Thing 17: Digital Tattoo and Digital Citizenship

For starters, I watched the two videos posted by Polly - "Amazing Mind Reader Reveals His 'Gift'" and  "Jigsaw: for 8-10 year olds" by The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center. These are each great for showing to my students according to their grade level to introduce the  topic of digital citizenship and create a felt need.

What is Digital Citizenship? 
"The ability to use digital technology and media in safe, responsible and effective ways" ("8 Digital Life Skills All Children Need - And a Plan for Teaching Them").

Why Teach Digital Citizenship?

• Students "need to understand the responsibilities and risks that come with life online" (Teacher's Guide to Digital Citizenship)
• Standards require that we teach digital citizenship. For instance, The Empire State Information Fluency Continuum Standard 3 - Demonstrating Social Responsibility - correlates directly to digital citizenship.
• "Teachers – especially in the elementary grades  -need to develop a shared vocabulary around the skill of searching. They need to make sure their students learn some basic search strategies and keep applying them until they become almost automatic." ("Do Your Students Know How to Search")

What Should Instruction on Digital Citizenship Include?
(list from Teacher's Guide to Digital Citizenship)

1. Online safety - what information is safe to give out; warnings about strangers 
2. Understanding digital footprints - postings are permanent and can impact your life
3. Financial responsibility online - avoiding scams, determining secure sites, etc.
4. Acting with respect online - netiquette;  cyber bullying
5. Information literacy - how to efficiently find reliable information online 
6. Legal restrictions online - illegal downloads, plagiarism, etc.

Resources I Want to Use with My Students?
After exploring multiple options for teaching Digital Citizenship, I chose the following because they seemed easy to implement and included interactive features that would catch the students' attention.

1. Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship Lesson Plans - Includes complete K-12 curriculum with scope & sequence and lesson plans  (3 units with 5 lessons each per grade band of K-2, 3-5, 6-8; 4 units 9-12). 
2. BrainPop provides 16 videos with corresponding quizzes, activities and games. 
3. Digital Citizenship Education - love the digital format and embedded videos and tech-related activities.
4. NetSmartz - includes videos, games, activity cards, etc.

Are there games to help teach Digital Citizenship?

1. Webonauts - by PBS Kids; a good amount of text that the students will be willing to read in order to play the game and learn
2. Digital Passport - also by Common Sense Media

Exploring the topic of digital citizenship allowed me to organize my thoughts and curate the resources that I want to use with my students!