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This resource steps students and teachers through the steps of how to become an upstanding digital citizen. It will be used to teach people what to expect during each step of their digital citizenship journey.

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Growth in DigCit Thinking | Piktochart Visual Editor

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This resource provides a digital citizenship toolkit for teachers to use in their classrooms. It steps teachers through 1) Why digital literacy is important, 2) Top 11 myths about digital literacy, 3) Ideas for a digital literate classroom, 4) Digital literacy resource bookmarks, and 5) Checklist of skills and tools for digitally literate teachers.

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96 percent of Americans use the internet daily, and 62 percent of working Americans rely on the internet to do their jobs. We live in an internet age - an age that requires specific skills. Digital literacy skills have become essential to academic, career and interpersonal success.

Digital literacy is defined as the ability to find, evaluate, share and create content using the internet - but it's much more than that. Digital literacy skills (also referred to as "21st century learning skills") have permeated the classroom, becoming requirements for both teachers and students.

To address this need, we worked with education expert Leah Anne Levy to create USC Rossier's Toolkit for Digitally Literate Teachers. This toolkit provides teachers and school administrators with how-to guides, actionable strategies and real-life examples of the benefits of digital literacy in the classroom.

Teachers are using digital tools in inspiring ways - whether they're tackling digital problems directly or employing students with skills to unlock their creativity. How have you used digital tools in your school? Share your examples on social with the hashtag #WhyDigLit
Graduate Degree Programs From USC Rossier School of Education
USC Rossier offers a range of online graduate degrees for aspiring teachers and experiences educators. Request information to speak with an admissions counselor.

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USC Rossier's Toolkit for Digitally Literate Teachers provides teachers with how-to guides, actionable strategies and real-life examples of the benefits of digital literacy in the classroom.

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This resources teaches teachers how to address cyberbullying in the classroom, providing 5 steps to combat cyberbullying.

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One of the most newsworthy incidents this summer was the tragic murder of nine African American parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina. The suspect in the crime, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, is a white man who was known to be heavily influenced by online white supremacist hate speech, most notably from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that now functions primarily as an Internet clearinghouse for racial fear-mongering "news" stories.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Konner Sauve, an 18-year-old high school senior, made headlines in June when he revealed that he was behind the yearlong anonymous posting of 650 photos and kind messages to other students at East Valley High in Yakima, Washington. Sauve said, "I wanted to focus on the better aspects of people. To shed a positive light on each individual, make them feel appreciated, and to know that someone cares." The Instagram account, @thebenevolentone3, has 14.3K followers.

As a society, are we more surprised by a Dylann Roof or a Konner Sauve?

The Downside of Social Media

Modern technology, the internet, and mobile communication have quite literally rocked our world and changed it forever. Through online communication, we can buy anything we want, meet and connect with people across the globe, exchange ideas in a polite or heated tone, learn things small and large, and express ourselves in countless ways. Unfortunately, this global communications technology also has become a place for people to communicate and spread hate, vitriolic language, and bigotry.

We define online hate speech, or cyberhate, as the use of electronic communications technology to spread bigoted or hateful messages or information about people based on their actual (or perceived) race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or other similar characteristic. Cyberhate has become a growing concern in our society, especially for young people because of their active engagement in the electronic world.

Cyberhate can take various forms, including the web sites and communication forums in which Dylann Roof participated. It includes the vicious and organized rape and death threats toward women who spoke out against sexism in the gaming industry (commonly referred to #GamerGate). It also includes attacking individuals based on their appearance, racist tweets ranging from sports to the Miss America Pageant, anti-Semitism expressed on Facebook, and hateful comments written in response to news articles. It is difficult to quantify the extent of cyberhate and its change over time; however, there seems to be agreement among experts (PDF) that the problem is increasing in magnitude.

5 Strategies to Fight Cyberhate

What can educators do to help young people address cyberhate? The first step is to educate students about cyberhate by defining it and analyzing how it reflects and perpetuates bias and discrimination prevalent in our society. At the same time, it's important to be mindful not to direct students to hateful websites for "research." Instead, provide screen shots and articles about the cyberhate.

