I think that we try to be very proactive at our school about talking to the kids about their electronic life. At the beginning of the school year I address all grade levels to discuss the school's Acceptable Use Policy as well as our Plagiarism Policy. During that discussion I also talk to the kids about how things they send on their electronic devices outside of school can affect them at school (like mean and inappropriate Facebook postings, texts, or tweets).
We also incorporate a lot of our discussions about safe use of the internet within the English curriculum. Since I push into to every English class during the year the staff and I discuss that being good consumers of the web involves more than just discerning between good and bad sources - it means using our electronic information appropriately. We discuss simple things like email names being appropriate (no one wants to email a prospective employee at an email address like 'drinktothis@abc.com'!), making sure the kids understand there is NEVER a delete button on electronic items (they float out there forever), and making sure they don't give too much information about themselves out there in cyberspace.
At one point the kids had a training for parents and other adults on what Twitter, Facebook, and other social media does and how to use it properly. I also have an internet safety document posted for parents on my library website.
After reading some of the articles in this module, I think I am going to change it up next year and have my Freshmen complete a "Digital Passport" portfolio which I would create for them and have them go through it as part of their English grade. I think I can design something online that would work but if anyone knows of anything like this at the high school level I'd love to hear about it. I like the "Digital Recap App" article and I think I will use that in part with my Freshmen as part of their writing prompts on Wednesday. I do agree that students need to experience online 'living' in order to create their own personal understanding of digital citizenship, however, I think those experiences need to allow students to explore within certain parameters and with the guidance of someone who really 'gets' the cyberworld. Parents, and many teachers, lack the web skills to guide their students safely through the maze of the online world so we really need to focus our efforts on training faculty as well as students in the perils and pitfalls of their electronic life.
Having said that, I think I will offer a training to staff on our next half-day on using the internet wisely and ask to include the support staff as well. I bet 30 minutes of discussion will at least generate some ah-ha moments for many of our staff!
Thanks for the brain food from this lesson. It was a great way to reconnect with my current practices in this area and to expand on them.
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