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| Poster credit: commonsense.org |
Common Sense Media has a wonderful curriculum for all grade levels, from kindergarten through high school students. I have this poster (which is from their website) hanging up on my classroom wall. I think it's a great poster as it defines the thought process that everyone should go through before posting anything on the Internet. As I tell my students, anything posted on the web will follow you forever, your digital footprint. We discuss how employers and college admissions may search the Internet to find what kind of digital footprint they have left. We Google ourselves to see what might be there. We talk about privacy settings and passwords and keeping information safe, but we also talk about how their friends may share things that they post as well, so privacy settings are not always fail-safe.
We also learn about computer safety, personal safety and cyberbullying, as well as copyright and plagiarism issues. (Another great poster, by Pia Jane Bijkirk, on posting copyrighted works can be seen here. I also have this hanging in my classroom, but I can't post it here, because I don't have the artist's permission.)
They learn how to make sure their digital footprints are appropriate, by posting helpful information, such as the webquest project we do which has them creating informational web pages on being a good digital citizen. Some schools have students creating blog pages to interact with students from other schools or using Twitter to share information or participate in class discussions. These are good ways to teach good digital citizenship .
I have heard from other classmates in the previous courses who use the THINK before you post rule. Is the post:
- True?
- Helpful?
- Inspiring?
- Necessary?
- Kind?
Here are some other sites I have found useful for teaching digital citizenship concepts:
http://www.netsmartzkids.org/
http://www.netsmartz.org/Teens
http://www.nsteens.org/
http://www.digizen.org/
https://www.digitalpassport.org/educator-registration
References cited:
Common Sense Media. (2012). [Poster]. Retrieved from: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/uploads/pdfs/postaphoto-ms-hs-poster.pdf
NHDOE. (2006). Technical advisory #2, Information and communication technologies. Retrieved from: http://www.education.nh.gov/standards/documents/advisory2.pdf
I really like the THINK method - I had not heard of that before. I agree that digital citizenship should be taught to all students. I don't think it is a topic that they can hear too much. With the way that technology changes so fast, we need to keep at the front of their minds the way to use technology correctly. Many kids are easily led astray and technology could be a very scary playground for them.
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ReplyDeleteCindy,
I can give a first hand example about employers checking your facebook or possibly searching for you on google. Two years ago I applied for a long term position. When I went on my interview the women, who was going on maternity leave, told me she looked at my facebook and realized we had common friends. After I left that interview I really started thinking about what I had on my Facebook page. It brought me back to my college days and my professors telling us, which I thought was more to scare us, the impact our social networking pages could have. Now that I have matured and realized the impacts of your digital footprint, I realize how important it is to educate our students on moral and ethical behavior. I like how you showed the exact standard, we are required by the state to be teaching this. Your THINK acronym is awesome and I enjoyed looking at your additional resources. Insightful post!
Thank you for all the great resources. I think you bring up a good point about copyrights. As technology is becoming more advanced, more information and works are able to be taken from the web. Youtube videos can be downloaded, pictures can be found and anything can be upload. It is important that we teach students to cite work and to understand what can happen to their items when they go online. Many do not realize that pictures on social media become out of their control when they are posted. I feel this will be an increasing issue as technology grows.
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