Educators can talk with students about the following strategies for responding to cyberhate, and provide the skills needed to make it happen:

1. Don't support or reinforce the hate.

One of the most important and easiest tactics is not to support the haters. Help students resist the temptation to respond, applaud, "like," or share. By refusing to join in, they send an important message that bigotry, hatred, and intolerance are not acceptable.

2. Report cyberhate.

Many internet companies and social networking sites acknowledge that counterspeech -- using our voices -- is the most powerful tool in fighting hate online. Most have cyberhate policies with direct links for registering a complaint when free speech has crossed the line into hate speech. Help students learn how to report cyberhate.

3. Support the targets.

Whether the targets are individuals or groups, and whether you know them or not, encourage students to reach out and let these targets know that someone cares about them. Or, as Konner Sauve did, design a project in class where students add to or create their own online support forums or individual posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram in support of someone who is a target of cyberhate.

The best response to bad speech is good speech, and that's true online as well as in person. Encourage young people to address online hate speech by organizing or participating in counterspeech. They can write an encouraging comment, ask others to do the same, or use social media platforms to support the person.

4. Speak out against hate.

In response to messages of bigotry and hate, students can convey their thoughts by writing a comment in disagreement, making a video, writing a blog, or using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to condemn hate online. In this way, they amplify the message that it is unacceptable. Assign this as a group project or infuse it in other parts of your curriculum.

5. Engage in activism.

In the face of cyberhate, many individuals and groups are fighting back with organized efforts to confront the bias. Last year, Honey Maid created a "This Is Wholesome" commercial which included diverse families (two dads, an interracial family, and a family heavily tattooed). The ad immediately sparked negative and hateful backlash from individuals and organizations. In response, Honey Maid released another video titled "Love" which received positive messages -- ten times as many as the original hateful ones. Encourage students to join groups or campaigns already underway, or engage in counterspeech as a class by taking on an activism project of the students' choosing.

How does your class or community address cyberhate? Please tell us about it in the comments section below.

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Tool or Weapon? Addressing Cyberhate in the Classroom

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One of the most newsworthy incidents this summer was the tragic murder of nine African American parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina. The suspect in the crime, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, is a white man who was known to be heavily influenced by online white supremacist hate speech, most notably from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that now functions primarily as an Internet clearinghouse for racial fear-mongering "news" stories.

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This resource informs teachers how to increase Internet safety in the classroom and how to talk to students and parents about safety precautions. It will be used to teach teachers how to handle Internet safety in the classroom.

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Earlier in the year, I had our middle school Parent/Teacher conferences, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that 99 percent of my students (most of whom are Title I) have a computer in the home. However, there was absolutely no oversight of what was going on with the computer, because the only person who even knew how to turn the computer on, many parents claimed through their translators, was their student. The parents knew nothing of the box in the kid's bedroom.

An online colleague of mine, Patrick Ledesma, recently reminded me of the "door to door" law that states it is the school's responsibility to keep students safe the minute they leave their front door until they return home at the end of the day. However, this law now seems to extend to cyber safety and netiquette, making our responsibility to monitor children greater than ever because their world is now ever wider.

The Problem

The unfortunate fallout of all this is that in an attempt to legally protect themselves, districts have put up aggressive firewalls that don't service the education of the child. Sites are blocked which could enable teachers to open up learning, and students are never asked to practice good decision making at school because there are no decisions to make. This becomes a greater problem when a student then goes home and jumps onto all those sites with her email address flirtykitty@aol.com and schools are then blamed for not educating students in better Internet safety. Furthermore, this perpetuates the myth in the student's mind that there is school life and then there is real life. Our schools must be permitted to better mimic the challenges that exist outside its walls in order to better help prepare our students for those decisions.

So I believe that one easy thing that we can do as a partner with our community is to help educate our parents. We are, after all, in the business of education, and we can't do this without them.

