Digital Citizenship in Schools

"Surely, online interactions can be shallow, but it's no certainty. I've spent over a decade in different online spaces-primarily as a member of various web fora where sub-communities exist-and I cannot say that what I've witnessed and experienced was anything less than a human desire to connect with others. Sometimes these online spaces offered, for those who felt lonely or isolated by their interests in their physical environments, a place to belong. In other words, for many people I've encountered, these are not places for leading a shallow existence."

"It took four years to hit 21 billion tweets. Now Twitter users generate nearly half a billion a day, and the Library of Congress will be archiving and indexing all of them."

You're inundated with new contracts, Terms of Service, privacy policies, and disclaimers for every new service you use, but reading them all is next to impossible for a normal human being. To help solve this problem, we've looked at the language of most Terms of Service agreements to come up with the main words and sections everyone should pay attention to.

This is a print, rather than an online, lesson that explores copyright, intellectual property rights and the public domain for junior secondary years.

This is a Canadian site that explores the intersection of digital and media literacy.

"We often hear complaints about what students say and do online, but we often neglect to look into educators helping them manage their online reputation. This infographic is geared toward adults, but it can serve as a great starting point for conversations and activities that educators can engage in with students to help them to establish an active digital footprint that represents who they want to be perceived as online."

Online community for youth interested in global issues and creating positive change

When socializing or communicating with Facebook here are some resources to support your understanding of the environment, a few tips to ensure for a safe experience, and some links to keep up you up to date on changes and privacy settings. The concept to be aware of is that anything online is not private. So be cautious and thoughtful about what you say, share and post. It will be associated with you on the internet and you may never be able to get rid of it. Think before you post!

Article re the safe use of Facebook

"Respect each other online You can use phones, tablets and computers to do awesome stuff. But things can turn nasty if you use them to disrespect each other. Treat each other with respect and Keep It Tame." This site has links to a range of support services and comes from http://www.youngandwellcrc.org.au/ 

"Correctly citing an image with a Creative Commons licence can be a tricky task for both educators and their students. ImageCodr is a website that aims to help by providing a generator that will construct attributions for Flickr Creative Commons photos that can be embedded into blogs and websites."

"Fear comes in many forms, and on Halloween things get creepier and crawlier than usual. But for some of us, the scariest thing of all has nothing to do with snakes and spiders - and everything to do with cybersecurity. Lax attitudes towards online accounts have led to major digital break-ins for years, which is why content security software Trend Micro realized we should all be a little bit more scared of password protection and less scared of heights and elevators. The company found that one in four of us use the same password, or a variation, for all our accounts. One in four people in the U.S. also don't bother to back up files."

"Forget birds and bees -- today's kids learn about sex from porn, pop lyrics and Facebook."

This is not so much about digital citizenship but I thought that it might be useful resource for digital resourcers to have in their bookmarks.

"In a recent post I described how Social Media is About Nodes and Connections and explained "the importance [of] the network effect, with a growth in the number of nodes (the bloggers, the contributors, the Twitter users) leading to a growth in the number of connections (the posts, the comments, the tweets, the retweets) which help in the development of new insights and new ideas". But whilst many users of social media, including those working in higher education, are making use of such network effects to support their professional activities in legitimate and ethical ways others are seeking to exploit network effects in ways which may be considered unethical."

"Michael Fraser calls it the ''rubbish web''. That is the internet we will be left with in five to 10 years unless governments and cyber corporations fix the holes that allow criminals to infiltrate the world wide web and strip global citizens of their identity, money and dignity, he believes. In his bleak view, those who can afford it will retreat behind private corporatised security walls."