Digital Citizenship

Essential Questions:

What is digital citizenship?

What rights and responsibilities do I have as a digital citizen?

How can we manage and minimize the negative impact of our “digital footprint?”

What can we do to stand up against bullying and cyberbullying?

What is the bystander effect and why is it important to recognize it?

Do I have a digital dossier? What are tips to safely use the Internet?

Safe Schools Hotline: 888-728-5437

Helping a child become a good digital citizen cuts across all curricular disciplines and includes knowledge, awareness, and skills in three key areas:

  1. Safety & Security: Understanding the risks that we face from others as well as from our own conduct, and the dangers posed by applications like viruses and phishing.

  2. Digital Literacy: Learning how to find, sort, manage, evaluate and create information in digital forms. These literacy skills build on but are somewhat different from the traditional literacy of reading and writing.

  3. Ethics & Community: Becoming aware of and practicing appropriate and ethical behaviors in a variety of digital environments. This area includes shaping your digital reputation and being a responsible citizen of the communities in which you participate, from social networks, to games, to neighborhood civic forums.

Rights and Responsibilities of a Digital Citizen*:

• Rights include access & participation, free speech, community, privacy, physical & psychological safety, safety of identity and of material and intellectual property.

• Responsibilities include respect & civility to self & others; protecting own/ others’ rights & property; respectful interaction; demonstrating the blended literacy of a networked world: digital, media, social.

*Source: Anne Collier, ConnectSafely

Before you post, THINK... Is it True, is it Helpful, is it Inspiring, is it Necessary, is it Kind?

Create your media using at least one of the nine elements of digital citizenship. Online safeguard procedures should reflect responsible and safe use of technology. Share finished product with kimberly.jones@lcschools.org

Media: VOKI Cartoon Storyboard StdsDoc Digital Citizenship #DigitalCitizenship Living in a Digital World student video

Parent Tips: Common Sense Safety Real Life Stories


Author video: http://www.dianalopezbooks.com/confetti-girl.php

Note: stop playing it at 1:54.


Video: Ryan and Noah’s story http://www.netsmartz.org/RealLifeStories/SurvivorDiaries

There is no greater risk to a child’s safety than an online predator who wishes to meet in person. Teach children to identify predators’ methods for online enticement.

  • Kids should NEVER meet face-to-face with anyone they first met online without permission and/or attendance of their parent.

  • Teens should include their parents/guardians and trusted friends in their online activities and let them know with whom he or she is communicating.

  • Teens must refrain from talking about sex with anyone they meet online (social media, gaming, etc.).

  • Be a true friend and ask questions, especially if your teen friend is acting suspiciously.

  • Teach your friends not to reveal personal information.

  • NEVER take inappropriate pictures. Don’t post a lot of information on social media! It’s easy for people to track teens. Make sure you do not reveal identifying information and are not sexually provocative or inappropriate.

  • Look for warning signs. If you feel your friend or peer is in danger, tell a trusted adult and contact your local law-enforcement agency immediately.

Predators are looking for their next target...don’t be it.

Digital Citizenship Pledge

I pledge to: communicate responsibly and kindly with one another; protect my own and others' private information online; stand up to cyberbullying; respect each other's ideas and opinions; and give proper credit when using others' work.

Handout (t)

5 Facts about Advertising Tony's Pizza Ad Handout: Persuasive techniques in advertising PPT: Media Propaganda

EXAMPLE: Michael Jordan wore Converse basketball shoes in college Worn Converse basketball shoes sells for $190K

Quote: “MJ was wearing the Converse Pro Leather in the 1982 championship. He is often quoted as saying he felt he became Michael Jordan in that moment,” Hatfield said in a statement. “To signify the birth of MJ, I had the Converse logo fade out and the Jumpman appear.”

Work Cited:

Verry, Peter. “Converse Throws a Jumpman Logo on a Classic Sneaker to Celebrate Michael Jordan's NCAA Title.”

Footwear News, Footwear News, 2 Aug. 2018, footwearnews.com/2018/focus/athletic-outdoor/converse-pro-

leather-michael-jordan-north-carolina-march-madness-517473/.


