Digital Citizenship in Schools

The school's goal is to prepare its members for life in a digital global community.

With technology tools being such a big part of the academic and social lives of our high school students we are looking at more ways to build responsible behavior into assignments and expectations.

"That training isn't just for the kids interacting on the site. Everloop also educates parents about how kids make use of social media channels. Parents can help shape the online experience for their kids, but they aren't allowed to participate in the tweens' space. Everloop is a Toolkit for Parents There is a growing trend toward use of monitoring for digital parenting. Location services can be buried deep in the firmware of smartphones and other mobile devices to allow parents to keep tabs on their kids. CheckPoint, an internet security firm, offers software to alert parents to patterns of destructive online behavior on Facebook without granting direct access to the content. Facebook itself has taken steps, including an upgrade to their Family Safety Center, to improve education and member reporting of destructive content. Everloop focuses on a user group younger than these technologies address."

"Welcome to Know IT All, Childnet's multi award-winning suite of education resources designed to help educate parents, teachers and young people about safe and positive use of the internet. Currently there are 4 KIA resources for Parents and Carers, Secondary Schools, Primary Schools and Trainee Teachers and all four resources include content for young people. You can access all these here online for free, or order on CD-ROM. "

""The treasure trove of personal data about each of us is growing to unanticipated levels, and the leak of huge portions of those data can be personally devastating"

"Hyper Alerts is a feature for everybody who wants email reports of posts and comments on a Facebook Page. You don't have to be an administrator of the page to get our email alerts, and you can have as many subscriptions as you want. You can get the alerts within minutes, or a digest every hour, day, week or month."

Here's one for all you twitterbugs. Unfortunately, as I understand it, secondary students are not really users of Twitter.

This looks like such a good resource but it costs because these are all genuine apps. Some good specials. To me even the names of the apps provides a helpful suggestion of digital activities that may be set and aligned with Blooms.

"Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. Last Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called "To the Lady," which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops. "

From ACMA Cybersmart this very catchy video has stats on what students are doing online as well as lots of targetted advice on what to do to prevent problems and what to do when problems arise. It also contains visual links to the support docs that Cybersmart can provided.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that technology is neutral. It's neither evil nor holy. The same hammer that builds a cathedral can be efficiently used to break the cathedral's windows.

I thought that this was pertinent description of the Information Team in a school can work, highlighting the importance of collaboration and the role of the teacher librarian. I must ask our TL if she was at this conference.

Definetheline.ca: Clarifying the Blurred Lines between Cyber-bullying and Socially Responsible Digital Citizenship. Welcome to Definetheline.ca. The objective of our research team at McGill University is to share our expertise with policy-makers, teachers, parents, educators and youth (11 - 17) in user-friendly ways that help all stakeholders engage, learn from, and share resources on our website. We also have a fun section for children (ages 5 - 11) that will promote responsible, thoughtful and considerate digital citizens from an early age. Defining Digital Citizenship and Socially Responsible Online Communication: Social media and a range of digital technologies provide enormous opportunities for peaceful and supportive global interaction, international learning collaboration and fruitful educational partnerships. Every digital user has the potential to reach communities in all corners of the world through transformational online leadership and responsible digital citizenship by embracing the fundamental principles that underlie constitutional rights to free expression, privacy, safety, fair and equality.

""Cyber-bullying, because of its perceived anonymity and infinite on-line audiences, has attracted media spotlight with the advent and increased use of digital and social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter," said Prof. Shaheen Shariff, who has pioneered research into the phenomenon since she joined McGill's Faculty of Education eight years ago. Now, a McGill research team led by Shariff has launched a new website, www.definetheline.ca, to help kids better understand the risks and their responsibilities - and to help parents, teachers and policy makers sort through the issues and implications. It promises to become a valuable resource for educators across North America, providing advice from leading experts in a user-friendly format."

"Victoria police Staff Sgt. Darren Laur said he's always surprised at who adds him as a Facebook friend. His more than 2,000 "friends," mostly teens, think he's a 15-year-old girl they have never met, not a 46-year-old cop looking to make an example out of them. Laur said he's trying to teach kids that by opening up their social networking sites to strangers, they're potentially giving away personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, emails and friends' names, which could be dangerous in the wrong hands."

This website describes clearly the elements of digital etiquette, or "netiquette". It contains full access to an online version of the book Netiquette by Virginia Shea, a summary of the basic rules the book suggests, and a quiz to test your netiquette knowledge. It provides a clear understanding of the concepts needed to create a policy on digital etiquette and will be a useful resource when creating one.

This is a general library resource and most may have seen it on the OZTL_Net but I'm sharing it just in case.

"A growing number of educators and advocates in the online safety field are now embracing the term 'digital citizenship' to describe education about privacy, safety, security and responsible use of information and communication technologies (ICT). There is also a growing understanding of the importance of beginning this education when a child first starts their use of ICT. "

The full version of this does not seem to exist :(