I am a big fan of “Digital Citizenship” that explicitly denotes the “the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use”. As part of our advisory programme for “Making Good Decisions” – our counselors involve our students in a conversation that look at appropriate material to view and post on the Internet and the use of social media. This year, our school has had to deal with cyber bullying and poor choices in social media posts involving inappropriate photographic material in the middle grades which has shocked some of our long serving faculty into realizing that our middle grade students are not so innocent. While the school already has a well-defined and honed digital policy that the students and parents sign annually, it does not cover consequences for this activity, which has been a point for our collective reflection as we decide action for these offending students.
I’m also keen on “Wired Safety” as a website as there are lots of videos showing students answering the big picture questions about Internet safety and the key issues like not sharing passwords or posting full names and addresses online. This is a go to place for teacher resources in this context and allows the students to fully understand the implications of their actions. As schools need to be compliant to the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA), this is also a good site to insure that we are not making mistakes and that the online activities of our students are monitored by the greater good of our school firewall and IT department. We might bellyache when a search does not work – but it is for the protection of our students – and our professional selves! For example, the new Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) went into effect July 1st, 2013. So operators like Twitter, Facebook and Vine must insure that they have taken reasonable steps to insure that the under 13’s are not using their product. As teachers, we need to make sure that when asking a student to sign up that under the age regulations we can, in fact, as them to do just that!
As an international school, one strategy that we use is “Safer Internet Day”, which this year was on 11th February. Organized by “Ins@fe” annually, the goal is to “in February of each year to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world”. Funded by the European Union, there is a plethora of materials for use in schools, for example the ESafety Kit for Families. The bonus for us an international school is that these are available in multiple languages (both instructional and mother tongue for those families that move in for whom English is far from a first language). Therefore we are able to cross the linguistic divide in bridging the digital one where the safety and security of our students is concerned. Communication with parents is key – and when using any kind of digital workflow in a classroom, a letter home is always the starting point to insure that the parents are well informed.
In the same way as we teach our children how to safely cross a road or look after their personal hygiene, schools are becoming ever more pressed to protect our students’ personal digital personas now more than ever before. In the 21st Century realms of the lifelong learner, the earlier the student knows how to make good decisions – the better for the student’s safety and protection.
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin