1 - It's the Law

NY Educ L § 801-A (2014) - 801-a. Instruction in civility, citizenship and character education. The regents shall ensure that the course of instruction in grades kindergarten through twelve includes a component on civility, citizenship and character education. Such component shall instructstudents on the principles of honesty, tolerance, personal responsibility, respect for others, with an emphasis on discouraging acts of harassment, bullying, discrimination, observance of laws and rules, courtesy, dignity and other traits which will enhance the quality of their experiences in, and contributions to, the community. Such component shall include instruction of safe, responsible use of the internet and electronic communications.

NYS Education Law - § 814: Courses of study in internet safety: Any school district in the state may provide, to pupils in grades kindergarten through twelve, instruction designed to promote the proper and safe use of the internet.

Current Proposal in Committee - Assembly Bill 5981 – To study the teaching of digital citizenship, internet safety, and media literacy.

2. It's Part of our Learning Standards

(Some) NYS Common Core Standards That Mention Technology:

• Make strategic use of digital media to enhance understanding and to add interest.
• Use technology to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
• Gather relevant information from multiple sources; use advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths/limitations of each source; integrate information selectively; avoid plagiarism /overreliance on any one source; follow a standard format for citations
• Integrate visual information with other information in print and digital texts.
• Graph functions expressed symbolically and show key features of the graph, by hand in simple cases and using technology for more complicated cases.
• Compute (using technology) and interpret the correlation coefficient of a linear fit.

3. These skills help kids be safe, courteous and efficient consumers and creators of technology and tech resources