Common+Sense+Media

Common Sense Media is a non-profit organization that helps students, parents, teachers, and even policy makers learn how to be responsible consumers of digital media. Their website offers tons of resources for teachers, parents, and students. For educators specifically, these include Graphite to help teachers find and rate the usefulness of various classroom technology resources, Digital Citizenship materials to help students learn to be responsible members of the Web community, and much more.

From the Common Sense Media website: "Media and technology are at the very center of all our lives today -- especially our children’s. Kids today spend over 50 hours of screen time every week. The media content they consume and create has a profound impact on their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development. Learning how to use media and technology wisely is an essential skill for life and learning in the 21st century. But parents, teachers, and policymakers struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing digital world in which our children live and learn. Now more than ever, they need a trusted guide to help them navigate a world where change is the only constant."

Graphite Digital Citizenship Other Resources
 * On this page:**

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Graphite
Graphite is a powerful tool that lets educators find engaging apps and tools that are appropriate to specific grade levels, subjects, topics, and standards. Graphite also provides reviews by real teachers who have field-tested these apps and tools in their own classrooms.

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A Graphite search for a certain app, website, or tool can give you a lot of information about that resource (however, not all of the information is available for every tool):
 * A brief overview
 * Price
 * Applicable grade levels
 * Platforms (e.g., iPad, Android, website, etc.)
 * Subjects*
 * Skills (tech skills, critical thinking, character and SEL [social-emotional learning], communication and collaboration, creativity, college and career prep)
 * Standards
 * Pros, Cons, and "Bottom Line"
 * Graphite expert reviews
 * Teacher reviews
 * Similar products/tools

There are a few different ways you can utilize Graphite. If you already know about a specific app, website, or tool and just want to learn more about it, you can search for it directly. For example, a search using the term " Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra " will show that app as well as other tools that share some of those key words.

Search for a general term, like "rhythm," to see what apps, websites, and/or other tools are recommended and reviewed. You may also want to narrow down your search results, e.g. to only include tools appropriate for specific grade levels (try 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade ) or only show tools for certain purposes (such as individuals and small groups ). To discover new apps you may not have known about before within the context of your specific needs, use the Graphite drill-down tool. Follow these steps to use the drill-down tool to find new technology resources on Graphite: Click the image below to see the results from this particular search.
 * Go to the Graphite home page
 * Click "Reviews and Resources" near the top left
 * Click on various options to drill down into a specific area you're looking for. Selections will turn dark grey when chosen. You can choose more than one option for each of the categories: Type, Subjects*, Grades, Price, Skills, Purpose, App Devices. Each time you make a new selection, the page will refresh to update your findings.
 * Choose your sort settings: by highest rating from Graphite, by highest rating from other teachers, by title (alphabetical), or by last updated.
 * Check out your results and click on an individual tool or resource to learn more about it.
 * Graphite does not yet offer a separate category for "Music," but they do offer a category for "Arts." Note that some search results will be aimed for visual arts classes.

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Digital Citizenship
Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenships resources cover a wide array of digital citizenship topics. One of the most powerful Digital Citizenship resources that Common Sense Media has developed is their scope and sequence that covers a variety of topics disaggregated by grade level (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12):
 * Internet Safety
 * Privacy & Security
 * Relationships & Communication
 * Cyberbullying
 * Digital Footprint & Reputation
 * Self-image & Identity
 * Information Literacy
 * Creative Credit & Copyright

These are different from the ISTE Standards in that they do have specific skills benchmarks for specific grade levels, but they are similar in that both Common Sense and ISTE focus on some of the same major topics. Check out this alignment chart to compare the Common Sense scope and sequence to the ISTE Standards for Students.

While music teachers should not be the sole purveyors of this information in our schools, we should also not consider ourselves exempt from the responsibility of teaching these skills to our students. These resources help music teachers become familiar with the technology skills and benchmarks that our students should know and be able to do at different ages. This can help us plan for using technology that is developmentally appropriate for our students.

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Other Resources
Common Sense Media's Education resources also include:
 * Connecting Families
 * 1-to-1 Essentials
 * Professional Development
 * Videos
 * Blog
 * Graphite Top Picks
 * Graphite Teacher Center

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