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Our Global Issues Project is the culminating activity from my digital literacy unit in Language Arts 9. Students are challenged to look at their position in the world, their perceived power, and what they as teenagers can do to change things. The song Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer is the jumping off point for this project. Students listen to the song, then blog about the meaning of the song. They then listen to the song and again respond in the blog about the meaning of the lyrics. Finally, they watch the music video several times and pick out all of the keywords, imagery, and allusions they can. This is done with a graphic organizer in Google Docs which they share with each other. I'll share another awesome use of Google Docs later this week!

There is a teachable moment here that you should incorporate. We talk about digital citizenship a lot in class, and the use of creative commons and copyright, so I have my students select photos that they have permission for, which they then have to include in a photo bibliography complete with links to the source of each photo. 

The biggest risk is not so much the danger of being harmed but the danger of missed opportunities, especially at school. As we point out in, Online Safety 3.0: Protecting and Empowering Youth, schools too often block access to social media and fail to use it in the educational process. While it's true that there are some online activities that ought not to be done during school hours, banning all social media is the 21st century equivalent of banning all books just because some books are inappropriate for use in school.

I'm also concerned that Internet safety education is missing a big opportunity to reinforce digital citizenship, media literacy and critical thinking -- skills that will serve for life, on and off the net. We can certainly warn kids about the dangers du jour, but the ultimate solution to keeping kids safe is to instill an internal desire to treat themselves and others respectfully.

hat blurred line between public and private space is what Common Sense tries to address. “That sense of invulnerability that high school students tend to have, thinking they can control everything, before the Internet there may have been some truth to that,” said Ted Brodheim, chief information officer for the New York City Department of Education. “I don’t think they fully grasp that when they make some of these decisions, it’s not something they can pull back from.” Common Sense bases all its case studies on real life, and insists on the students’ participation. “If you just stand up and deliver a lecture on intellectual property, it has no meaning for the kids,” said Constance M. Yowell, director of education for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which has provided financing.