Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

Middle School Lesson plans on cyberbullying, personal safety and predator education.

Identity theft can affect everyone, including teenagers. It is important for you to know what information is needed to steal your identity and the best ways of protecting your information. Your information, in the wrong hands, can 'jack your life!' The site includes lesson plans, games and a video.

Interactive exploration of piracy issues related to music from the ThinkFinity web site and Read/Write/Think.

Computers make it easy to make copies of computer software, pictures, words, movies and songs. But copyright laws make it illegal to copy the creative work without the owner�s permission. Making copies of a work protected by copyright is just like stealing. The B4UCopy educational program, available for free download, has a goal of raising awareness of copyright laws and reinforce responsible behavior online.

In this lesson, students draw conclusions from an analysis of propaganda techniques used in a piece of literature-such as the novel Brave New World, the play The Crucible, or the movie Dr. Strangelove-and political advertisements posted on the Internet. Students also make connections to their own world by looking for examples of propaganda in other media, such as print ads and commercials.

Developed by the folks who designed the Olweus Bullying Prevention program, this curriculum offers students an opportunity to:
1. interact, collaborate and publish with peers, experts or others, employing a variety of digital environments and media.
2.communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences, using a variety of media and formats
3. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.

Cyber Bullying: A Prevention Curriculum for Grades 6-12 is a curriculum that deals with attitudes and behaviors associated with cyber bullying. This eight-session curriculum is designed to:
1. Raise student and parent awareness of what cyberbullying is and why it is so harmful
2. Equip students with the skills and resources to treat eachother respectfully when using cybertechnologies
3. Give students information about how to get help if they, or others they know, are being cyber bullied
4. Teach students how to use cyber technologies in positive ways.

This is the link to purchasing information for this book. The authors are three School Psychologists who also published Cyberbullying in the Digital Age.

Web-based course designed by Kevin HoneyCutt to help schools meet the training provisions of HB 2758 or the Kansas Anti-Bullying, Cyberbullying & Character Development Legislation.

Nortel LearniT is an initiative of Nortel Community Relations to prepare teachers, students, and learners of all ages to develop 21st century skills that will provide a basis for their ongoing engagement in learning and personal achievement. Their lesson plans and guides include several lessons on cybersafety, covering topics like spam, hoaxes, cyberbullying, online predation and analyzing web sites to determine validity. The site is translated into multiple languages, including Spanish.

Teaching cyber security with a focus on safety and ethics has grown rapidly in importance over the past few years. Securing your personal computer and protecting classroom computers plays a crucial role in protecting our nation's Internet infrastructure.

Hoping to clear up the confusion over the "fair use" of digital materials in teaching and learning, a panel of university professors has developed a "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education."

Looking at how and why copyright law has changed over time can help students better understand recent and current copyright disputes and the many perspectives involved in these ownership issues. In this lesson, students read about the history of copyright law and generalize about how and why it has changed.

Microsoft offers this free digital citizenship curriculum to educators. The four units of study are all related to creative rights. They are downloadable as PDF files and include pre- and post-assessment materials. The program is aligned with ISTE Standards and the American Association of School Libraries. It is also endorsed by the National Council on Economic Education.

NCSA launched the Cyber Security Awareness Volunteer Education Project (C-SAVE) in April of 2009. The program will teach youngsters not just to be wary of online predators and bullies but alert to the tricks of data thieves and scam artists. Curriculum is customized for three grade levels: K-2, 3-5 and middle/high school. What makes this program unique is that they plan to use "tech pros" from the technology industry to deliver the curriculum in the classroom.

Sen. Menendez's bill, the School and Family Education about the Internet Act, would provide for grants for educational programs and award them based on objective criteria, with the grants adjustable from year to year based on changing needs and technologies.

A new "online harrassment" statute makes it a felony to create phony profiles on social networking sites with intent to "harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten" others.

In a ruling that could have significant ramifications for Web publishers, a federal appellate court has held that Yahoo could face liability for breach of contract for failing to delete a post that was meant to harrass a former girl friend.

This site provides reading materials for students studying the law as it applies to activities in cyberspace. The reading materials include edited cases, statutes, treaties, and law review articles, as well as content written by the individual module authors. Some have likened the study of cyberspace law to trying to board a moving bus. Given the pace of change in this field any attempt at a traditional casebook would largely be outdated before it reached the hands of the students. This site is designed to take advantage of the hypertext media offered by the world wide web by providing reading modules that can be altered or replaced as the law changes.