Online presentation on Digital Citizenship from Kevin Murphy. [Nov08]

Mike Ribble's ISTE Webinar presentation, based on his new book, RAISING A DIGITAL CHILD.

Locate Digital Citizenship PowerPoint presentations presented by others.

Curriculum wiki for digital citizenship. Divided into six tenets of Digital Citizenship.

The Acceptable Use Policy should state that written parental consent is required before any student is given access to the Internet or to electronic mail. There needs to be a signature form for parents and students to sign indicating that they have read, understand and intend to abide by the school's Acceptable Use Policy. Sample permission forms are included for elementary, middle and high school.

Model acceptable use policy from the U.S. Dept of Justice. Covers issues like copyright but does not address cell phone usage or cyberbullying.

Preparing today's students to be tomorrow's innovators, leaders and engaged citizens

This site is intended to assist K-12 school districts and other K-12 entities in developing their own Acceptable Use Policy for use of the K-20 Network. Since "local control" is a major tenet of K-12 education in Washington state, it is up to each district to determine what elements they wish to include in their own policy, and if they wish to include other elements not contained in the template that has been provided. Includes sample parent letters and permission forms, guidelines for Internet Safety Policies and sample board policies on Network use.

Web proxies are almost as old as the Internet itself as a means to route Web traffic through an anonymous domain name or circumvent content-filters, and they've long been the territory of corporate networks and the tech savvy seeking privacy. Nowadays, an increasing number of teenagers are setting up proxies on home PCs to sidestep school filtering traps, in addition to using free proxies set up on the Web, according to technologists at schools and at content-filtering technology providers.

The Rochester Regional Cybersafety and Ethics Initiative has conducted the largest cyber safety and ethics survey of K-12 students in the Nation, with more than 40,000 students throughout the area participating. This new study shows that the majority of cyber offenses involving children, adolescents and young adults are perpetrated, not by adults, but rather by peers of approximately the same age or grade level. For a summary of the research report, see: Key RIT Cybercrime Research Findings.

Instead of using scare tactics and statistics that are misleading, we must paint a realistic picture and use statistics appropriately. Rather than pass legislation that puts constraints on schools, Congress needs to fund online safety education and public awareness campaigns that show the true picture. "You can't get there from here." it's not just the punch line of a driving direction joke. For educators, whose destination is the realization of educational technology's potential, that punch line sometimes seems closer to the truth than we like.

In alarming numbers, teenagers who think they are fully prepared to make ethical decisions are also driven by the pursuit of success to cheat, by time constraints to plagiarize, and by vengeance to inflict physical violence. This paints a disturbing picture for employers who will be relying on this age group to fill the pipeline in their future workforces. The fifth annual JA/Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey found that while most teens (71 percent) feel fully prepared to make ethical decisions in the workplace, nearly 40 percent of those young people believe that lying, cheating, plagiarizing, and violence are sometimes necessary to succeed in school. Download the attached Executive Summary and survey results documents to learn more.

Here is a collection of 75+ videos that might be helpful in the teaching of Digital Citizenship in our schools. Note that many of these are YouTube videos and the site may be blocked at your school. But using a tool like Zamzar.com, you could download them in advance and play them as stand-alone videos.

[Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey]
Leading and Learning with Technology, Vol. 32, Number 7
Everyone has an internal compass but adults need to teach children how to find and use it. This article includes some scenarios that require students to use their internal compasses.

From the folks at CommonSense Media. This would be a good video to show at a parent assembly. Click on the video itself and it enlarges to full screen.

Locate and download Digital Citizenship PowerPoint presentations created by others.

Digiteen Project on digital citizenship; collaborative effort among three schools in three countries, according to the framework defined by Mike Ribble and George Bailey.

School districts student and Parent Internet & User Agreements for access to the district network.

Texas school district electronic device policy covering use of pagers, cell phones, PDA's, handheld, laptops and similar devices.

This district directly addresses a code of ethics about content posted to the web. The content of Arp ISD Website, DVDs, CDs, videos, PodCasts, streaming video sessions, and publications directly reflect on the image of the district and as such must be handled responsibly, ethically, and taken seriously. Publications and media are intended to be used for the communication of school information and the activities of classes, clubs, athletics and other school events. The content of these Web pages and publications follow the same guidelines as the Arp ISD's acceptable Internet use policy. Submissions to the site will not permit unacceptable, obscene, derogatory or objectionable information, language, media or images.