Internet Safety

Grade level lessons from Common Sense Education

Safety vs Privacy (Glenn Greenwald) handout

Fourth Amendment to The Constitution: a law that protects people from unreasonable searches

surveillance: closely watching or keeping track of a person or people


Facebook name changed to Meta "Meta" name in use

Metaverse: a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.

anonymous: someone who cannot be identified based on the information at hand

anti-virus software: software for blocking malicious (bad) programs, such as viruses or malware, from harming your computer.

avatar: a graphic (picture, image) that is use to represent yourself on the Internet.

boundaries: physical, emotional and mental limits we set to protect ourselves from being manipulated, used or harmed by others.

bully or perpetrator: someone who acts in an aggressive, hostile, or hurtful manner toward others

bystander: a person who does nothing when they witness something happening

citation, cite, citing: a reference which names the source of specific information which has been used.

citizen: an inhabitant or member of a community, one who is entitled to the rights and privileges of it; a native who owes allegiance to a government or organizing body, and is entitled to protection from it.

commercial purposes: a use in connection with a business, usually for profit

cookies: small computer text files placed in your computer by the sites you visit that collect information about you computer system and the web pages you view

Copyright: a law that protects a creator's ownership of and control over the work they create, requiring other people to get the creator's permission before they copy, share, or perform that work

Creative Commons: a kind of copyright that makes it easy for people to copy, share, and build on someone's creative work-as long as they give the creator credit for it

cyber-bullying: use of digital media tools such as the Internet and cell phones to deliberately and repeatedly hurt, harass or embarrass someone else.

de-escalate: to decrease or make less intense

Digital Citizenship: navigating the digital world in a safe, ethical and responsible way

digital identity or digital footprint: all of the information online about a person either posted by that person or others, intentionally or unintentionally.

digital media: electronic devices and media platforms such as computers, cell phones, video, the Internet, and video games that allow users to create, communicate, and interact with one another or with the device or application itself

digital: characterized by electronic and computerized technology.

downloading: process of transferring files from a website/Internet location down to your personal device. Downloading can be either authorized or unauthorized by the content creator - and may contain malware. Beware!

empathy: (a top 21st century skill) is being aware of, sensitive to, and understanding what someone else is feeling or experiencing.

escalate: to increase or make more intense

fair use: idea that copyright material may be quoted without the need for permission from or payment to the original source, provided that a citation is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief.

Fourth Amendment to The Constitution: a law that protects people from unreasonable searches

grooming: techniques used by child predators to try to gain your trust.

hacker: someone who accesses computer information without permission.

harassment: to annoy someone repeatedly. For example, cursing at, following, or mocking someone online or offline.

identity theft: a crime that happens when someone gets the personal information (e.g., credit card, social security number, bank account numbers) of another person, usually to steal money.

intellectual property: includes art, books, inventions, magazines, movies, music, performances, reports, software, stories created by you or by others.

jeopardize, jeopardizing: to put something at risk or in danger, such as your reputation or digital footprint.

malicious: to cause harm to someone or something on purpose.

media literacy: ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.

netiquette: courtesy, honesty, and polite behavior practiced on the Internet - key component of digital citizenship!

offender: a person who has malicious intent to hurt or damage someone

phishing: a con game that scammers use to collect personal information from unsuspecting users. The false e-mails often look surprisingly legitimate, and even the Web pages where you are asked to enter your information may look real. However, the URL in the address field can tell you if the page you have been directed to is valid or not

plagiarism: using someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as your own.

predator: a person who stalks or uses lies, secrecy, or stealth, to get close enough to another person in order to easily hurt or harm them. Usually an adult.

privacy options: choices a website might give you about what it does with your information

Public Domain: creative work that's not protected by copyright and is therefore free for one to use

social media: includes the various online technology tools that enable people to communicate easily via the Internet to share information and resources

software patches: a patch can be an upgrade (adding more features), a bug fix, a new hardware driver or update to address new issues such as security or stability problems.

spyware: software that goes on your computer without your knowledge and steals private information.


surveillance: closely watching or keeping track of a person or people

target: a person who is the object of an intentional action

third party: a person or company other than you and the owner of the website you visit

tolerance: respecting those who are different from you.

trojan horse: similar to the Greek mythology, trojan horses are software programs that hide inside regular programs, such as games, disk utilities, and even antivirus programs. But if they are run, these programs can do great harm to your computer.

upstander: a person who supports and stands up for someone else

virus: a virus is a program that duplicates itself and spreads throughout your computer destroying files, changing data, hogging all your memory, or doing anything that is possible with a computer program. Viruses only damage software, not hardware.

worm: a computer worm is a type of virus that replicates itself, but does not change any files on your machine. However, worms can multiply so many times that they take up all your computer's available memory or hard disk space.

Did you know that on average, 8-18 year olds devote 7.5 hours to using media devices (smart phones, computer, TV, etc.) on a typical day? That’s the equivalent of a work-day, and amounts to more than 53 hours a week! And because most of that time is spent multitasking using other media, it boosts up the average time to more than 10 hours a day. This time does not include daily use of computer for school work, or texting time (1.5 hours), or talking on their cellphone (30 minutes).

† †Source: ‘Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18- Year Olds’, a national survey by Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010.