Digital Citizenship in Schools

"Users should use and reuse weak passwords for websites which don't hold valuable information, say researchers from Microsoft, overturning decades of accumulated wisdom on internet security. By not having to worry about remembering complex unique passwords for every individual website, users can focus their efforts on recalling secure passwords for high-value sites like banking or e-commerce."

"Most internet users would like to be anonymous online at least occasionally, but many think it is not possible to be completely anonymous online. New findings in a national survey show:"

"So, like every other one of the world's 1.28 billion monthly active Facebook users, you blindly agreed to Facebook's Terms and Conditions without reading the fine print. You entrusted your photo albums, private messages and relationships to a website without reading its policies. And you do the same with every other site ... sound about right? In your defense, Carnegie Mellon researchers determined that it would take the average American 76 work days to read all the privacy policies they agreed to each year. So you're not avoiding the reading out of laziness; it's literally an act of job preservation. So here are the Cliffs Notes of what you agreed to when you and Facebook entered into this contract. Which, by the way, began as soon as you signed up:"

"New research from the ACMA is casting a clear light on what Aussie teens are involved in, online. It shows that kids from 14 - 17 years are, unsurprisingly, active players in Australia's digital economy, who are online more often than ever before, use the internet and mobiles for everything from entertainment to shopping, research, banking and sharing with friends."

"Facebook has been analysing our relationships all along, to the point where they are able to make predictions about our behaviour. Most interestingly, Facebook monitors the quantity of wall-posting interactions between potential suitors to determine what phase of the relationship they are in. 100 days prior to becoming 'Facebook official' and updating their relationship status, Facebook observes a steady increase in the number of interactions between suitors. Is social media that engrained that we are conducting courtship on Facebook instead of real life?"

"There's no helpline for pedophiles who want treatment before they act. So a teen with a terrible secret had to find his own way to save himself and others like him."

"These days whenever things go wrong - or even right - it's search engines we turn to for answers and affirmation. So how did the internet become our best friend, confidant, oracle - and what do the questions we ask reveal about our lives? Kate Bussmann investigates."

Want to ditch your online account? Shouldn't be a problem, right? Unfortunately, on many websites, including popular ones like Facebook, deleting your account can be a real pain. AccountKiller collects direct links and deleting instructions to make account termination easy. Websites like Skype that do not allow deleting your profile in an easy way at all get blacklisted. Luckily there are websites that do care about your online privacy.

This news article caught my eye as it is my old high school in Victoria! This type of media reporting is problematic - a typical negative report based on the need to have ultimate control. A more positive approach is for teachers to be modeling best online behaviour and being online in the same spaces as the students. The conversation needs to be about how to best represent yourself and your ideas online while being respectful to others.

"The recent furore about the Facebook Messenger app has unearthed an interesting question: how far are we willing to allow our privacy to be pushed for our social connections? In the case of the Facebook Messenger app, the answer appears to be: "Not as far as Facebook thinks.""

"Bullying online is only half as common as traditional forms of bullying, according to a two-year study of research around the world. Kathryn Modecki from Murdoch University in Perth and colleagues looked at all existing studies measuring traditional and cyberbullying among adolescents. "We found that despite popular thought, cyberbullying was only half as common as traditional forms of bullying with about 15 per cent of adolescents reporting either cyber perpetration or victimisation compared to around 30 per cent for traditional bullying," Dr Modecki said."

"Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web.  If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser.  To the advertiser, it's like you suddenly disappeared."

One of the better articles I have read about the flipped classroom or flipped learning.

"A CYBER safety expert has slammed primary schools for letting students as young as eight use Twitter. Roxburgh Homestead Primary School is one of a number of schools to set up classroom Twitter accounts so students can share snippets of their work with the outside world. Parents have been encouraged to 'follow' the accounts for an insight into their children's school life."

Article showing both sides of the argument for letting younger students use social media (including Twitter) for learning.