In honor of it being National Cybersecurity Awareness Month,
I thought it would be apropos to share a somewhat-related story of how my
school is teaching digital citizenship and safety in hopes that it may help
other schools and teachers do the same. I
have a link to our program at the end of this post. You can also read my previous writings on digital citizenship here. Digital
citizenship and Internet safety are critical concepts that students must
understand and apply in their own lives as their access to web-connected
devices and services begin earlier and earlier.
After all, these devices and online services are tools, and, as with any
tool, we must teach the uninitiated how to use them responsibly, safely, and
intelligently lest they get themselves in trouble via misuse.
Not long after I started working at my school, I recognized
the need to gather feedback, insights, and questions from the staff about the
technology used throughout the school.
The effective exploration and integration of technology (or any other
thing) are predicated on open collaboration, detailed planning, careful
execution, and thoughtful reflection. To
this end, I formed and headed up the Technology Committee.
Last year, our main goal was to develop a unified series of
lessons in Grades 3-5 to teach digital citizenship and safety. Some teachers were already teaching various
aspects of this, but there wasn’t a common curriculum. We, the Technology Committee, sought to
remedy this by creating a consistent and scaffolded program of lessons, so
there were no overlaps or gaps in teaching these integral skills and the lessons
would build on each other throughout the grades. We also wanted to schedule these lessons at
the beginning of the school year to lay a solid foundation on which to build
later and head off any student misuse of technology. Finally, we understood teachers have much to
teach already, so we focused on core lessons and divided the teaching of those
lessons between the classroom teacher, the Library/Media teacher, and the
Makerspace teacher. I went into the
classrooms to teach some lessons as well, which was very fun. We thought it would be beneficial for the
students to learn about digital citizenship and safety from different people,
who could offer unique perspectives on the subject.
Like any good creator (or artist), we took bits and pieces
from existing lessons and resources, modified them to meet our vision, and
quilted them together in a final product.
We didn’t want to rely all on one source for these lessons. To promote unification and scaffolding, we
borrowed an idea from Google’s Be Internet Awesome program and put our lessons into four pillars or units
that would cross all three grades: Be
Digitally Kind (Unit 1), Be Digitally Safe (Unit 2), Be Digitally Responsible
(Unit 3), and Be Digitally Savvy (Unit 4).
Each grade would be learning lessons in the same pillar at the same time
to bring a cohesiveness to the program. We
put three lessons in each of those units:
one for the classroom, one for Library/Media, and one for
Makerspace. We chose lessons that would
complement the theme of those units, put them in an order that would build on
each other, and ended each grade with a lesson that we felt synthesized all the
units. In total, we had twelve lessons
for each grade. Our goal was to complete
one unit each month: Unit 1 in
September, Unit 2 in October, Unit 3 in November, and Unit 4 in December.
Thus far, our program has been going very well. Of course, this is our first year implementing
it, so we are actively reflecting on it and looking for ways to improve
it. Also, we will brainstorm ways to
build on these lessons later in the year to reinforce the learning. We are thinking of having each grade do some
kind of project-based/real-world assignment that can authentically make use of
what they have learned.
