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Resources to use in your classroom to teach Digital Citizenship.

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A collection of articles, videos, and other resources on internet safety, cyberbullying, digital responsibility, and media and digital literacy.

Digital Responsibility

Common Core in Action: Teaching Online Ethics by Heather Wolpert-Gawron (2014): A look at a key element of digital citizenship-responsible use of intellectual property-and the eighth-grade Common Core standard for gathering, using, and attributing relevant information.

Five-Minute Film Festival: Copyright and Fair Use for Educators by Amy Borovoy (2013): In K-12 education, it's a challenge to navigate the copyright and fair use waters. What can educators use? How can they use it? We have some fun, engaging videos to help teachers and students understand this confusing subject.

The Basics of Open Technology by Ira Socol (2015): From abundant tools and smart budgeting to accessibility and trust, the Albemarle County Public Schools district maintains a tech program that leverages digital literacy for all students.

Five-Minute Film Festival: Are We Addicted to Technology? by Amy Erin Borovoy (2014): Can't put your device down? Obsessing over social media? You may want to dig in to this playlist of videos and resources to help educators, parents, and students reflect on their relationship with technology.

Media and Digital Literacy

Other Resources From Edutopia

Additional Resources on the Web

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A collection of articles, videos, and other resources on internet safety, cyberbullying, digital responsibility, and media and digital literacy. Common Core in Action: Teaching Online Ethics by Heather Wolpert-Gawron (2014): A look at a key element of digital citizenship-responsible use of intellectual property-and the eighth-grade Common Core standard for gathering, using, and attributing relevant information.

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Template to plan for our One-to-One section in our Student Handbook

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More resources on Digital Citizenship.

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How can we teach kids to use technology responsibly when the technology is changing faster than we can keep up? How do we foster the values of good digital citizenship in students who are old enough to scoff at the "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots"?

Grappling with these questions is just the beginning of the digital citizenship conversation. Most educators recognize the need for it, but many are at a loss for how to teach it. Some have tried creative approaches and failed.

In classrooms where digital citizenship is taught effectively, the teachers often share two things in common: They model ethical technology use for their students on a daily basis, and they naturally incorporate conversations about it whenever technology is part of their lesson plan. In other words, they weave digital citizenship seamlessly throughout their curriculum.

Here are some resources to help:

Schools have long woven citizenship lessons into their curricula, but now that much of our social interaction happens online, many teachers are struggling to figure out how to teach students about responsible digital citizenship as well. Yet the two aren't that different. This infographic compares the basic tenets of traditional citizenship with the essential elements of digital citizenship.

Technology is changing faster than teachers can keep up, leaving many educators struggling to develop a cohesive digital citizenship curriculum. In this video, tech integration expert LeeAnn Lindsey discusses the main challenges schools need to address.

In a classroom where learning is already infused with technology, it's a simple matter to incorporate digital citizenship into any lesson. Kelly Mendoza from Common Sense Media offers three examples of how to slip digital citizenship into your regular activities.

Empower students to think critically, behave safely and participate responsibly in a digital world. Common Sense Media's K-12 curriculum is available as either an iBook or printable PDF.

Students are far more likely to absorb the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use when they see teachers modeling it on a regular basis. Explore how the ISTE Standards for Teachers address the need to model good digital citizenship.

Explore the major issues surrounding digital citizenship in schools with this self-paced online course. It includes resources, videos and lessons to help educators at all levels - from administrators to teachers to coaches - develop, model and facilitate digital citizenship skills.

As socialization increasingly shifts into the digital realm, something is getting lost in translation: empathy. One way to discourage cyberbullying is to help students build empathy skills. Discover three powerful approaches to counteracting the empathy gap.

How do we teach digital citizenship to older students, who don't respond well to lecturing and finger pointing? Instructional technology coordinator Cynde Reneau shares her strategies for guiding students to draw their own conclusions about cyberbullying.

Looking for a fun way to help younger students become more social media savvy? Flocabulary's animated rap video for kids offers 10 tips for appropriate posting and sharing on social media.

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9 resources for teaching digital citizenship

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How can we teach kids to use technology responsibly when the technology is changing faster than we can keep up? How do we foster the values of good digital citizenship in students who are old enough to scoff at the "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots"?

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Why should we teach Digital Citizenship?

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by Paul Barnwell, Teacher of English & Digital Media

Students buzzed about the latest uproar on Instagram.

Anonymous sources had posted a 'questionable'-and NSFW-list for multiple public schools in our city on Instagram, leading to distraught girls, viral Twitter reactions, and an investigation.

This type of cyberbullying and reckless use of digital communication is rampant among teens, but this recent episode was only unusually due to its elevated publicity.

Every day, I see a student deficit on how to mindfully employ the unbridled potential and power of their smartphones and other digital tools. But who's to blame? Is it students who decide to post explicit photos? Who sext people they believe they trust?

Is it those cruel sources who exploit the images?

Is it parents who purchase smartphones and laptops for their children and fail to set boundaries or teach their kids about responsible use?

Is it the lack of education and discussion in schools about the ways students can be more mindful, responsible users of technology?

A combination, of course.

