Supporting Positive Digital Citizenship

Great lessons and resources for Middle-Secondary can be found at https://applieddigitalskills.withgoogle.com/c/middle-and-high-school/en/build-healthy-digital-habits/overview.html  

It is very important that we are supporting the creation of digital citizens that have a good understanding of their digital tattoo (a more permanent symbol of "digital footprint"), and that have good strategies for navigating as a digital citizen.  

Five key points to remember for ourselves, and to focus on with our students, are:

• Personal.  maintain a profile that doesn't disclose any personal information

• Private.  maintain security for passwords and personal details

• Permission.  ensure permission to view and share online

• Positive.  treat yourself and others with respect   

• Prevent.  make sure that negative interactions don't continue and get adult help

Any teachers that might be wondering about how to discuss appropriate technology use and digital citizenship with their students might consider giving a peek at the slide shows below.

It is NOT intended for a single session discussion. It begins a conversation to build acceptable use of technology for your classroom so that you can begin from a point of awareness. There are 5 Ps threaded through the guiding discussion questions that will, hopefully, help to bring up some pieces that are essential in discussing digital safety and technology use. This is simply the beginning of this, for me, and I intend to keep working on this. 

I'm looking for feedback and shared contributions. Let me know your thoughts about changes that should be made, and feel free to comment on the slides if you would like to.  Or, if you want to just take some of it and change it for your use, feel free to do so.

Google has also created some programs to support Digital Citizenship.  Check out Be Internet Awesome, an interactive and free online game that also teaches students how to navigate the internet as you "explore Interland". 

There is also a bundle of Media Literacy Apps available on chromebooks to help students develop their critical thinking skills. 

• Frontier is a program focusing on English Language Arts for grades 3 - 8 that looks at reading online and then following up with narrative writing, informational writing and opinion writing.   

Common Sense Education has a number of great tools for you to use.  Their programs are available by purchase and there are also some free extensions that you can access.

You can view some of their online units,"scope and sequence" and you can set up a class to work through the Common Sense Education Digital Passport with your students to support them in building their awareness of safety online.

Need Help Now - a resource for inappropriate images being releases and cyber-bullying  https://needhelpnow.ca/app/en/ 

NetSmartz has produced some teacher resources available to support work with teaching digital citizenship.