Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

Thinking out loud about how best to engage questions of digital citizenship amongst educators.

One educator's attempt to "seed a conversation" about educators' digital rights and responsibilities.

My ninth grade students made this wiki to plan the course for the middle school digital citizenship course.

The course planning wiki for the digiteen action project from my ninth graders for the middle school. They've done a nice job of planning and sharing the materials. I like their google presentation which has evolved significantly over the last three weeks.

Digital Etiquette page made by students on the digiteen project.

The page made by the digiteen students on digital etiquette. Although this page does not have the hyperlinks that it should have, it does have other great information.

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.

Short video of Internet Safety presentation at NECC 2008

Job characteristics and strengths at work at Google -
\n\n... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.
\n\n... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.
\n\n... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.
\n\n... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.\n\n... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

A Q&A of how Seattle Schools are dealing with cyberbullying.

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.

Trends, Access, Quality, and Presidential Candidate Policies to be Studied in Aspen, Colo. August 9-12

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.

Check here for a complete list of over 80 agencies involved with cybersafety education.

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.

Florida Virtual School includes a learning module on Internet Safety in their student orientation materials. Through colorful flash-based adventures, students solve four Internet Security mysteries and learn about cyberstalking, identity theft, cyberbullying and email scams, then create their own Internet pledges based on NetSmartz materials. ISafe materials on cyberbullying and copyright are also included as downloads in the resource section.