Week 4: Digital Citizenship

Commonsense Digital Citizenship Curriculum

The idea of teaching digital citizenship in the classroom seems like a no-brainer to me.  With our classrooms revolving around so many kinds of technology, students simply "Google" anything and everything.  The Commonsense Digital Citizenship Curriculum has a very well laid out scope and sequence that is divided nicely into grade levels.  It seems to me that having this so easily accessible to teachers that more schools should be using this, or something similar in the classroom.  

I am lucky enough to have a technology teacher in out building who does a great job of teaching digital citizenship.  In fact she uses a free program that sounds exactly like the Commonsense' model that we are viewing for class.  In our building we start students out in kindergarten and they build on what they know about digital citizenship over the years.  

Media Education Lab: Teaching Resources

I love the availability of so many different kinds of resources on this site.  I spent a lot of time clicking from resource to resource on Media Education Lab.  There are a lot of ready to use resources that could easily be integrated into the classroom.  I like the fact that I could find a video with no words to demonstrate a mother's struggle to get her child to interact in the outside world with others.  I think all age groups - and even teachers - could relate to this video and take away similar knowledge its representation.  There are resources such as this simple video and resources for older students to really exercise their skills for forming their opinions about media.  I especially like the Teach the Conspiracies lesson ideas for my junior high students.