instruction, integration of discussion boards for interaction, and tools and strategies to provide feedback for professional development.