I once heard a child psychologist say that raising a child is like letting them walk the median of a very wide, 4-lane highway bridge. There are barriers on both sides, of course, making the child feel safe. But just imagine what it would it feel like if only one of those sides was missing? Would the student, even walking the double yellows of the bridge, have that same sense of security? Of course not. That's what's happening in today's schools with only one group trying to educate our children in Internet literacy. The school is trying, but many parents are not a part of this equation of learning. The students, therefore, are teetering in a 4-lane suspended highway with only one siderail.

Resolutions

Therefore, schools must help empower parents to be the digital caretakers at home because we can only do so much during the school day. We must teach families simple tools to insist on, and have them extend the culture of cyber safety to the homes. Parents must work hand in hand with schools if our students are to function in this digital world.

To help address this problem, I helped organize a district Parent Tech Institute. I saw the school as a way to help educate parents with little computer knowledge in how to enforce tech standards at home. Without them, we will most definitely fail, and unfortunately, it is the school that will get blamed.

We began by doing the following:

#1. Set the date This was just one workshop at the basic level, a Computer 101 of sorts. From there, we surveyed the parents who came to further determine the needs of a 102 class.

#2. Ordered the translators We have three labs on our middle school campus, so we planned on having three teachers presenting the same material, each with a translator in a different language. In our district, it will be held in English, Spanish, and Mandarin.

#3. Prepared the curriculum Our 101 class literally started with the basics: How to navigate the district website, How to find your school's website (for this was offered to parents throughout the whole district), How to set up a free gmail account, How to email your student's teacher, How to respond to an email, What is Facebook, How to set up basic parental controls. We took tips from Alan November and our Cybersmart curriculum for guidance.

#4. Promoted Our Director of Ed Services agreed to be our district point-man (well, woman) on this. She mailed home fliers in the three main languages promoting the event. Her biggest challenge was finding the money to even do a district-wide mailing because we all agreed that we clearly couldn't promote it online because our target demographic is never on the computer. Additionally, phones only went so far. It had to be hard copy, and it couldn't be entrusted to the kids to bring the handout home intact. Additionally, my principal took the information back to her principals' meeting to get other administrators on board.

#5. Thought about the miscellaneous Will we also have to provide child care for this event to really take off (more money)? Should we provide coffee, cookies, and other hospitable items (more money)? What should the parents leave with to remind them of what they've learned? How will be pay for the reproduction of these items? This year, the teachers are volunteering some of their time to participate in this service, and the Dir. of Ed Services is cobbling together some green card money to help us out, but if this is to continue, we cannot expect that to also be a tradition. How do our teachers get compensated for their time and efforts so that this does not become yet another past practice expectation of donated efforts?

We tried to think about every angle, but will this solve every problem that a tech savvy kid brings into the home? Of course not. Nevertheless, it will set an expectation of online behavior at home that currently many of our students don't already have. It'll help parents build up their side of the bridge, and that's a start.

Ever hosted such an event, and care to share? Or, more importantly, if your district hasn't sponsored one, what's to prevent you from starting?

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Earlier in the year, I had our middle school Parent/Teacher conferences, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that 99 percent of my students (most of whom are Title I) have a computer in the home.

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This resources addresses digital citizen topics such as student control, talking to parents, accessibility, and more. This resource will help teachers navigate these specific topics within their classrooms.

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Student Control

When we give our grades 6-12 students a 1:1 computer to take home, those students are the local administrators of their devices. They can download software, change settings, rearrange icons and menus, and personalize with on-screen images and bookmarks, or with stickers. They can make the computer fully theirs. Why? Because these are lifetime skills that they must learn, and because a "personalized learning device" is not that if we (not they) control it.

Do children mess up? In the words of Vince Scheivert, our CIO, "Of course they do, they're kids, and do middle school kids mess up more often? Of course they do, they're in middle school." But then he adds, "And we're OK with that." We quickly reimage the device and give it back to them. Our middle school kids mess up a lot, our high schools kids almost not at all. That's learning.

