Digital Citizenship in the Classroom
Digital Citizenship is an important topic that needs to be revisited throughout the year in every classroom. It should never be just a one and done unit that is taught at the beginning of the year and then never discussed again. Ideally digital citizenship should be introduced in kindergarten and continue through high school.Where Can I Get Digital Citizenship Lesson Ideas?
Commonsense Media has a very comprehensive digital citizenship curriculum that many schools use. It's GOOD stuff. In combination with these meaningful lesson plans I believe it is incredibly effective to weave in small discussions and demonstrations into your lessons. For instance, if you are having your students create presentations about a Famous American, take 5-10 minutes to review Creative Credit & Copyright. Model HOW TO take notes from websites they visit and create informative sentences in their own words. Show HOW TO visit websites like Photos For Class, Pixabay and Pics4Learning to find copyright free images that they can use in their presentations. It seems like this may be common sense but TIME is always our enemy as teachers. However, it is vital that we take just a few minutes to review the importance of respecting these topics so students know they are always held accountable for being responsible digital citizens.Digital Learning Day
Digital Learning Day 2017 is Thursday, February 23rd. This day promotes how effective educational technology is in the classroom and its impact on student learning. Digital Learning Day empowers teachers and students to be leaders of innovation in and outside of the classroom.
This special day is a great opportunity to revisit our role as responsible digital citizens. Have your students engage in a discussion, project or activity that will get them thinking about internet safety, privacy & security, cyberbullying, online reputations, self-identity, information literacy and/or creative credit & copyright.Last October I blogged about 5 Easy Techie Ideas for Digital Citizenship Activities that could easily be used throughout the year! Try out one or multiple of those activities for Digital Learning Day☺I have teamed up with my Tech with Us friends to bring YOU even more digital citizenship ideas for Digital Learning Day 2017. Consider this FUN activity below..
Create a Web-Warrior Digital Book
Common Sense media has a lesson in which students design their own superhero and create a comic about how their superhero helps others by spreading digital citizenship. A similar digital activity that could be used in the classroom any time of year is for students to turn themselves into Web-Warriors using MarvelKids Create Your Own Superhero site and uploading it to a collaborative Google Slides presentation. The image that is produced actually displays a watermark that reads "Web-Warrior". Once students upload their superhero to Google Slides they can take a selfie and crop to a circulate shape to add to the superhero's body and then type a description about how they are SUPER digital citizens. Students will LOVE designing and turning themselves into a web-warrior! Here is an example:
My favorite thing about anything Google is the collaboration feature. I LOVE making digital collaborative books by distributing one presentation to the class and assigning each student their own slide. Therefore, create a Web-Warrior Collaborative Digital Book that you can embed on your class website/blog and/or send the link home to parents and/or share with the world! Click HERE for a template you can distribute to your students. If you are not familiar with how to do this, check out THIS blog post. The first slide is blank so your students can work together to design a cover page for their collaborative book. The second slide contains directions for adding a selfie and cropping to shape. Add or delete as many of the slides as you need. This template contains directions at the bottom as well as the link to the MarvelKids website:
If you are thinking about carrying out this activity with your students, I would LOVE for you to come back and share their digital book to the Padlet wall below. Just remind them that they should not put their last name on their slide. If a student does not have a photo release form filed at your school, just have them skip the selfie portion of the project!
Directions for adding your link to the Padlet Wall below:
- Double click anywhere on the green background
- Enter a title (ex. Mrs. Smith's Class Web-Warrior Book)
- Click on the +plus icon
- Paste your link next to the magnifying glass and press the arrow
- Click OK
Need more Digital Citizenship activities for your classroom? Check out my Digital Citizenship Reading Passages and Google Slides Project in my TpT Store:
I hope you found some ideas to help you infuse digital citizenship into any online lessons. I've linked up with 5 other incredible technology-integrating educators from the Tech with Us Facebook Community to share more digital citizenship lessons and ideas in honor of Digital Learning Day on February 23rd. While the obvious goal of Digital Learning Day is to see digital learning find a place in schools all year long, it is also the perfect time to revisit digital citizenship a second time if you haven't yet this year.
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