See also 9 Rules For Digital Citizenship

With many schools now shifting to allow BYOD (bring your own device) at school, combined with a general push for integrating more technology in the classroom, it's obvious that students need to examine the consequences of their online activity-both good and bad. Here are five reasons why schools should take a lead by promoting digital and social media literacies curriculum, and promoting digital citizenship inside and outside of the classroom.

5 Reasons You Should Be Teaching Digital Citizenship

1. The Growing Gap

If you accept the fact that most people will continue to embrace new technologies without fully examining the consequences of implementation, then it's time to bring our curriculum up to speed. Some educational technologies are fads, of course, but students will continue to devour opportunities to use devices available to them, whether or not they are being embraced at school.

The gap between what students do with their phones and what they could do is striking in schools, and the gap will only grow unless we fully embrace the ubiquity of digital connectivity in all of our lives.

2. Digital Footprints Are Easy To Make

Given that many colleges and employers judge prospective students and employees based on their social media profiles, we need to teach students to create online personas that project more positive constructions of self. Many students are shockingly unaware that adults are able to access their profiles.

Case in point: the other day I played the role of a colleges admissions officer for my advisory class full of relatively high-achieving juniors. As a Twitter user myself, I found student profiles with ease. Students squirmed in their seats and reached for their phones. "Let's see who projects a digital persona that I'd be happy to help enroll at my college," I told them.

By the end of the class, many students were deleting inappropriate photos and tweets. It's a start.
3. It's Real Life
We educators frequently hear the need to make learning authentic and real to kids. There is nothing so consistently entrenched in students' daily lives as their use of digital technology, and ignoring this fact leads to missed learning opportunities. In fact, one of the Common Core State Standards reads: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

This is a vague directive, but it leaves the door wide-open for testing out all possible digital tools to spur student writing and collaboration. Don Wettrick's Innovations course at Franklin High School (Indiana) is a wonderful example of harnessing the real-world potential to challenge students to connect with various experts and sources around the world.

4. Students & Their Culture Of Relentless Multitasking

With evidence mounting against the efficacy of multitasking-and anecdotal evidence swamping we educators, it's foolish to avoid deliberately challenging the students to resist multitasking. If we desire for students to thrive the digital world, they must be taught and practice mindfulness and sustained attention, in addition to understanding the consequences of constantly checking their phones and jumping from window to window on the computer.

The consequences of accepting constant multitasking might not seem as important as teaching students about cyberbullying, but I'd bet money that there is long-term, adverse academic impact on students who fail to regulate their attention.

5. Content Curation Is Information Literacy

One of the most empowering elements of social and digital media is the opportunity to learn anything, anytime, anywhere. There are thousands of worthwhile sources out there; how to seek out, select, and streamline information sources is often ignored in schools. In English class, students should be able to cite and compile websites or blogs dedicated to literature or writing. In social studies, students should be able to create a Twitter list and follow updated current events from reliable sources.

Regardless of the class, students should seek out and analyze information, then share their findings. From Scoop.it! to Pocket, Feedly to Flipboard, and Pinterest to even facebook (which now lets you save and organize content), and other curation tools, it's up to us to learn how these tools work and pass on their promise to students.

Some may argue that it's easy to embed lessons about the above topics into any course. This may be true, but with so many different issues to consider, requiring a dedicated digital and social media literacies course elevates the discourse and, given the right professional development, opens more opportunities for teachers to learn about skills and issues that are affecting students each and every day.

Conclusion

The digital implementation and comfort gap among teachers is vast and also needs to be addressed.

I've been encouraged by student response to my first edition of teaching Digital and Social Media Literacies at Fern Creek High School-most students believe it should be a required course. It's my hope that our collective exploration will serve as a building block for greater consideration and implementation of similar courses down the road.

We'll never stop students' cruel and immature online activity, but we can teach them how to be proactive and mindful in how they employ their devices, opening the door to more productive classroom technology application.

Your Comments

So without a strong, universal set of digital literacy standards (assuming such a thing would be a good idea), how can we respond in schools and classrooms?

What do you do already? What have you seen others doing that looks interesting?

What do we stand to lose if we don't respond?

And what role can and should parents and community organizations play in the process?
Paul Barnwell teaches English and digital media at Fern Creek Traditional High School in Louisville, Ky. When not experimenting with urban gardening, bow-hunting, writing at his blog Mindful Stew, or watching football, he's an active participant in Middlebury College's Bread Loaf Teacher Network and the Center for Teaching Quality's Collaboratory; i mage attribution flickr users hoyasmeg and nicocavalato; 5 Reasons You Should Be Teaching Digital Citizenship

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Why Every Classroom Should Teach Digital Citizenship - TeachThought

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Students buzzed about the latest uproar on Instagram. Anonymous sources had posted a 'questionable'-and NSFW-list for multiple public schools in our city on Instagram, leading to distraught girls, viral Twitter reactions, and an investigation. This type of cyberbullying and reckless use of digital communication is rampant among teens, but this recent episode was only unusually due to its elevated publicity.

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What is Digital Citizenship?

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THIS VIDEO HAS BEEN UPDATED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH6869bD8iU. See our new digital citizenship curriculum at http://www.cybercivics.com For more videos like this, please visit: http://www.cyberwise.org