An Abundance of Tools

We hand our students real laptops with real capabilities, and we fill them with software, apps, and bookmarks. We like to have at least three ways that kids can do anything. They can use Google Apps to write, or Microsoft Word, or Open Office Writer. We have four different ways to convert Text-into-Speech, a half dozen different calculators, all kinds of organizational tools. We want our children to discover how to choose effectively for their own needs. To do that, they need choices, and so we believe in Toolbelt Theory.

Accessibility

Our laptops are Universal Design for Learning (UDL) devices -- they have the full Freedom Stick suite of accessibility tools installed. Microsoft Speech-to-Text is linked prominently on the start menu. We have talking calculators, Balabolka, and WordTalk installed into Microsoft Word. This is for every student. You don't need an IEP to choose these tools.

No student will have mechanical limitations in access to either information or communication -- whether through disability, inability at this moment, or even just discomfort. Learning is our goal, and we make it accessible.

Access Everywhere

Our school district, 726 square miles including hills, hollows, and mountains, comes with significant challenges. Seventy percent of this area lacks broadband access. Other areas lack access because of poverty. So with our Educational Broadband Spectrum -- something that the Federal government gave to every public school -- we're building out an LTE-4G system for home and on-the-go connectivity for every student in our district.

This isn't easy, and we're doing it without any budget initiative, but it is essential. " All means All," says the sign in our superintendent's office, and we take that seriously. Every child needs the same opportunities, and we can make this possible.

BYOD and an Open Network

Every school facility has both a "closed" (our devices) and "public" (any device) network. And with the exception of certain licensed resources, both go almost everywhere on the internet. Every K-12 student can use his or her own device in class. This is key to both UDL and choice. And teachers can collect old smartphones, reset them to operate as everything but phones, and use them in their technology tool crib. Parents can connect in school lobbies, libraries, or in the parking lot waiting for their kids. We see ourselves as a place where information is available and tool use is learned.

Talk to Parents

How much screen time is too much? What about filters? Why is this important? As with faculty, we help parents understand that we live post-Gutenberg, and the ways of learning and communication have changed. Too much of anything is too much, our kids don't stare at screens all day in school, and we'd love them to be outside playing at home. But make sure that your children have as much unstructured play with friends offline/outside as they do online. We help parents consider filtering their home internet service, or shutting down WiFi at night, or simply limiting computer use to family spaces, but we also know that the best filter comes from being involved with our children. We keep the lines of communication open, and we hope that we're modeling a balanced life for our students.

Worry About Behavior, Not Technology

We really don't have "technology discipline." We see no difference between online bullying and on-paper or verbal bullying. We see no difference between damaging tech stuff and damaging any other school property. If we wouldn't take books away from a child who let a book get wet, we won't take contemporary tools away from a child who made a mistake with his or her digital device. For our children, these tools are how they communicate and learn, and if we act as if that's true, the rules become much easier to understand.

Spend Wisely

We moved from three students per computer to 1:1 without any increase in our technology budget. We've done this by choosing devices carefully and negotiating prices. We pay less for robust Windows 8 devices than many schools pay for tablets and Chromebooks. We don't buy service contracts, because our tech staff and our students do the repairs. We don't pay for computer setup, because our student interns image and reimage over 10,000 student computers every summer. We ask parents to donate old smartphones when we need alternate-size devices. And we buy only Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suites -- all other software and apps are open source or freeware. Our goal is to spend our technology money on the student, letting us do much more with less.

Trust in Children and Childhood

Yes, this is a catchphrase, but it's vitally important. We trust our children, and in turn, they usually do the right things. And this underlies all that we do.

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The Basics of Open Technology | Edutopia

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When we give our grades 6-12 students a 1:1 computer to take home, those students are the local administrators of their devices. They can download software, change settings, rearrange icons and menus, and personalize with on-screen images and bookmarks, or with stickers. They can make the computer fully theirs. Why?

