Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

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. 

4. Disrespect- If you are going to treat me, or others in a way that is hurtful, if you are going to 'injure' others emotionally/socially... then we have a problem. Hitting someone, or physically hurting someone puts you in the 'Dangerous' category and becomes an immediate office referral. Disrespect on the other hand is a little different. If you emotionally or socially injure someone then you are defying one or two of our school beliefs : Respect and/or Inclusion.

This act, whether done simply as a joke, or with hurtful intentions, was wrong on many levels, from identity theft with the use of Student 1's account to social embarrassment of Student 3, (and Student 1 as well). It is cyberbullying because it used technology as the medium to bully. 

So might I humbly suggest a small change to any assignment that requires students to provide a “print” resource?  Ask them for a primary source instead.