Tool # 11 Digital Citizenship

As teachers, it's important that we take the time to teach our students about digital citizenship, not only looking at our students but also reaching out to parents and the community. Like others have mentioned in their blogs, I found the graphic organizer on Cool Cat Teacher blog to be very useful as a guideline for teaching digital citizenship. There are three areas that I would focus on discussing with my students.

1. Security and Safety: Students need to understand how to find credible resources. Students tend to believe whatever they find on the internet. They don't take the time to question the reliability of the resource or website. Teaching students to use good searching techniques is the beginning to understanding how to evaluate websites. As more social networks become available or popular, it's important to talk to students about being safe and knowing who they are communicating with.

2. Etiquette: Students need to learn that even on the internet there are codes of conduct to use. Opening a discussion as to what is appropriate behavior on the internet can allow students to create a classroom code of ethics for computer use.

3. Cyberbulling: As a fifth grade teacher, this is a subject that I feel is important to discuss with students. In this technological age, most fifth grade students have cell phones, interact on social media networks and plan games online. There is a definite rise in cyberbulling among kids, it's so easy for students to send messages that are threatening, teasing and hurtful about a person to a huge group of people at one time. More and more we see news of students who have been targets of cyberbulling and it's devastating effects.

I would teach these concepts one at a time building upon each one and leading discussions with students to come up with fair and acceptable guidelines to use in the classroom and hopefully, will carry over to their computer use at home.