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This resource explains the importance of upholding copyright and fair use laws in the classroom. Teachers will be able to follow links within the article that teach them YouTube copyright basics, the educators guide to copyright and fair use, and more!

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I absolutely love it when teachers and students create, remix, and mash up media; it's a fantastic way to encourage deeper learning and media literacy. But one issue that complicates digital freedom of expression is copyright law. While many would argue that copyright law is outdated and badly in need of an overhaul, it's still critical that adults and kids alike have a basic understanding of what's legal and ethical while playing with other people's intellectual property. Here's a list of videos I collected to help you navigate the murky waters of copyright law in educational settings.

Video Playlist: Understanding Copyright and Fair Use

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

1. Understanding "Fair Use" in a Digital World (06:14)
This excellent video by Common Sense Media and Teaching Channel shows students evaluating video remixes during a lesson in fair use. Get the PDF handout you see in the video here!

2. Should "Happy Birthday" be Protected by Copyright? (07:29)
I'm a PBS IdeaChannel fangirl, so I couldn't resist including host Mike Rugnetta's rapid-fire ruminations on the topic of copyright law. This one is a great discussion starter!

3. YouTube Copyright Basics (05:42)
YouTube commissioned this from comedic puppet duo Glove and Boots; it's chock full of useful information and helpful links. Despite the puppets, the language is not suitable for young kids -- you may want to preview.

4. Day at School: Copyright and You (06:35)
I'm a sucker for 1950s-style instructional filmstrip parodies, so I was tickled when I found this snarky one about copyright, made for teachers (not necessarily students!) -- and it actually has useful tips.

5. Fair Use School: Response to YouTube's Copyright School Video (04:42)
Lawyer Patrick McKay made this winning entry for Public Knowledge's contest to respond to YouTube's Copyright School video -- which is informative about what you can't do with copyrighted works, but falls short on what you can do under fair use.

6. Copyright Education User Rights, Section 107 Music Video (03:11)
This punk-ish music video takes a catchy look at some of the nuances of fair use, from media literacy activist and educator Renee Hobbs and the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island.

7. A Fair(y) Use Tale (10:14)
Using Disney footage to explain copyright? Yes! This brilliantly ironic remix video is by film/media studies professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University. A little long, and visual quality is not the highest, but worth a watch.

8. Get Creative! (06:38)
The surefire way to avoid copyright infringement in the classroom? Use materials licensed under Creative Commons (CC). This fun animation recounts the history of copyright law that inspired the CC system.

More Resources for Teaching Copyright and Fair Use

If you've watched even a few of the videos above, you'll understand that fair use and copyright are very complicated and nuanced issues; but getting familiar with them is an essential part of being a good digital citizen, and even more important if you and your students plan to make and share creative works, whether original or mashup (which I hope you will!). Check out my Five-Minute Film Fest on the best educational parodies from last year to get fun ideas and resources for remixes as classroom projects.

The good news is that there are lots of organizations dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and helping people understand their rights and responsibilities around copyright law; and even a few that specialize in helping educators get a handle on the issues and impart the right lessons to their students. Just a few of these are listed are below, I'd love to hear from you if you have favorite resources on this important topic!

Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center

Teaching Copyright website and curriculum, from Electronic Frontier Foundation

"Understanding Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons, as they apply to Education," by K. Walsh, from EmergingEdTech

"A Printable Guide To Creative Commons," by Katie Lepi, from Edudemic

Fair Use Tube, from lawyer Patrick McKay

Infographic: Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers (PDF), from Tech & Learning

"The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use," from Education World

Legal and How-to Guides for Citizen Media Creators and Online Publishing, from New Media Rights

Ethical Use of Materials: How and When to Cite Online and Print Resources, from International Education and Resource Network

"How Does Copyright Work in Space?" from The Economist Explains

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5-Minute Film Festival: Copyright and Fair Use for Educators

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I absolutely love it when teachers and students create, remix, and mash up media; it's a fantastic way to encourage deeper learning and media literacy. But one issue that complicates digital freedom of expression is copyright law.