Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

Palo Alto-based Togetherville.com has launched their new site as a social web experience for kids (age 6-10). Using Facebook accounts, parents manage the youth accounts and create approved lists of friends for their kids. On Togetherville, kids can play games, watch videos, send messages and create art in a safe and ad-free environment.

Larry Magid gives us an update on how to adjust our Facebook privacy settings. Note: defaults are public. You'll need to reviews all of your settings.

This Texas school district has decided that the best way to help their students learn how to use online resources more responsibly is to educate parents as well. Evening technology showcases provide a launch pad.

This site directs you to cybersafety week activities planned for Deepark Independent School District. Includes downloadable materials for GR K-2, 3-5 and middle school.

Digital Citizenship curriculum for PK-12 students and teachers at International School Bangkok. Contains Lesson Plans and resources. (site is still in development).

Students have been learning how to stay safe, both online and in the real world. The videos that they have created using NewsMaker software, (when cover slides were used), were created with Pixie2. All of our students are using online names, not their real names! We hope you enjoy our videos!

from NetSmartz, this 5 pg doc provides focus questions and recommended steps to prevent and respond to sexting

Two out of three online U.S. households use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, nearly twice as many as a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Reports State of the Net survey. But millions who use these services put themselves and their families at risk by exposing very sensitive personal information, according to the national survey of 2,000 online households conducted in January by the Consumer Reports National Research Center.

An anonymous Facebook page filled with negative comments about Evanston (Ill.) Township High School students became part of a police investigation into cyberbulling earlier this month. But now students at the same school are drawing attention for posting and sharing the nicest comments imaginable about each other.

In a demonstration of the power of civics and social media, 18,000 students coordinated a classroom walkout demonstration that was orchestrated from recent high school grad Michelle Ryan Lauto, 18, posting a Facebook invitation last month to take a stand against state budget cuts in education.

On listservs and blogs, education researchers and teachers are beginning to discuss how to handle this latest online application. To most educators, filtering is never a preferred option. Teachers and media specialists almost uniformly choose to use opportunities like this to teach students how to make decisions about what's appropriate on their own. "One of the responsibilities of working with students on the use of online resources is to make them aware of potential dangers so they can make informed choices," says Deb Logan, librarian and media specialist for Mount Gilead (OH) High School, by email. "A discussion of online resources like Chatroulette offers a learning opportunity. These opportunities sometimes come at unexpected times." But educators believe Chatroulette may be a bit different then other similar sites like Omegle.com and Facebook's PopJam in that video is involved-and there's no way to edit what pops up on the screen other than clicking "next" after it's already appeared. There's no lurking allowed on Chatroulette-once a user signs in, they're visible to anyone who chances upon them, and anyone, in turn, is visible to them. Needless to say, there's a bit of nudity and sexual play being reported on the site, and the swiftness of people moving from image to image doesn't allow children to protect themselves-other than signing off.

Anthony Orsini sent an e-mail blast to the Benjamin Franklin Middle School community in Ridgewood, New Jersey, on Wednesday, urging parents to take down their children's online profiles on Facebook and elsewhere. "There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!," he wrote. "Let me repeat that - there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!" The main problem, he wrote, is that tweens do not have the resilience to withstand internet name-calling. "They are simply not psychologically ready for the damage that one mean person online can cause," he said.

How to search for anything online

Steve Balkam, FOSI: Digital Citizenship includes not just the rights of free expression (as important as that is) and the right to remain safe online but also duties and responsibilities of a full active and engaged citizen, respecting others' rights and looking out for other cyber citizens in a civil and respectful manner. Excerpts from conversation about National Broadband Plan adoption.

A range of research reports suggest that digital literacy should be a key part of curricular developments in both primary and secondary schools. Digital literacy is about far more than functional ICT skills: it requires support for children to access, create and communicate using ICT, as well as to be evaluative and critical about the influences and impacts of new media.