Digital citizenship is an important new curricular area that can not be ignored. It will need to become part of our everyday classroom curriculum. Teaching students to be safe, respectful and responsible online is an integral part of the digital education that they will need to be successful in today's modern world. Not only is it is it crucial for academic success, in cases of cyberbullying, it is often a matter of life and death.
Many teachers don't feel they themselves have enough tech savvy to teach these lessons. Luckily, there is a plethora of great resources at our fingertips. Teachers can search through a variety of sites to find great lessons that pertain to their students, and/or use Common Sense Media which provides a comprehensive scope and sequence with age appropriate lessons. I am currently not working in a classroom, when I left the classroom I was a 2nd grade teacher. I also have a 1st grade daughter at home. When looking at how I would teach digital citizenship I use the 2nd grade classroom as my focus. First and foremost, I would teach the first lesson in Unit 1, "Going Places Safely". I have used this lesson with my daughter at home, and my school has started the year with this lesson in their classroom. I think relating the internet to their own neighborhood makes sense to them. Children know to not talk to strangers in real life. This lesson applies this rule to the internet as well. At our school, we have to extend this lesson to talking about not clicking on links or icons that they are unfamiliar with. 700 kids share the same generic web address when logging onto school computers. Kids move icons, create icons, change bookmarks, remove bookmarks, rename bookmarks and most problematic...bookmark inappropriate sites. While we are working on this issue in a myriad of ways, the message to the younger kids is, "Don't click a link or icon that you don't know". Similar to, "don't go into strange houses in your neighborhood". The second way I would bring digital citizenship into a 2nd grade classroom is to tie the lessons to our BEST/2nd Step lessons. Our school uses 2nd step lessons to discuss empathy, bullying, kindness, respect and responsibility. Adding digital citizenship lessons is a natural fit. When you talk about bullying, we can also talk about cyber bullying. When we talk about using kind words, we can also talk about language in texts and emails. In a 2nd grade classroom, they don't normally have serious bullying issues yet, but they need basic lessons on reporting playground bullying and knowing the difference from bullying and teasing. This is where I would bring use Unit 2, lesson 3 "Screen out the Mean" from Common Sense Media. Which teaches kids what to do when someone is mean to them online. I like the use of real life scenarios to help them deal with issues, hopefully before they start. 2nd graders are just starting to be able to do actual research. Their reading and writing skills are progressing enough that they can search out information on their own. Teachers often struggle with finding appropriate sites for children when doing PBL projects. This would be a great way to introduce "Sites I like" Unit 2, lesson 4 from Common Sense Media. This lessons teaches students to evaluate websites and find sites that are right for them. This is an invaluable tool when teaching PBL. A teacher could provide a list of sites and the students could explore them before starting their PBL project. Which sites reading level is too high? Which sites have videos? Students could explore the sites and then be able to do their own online research. As educators, Digital Citizenship lessons are becoming more and more important. With politicians, employers and individuals using social media and online tools daily, it is important for our students to know how to use these tools appropriately.
4 Comments
Kelley S. Miller
2/11/2017 03:26:00 pm
Your blog is articulate, Becky, and there is so much I want to respond to (not to mention your excellent of hook, thesis statement, transition words, and concluding paragraph)...
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Joseph Hall
2/11/2017 04:40:42 pm
Becky,
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2/11/2017 09:09:06 pm
I love how structured you have your post. I could probably take some tips from you. haha So, I really like your points about teaching our children not to click on websites like not talking to strangers. I also think that what Kelley said is true about eighth graders. For a little while at least. I feel that they may test the limits and if you make a big deal about it they may be prone to test it more but, if you let them probe a little and work on building a relationship of confidence and show them that you trust them they will stop doing those things. The novelty will have worn off and they will move onto something else. Haha I guess random history checks probably helps control this as well. There are some days I am looking like a hawk for it's next meal. If I see you typing or doing something with your trackpad that you are not suppose to when I think you are not suppose to I will call you out on it. Do you know what I have found? I found that most of the time they are not doing anything wrong. Really, I end up looking like the crazy, over paranoid teacher. haha my students love me though.
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Diane
2/12/2017 05:00:24 pm
I really enjoyed reading your blog and especially the part about being able to tie in second step lessons. I use those lessons as well to teach empathy, respect, feelings and responsibility. What a great idea to embed those in with how to treat others on line and good digital citizenship.
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