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Our students live in a digital age where they interact with others online as frequently as they do in real life. The gaming industry has really changed the way they use the internet for social connection, making it commonplace instead of an exception. With this new reality, it is even more important to ensure that our students have the skills necessary to navigate this digital world in a respectful, responsible and safe way.
While we are not gaming in the classroom, these modeled behaviors can spill over into our classroom spaces, making it difficult to curb mindless navigation, online meanness and/or oversharing private information. As teachers, it is important that we model appropriate online behavior and help students avoid pitfalls that could put them in harm's way. We work hard to create a positive classroom environment, built on inclusivity and teamwork. It’s time we started intentionally applying those same expectations to our classroom’s digital spaces. As Digital Citizens, our students can learn to take ownership of their own online presence.
While the concept of being a citizen in the digital world is relatively new, the ideas and expectations around being a contributing member of society are not new. People in the world are expected to do the right thing; the same should be true in the digital world. However, in the unregulated digital world, it is up to us to help establish and reinforce the norms of acceptable behavior. This does not mean we have to directly teach a list of internet ‘dos and don’t’ but we can ‘bake’ a series of mini-lessons into our classroom routines that are designed to help our physical learning environment run smoothly, while also allowing our students to establish and practice these critical digital citizenship skills.
Embedded lessons can be simple yet powerful. Here are a few simple ways to embed this learning into our classroom routines:
Problem 1: Curbing Online Meanness
Let’s be honest, the ways kids treat each other online can be repugnant. Modeling appropriate, kind responses and helping kids remember that someone else - someone with feelings just like they do - is reading the responses left on a digital forum. It can go a long way to instilling the value of empathy in a digital forum. So how do we practice?
Schoology’s Discussion Post -- let kids practice leaving kind comments and giving feedback to others using this simple tool in Schoology. Whether you pose a question of the day or ask kids to turn in assignments by uploading a file or link to the discussion post, this is a perfect forum to let them practice commenting on others posts in a safe and moderated learning environment. I liken it to swimming in the shallow end of a pool- full of teachable moments - before they jump into the deep end of internet discussion forums.
I used a Schoology discussion post to have student’s practice giving compliments to the video games designed by classmates.
Need to know how to enable your moderation settings?
Need to know how to create a discussion post on Schoology?
Problem 2: Oversharing Private Information
While kids interact with others in the safety of their own homes, they often have a false sense of safety because they are physically located in safe spaces. To put it bluntly, kids will often lose the ‘stranger danger’ skills they have been practicing in real life the moment they sit down at a computer. In this digital age, it is unrealistic to expect kids to ‘never share’ any information about themselves so it is important to teach the them to critically evaluate what they share and break it into to camps:
Private Information - Information about you this is personally identifiable and should never be shared online.
Full Name
Birthdate
Username or Password Information
Address of your home or school
Siblings, Parents or friend’s private information
Phone Number
Parents Credit Card Information
Personal Information - Information that is about you but NOT personally identifiable. This information helps us connect with others in a safer way. I like to call this ‘share with care’ information.
Pets
Favorite Food
Favorite Color
Process You Went Through to Learn Something New
I have found the easiest - and most effective way - to practice this skill is to develop picture based fake social media posts and have the kids evaluate them. This 5 minute activity has become a common ‘Brain Warm Up’ in my classroom space and has created some amazing disucssion opportunities. For example, I display the post and ask the following questions:
- What can we learn about this person - based on this post - that teaches us something about them? In the example above, it’s safe to share that Suzie loves soccer and her team has an upcoming game that she is excited about.
- Is it safe for Suzie to share that she likes soccer? Is it safe for Suzie to share that she is excited about her upcoming game?
- Did Suzie communicate her excitement in respectful, responsible and safe way?
- How could Suzie have adjusted her post to communicate her ideas without oversharing private information?
The 3rd and 4th questions are where the ‘meat’ of the conversation occurs. The kids are really excited about picking out the pieces of private information that our cartoon character should have kept private. It’s a sound bite review at it’s finest and pushes the kids to create simple action steps consistent with safe best practice.
Need a resource to help explain the difference between personal and private information?
The more practice the kids have identifying and practicing positive digital citizenship skills, the better they will be to function respectful, responsibly and safely in the digital world. Intentional practice heps us counter balance the negative actions modeled so regularly during online game play.
Please reach out if you want more information about what digital citizenship lessons are developmentally appropriate at each grade level and how you can establish routines in your classroom around media use that reinforces positive digital citizenship skills.
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