Digital Citizenship in Schools

Digital Citizenship curriculum for PK-12 students and teachers at International School Bangkok. Contains Lesson Plans and resources.

"Just like the footprint you leave when you walk on the beach, your digital footprint is the trail you leave about yourself when you're on the net. Anything you do online, including any profiles you have created, the sites you've visited and the online conversations you've had, add to this trail - even if you think you've been doing things anonymously, or have hidden them (e.g. deleted them from your computer)! "

"We all know that the delineation between public and private was eroded by Facebook a long time ago. Over. Done. But now Facebook's sheer scale is pushing it in a new direction, one that encroaches on your authenticity. Facebook is no longer a social network. They stopped being one long before the movie. Facebook is really a huge broadcast platform. Everything that happens between its walls is one degree away from being public, one massive auditorium filled with everyone you've ever met, most of whom you haven't seen or spoken to in years. Last week a bunch of massive sites across the web, including TechCrunch, adopted Facebook commenting. The integration of the formatting and fonts is so strong that when you're reading comments you actually feel like you are on Facebook, not a tech focused vertical site. This latest push by Facebook to tie people to one identity across the interwebs is very troublesome."

"Walk out of a store with a DVD shoved up your jumper and it's a clear-cut case of theft. Disagree? Tell it to the judge. Yet the digital revolution makes it easy to obtain a copy of a movie without depriving the owner of the original. So does copying equal theft? As someone who is not without sin I'm reluctant to cast the first stone, but I've never tried to kid myself that copying content isn't wrong. Everyone seems to draw their own line in the sand. "

This site was posted on the Diigo Education Group. It has practical ideas on how to teach and assess "in ways which make plagiarism unthinkable" (MacDonald Ross, 2008).

"The Digital Citizenship and Creative Content program was developed to create awareness of intellectual property rights and foster a better understanding of the rights connected with creative content. Four units comprise the curriculum resources. Each unit consists of standalone yet complementary lesson plans that play off a creative rights scenario presented through a case study"

At a time when many teachers are made wary by reports of predators and bullies online, social media in the classroom is not the most popular proposition. Teachers like Delmatoff, however, are embracing it rather than banning it. They argue that the educat

""If you feel empathy for someone, it is almost impossible to bully them.""

"So, it is time to get your school into social media in a way that is safe, makes sense, and will help your image in the community. We've discussed in Social Media Syndication Part 1: Where is your Audience?why social media is important to schools. In Facebook Friending 101 for Schools (170 tweets on that one) we discussed the impact of Facebook Friends on your teachers, students, and staff. You've resoundingly flooded my inbox with requests for more on social media and how to get your school in safely - so, let's keep going"

"I've been following the unfortunate story of Alexandra Wallace. If you haven't heard about it, here is a quick summary: Miss Wallace, a student at UCLA, posted a video rant on the internet complaining about Asian students talking on their cell phones in the library. In the video, Miss Wallace mocks the Asian students' speech and makes other racially insensitive remarks. The video went viral - people were outraged - Miss Wallace received all sorts of scorn in various forms from parody videos (the one below with over 3 million views) to death threats. She then apologized and withdrew from UCLA. In her apology, Miss Wallace said, "I could write apology letters all day and night, but I know they wouldn't erase the video from your memory, nor would they act to reverse my inappropriate action." She is correct, and that is precisely the lesson we should be reminding and reinforcing with our students - it is difficult, if not impossible , to take something back that you post on the internet."

At the start of the year we were given the Horizon Report on the future of technology and learning to read. One of the more distant predications was the use of gaming for learning. This article is from the NY times. It is followed by a Q&A with Thomas Paul Gee.

This NY Times article is an entertaining way of thinking about how social media is viewed by teenagers.

"Two preteen US girls accused of hacking into a classmate's Facebook page and posting sexually explicit photos and messages have been charged with cyberstalking and first-degree computer trespassing."

There is nothing here that is not covered by the new NSW DET social media guidelines but articles like this are a reminder that digital citizenship is not just for students.

"Plagiarism is nothing new. Students have been plagiarizing far before the Internet was widely available - whether it was copying from the encyclopedia or hiring professionals. But the Internet and the explosion of online resources has made it easier for students to get to those resources. You'll find a number of websites geared specifically to cheating - sites where you can buy papers, for example. But even if students opt not to pay-to-cheat, the Internet does seem to make it easier to lift content. It's as easy as copy-and-paste."

"With all of this comes new risks and new benefits to consider - such as a new social etiquette within social media, and potential privacy issues as we store more information off local machines and onto the so-called "cloud"."

Scrible is a new service offering a nice set of tools for highlighting, annotating, and bookmarking webpages. Scribble offers browser bookmarklets for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. With the Scrible bookmarklet installed, anytime you're on a page just click the bookmarklet to launch a menu of bookmarking tools. The Scrible tool set includes highlighters, sticky notes, and font change tools. When you annotate and bookmark a page in Scrible it is saved as it appeared to you when you were done altering it.

Great roundup