Navigating the Online World Safety – Digital Citizenship –
The internet can be a frightening place for students, but it can also offer them an exciting opportunity to connect with one another, empathise and learn. Educators should promote good digital citizenship in their classrooms by teaching students about netiquette, including evaluating the credibility of websites and protecting online privacy.
1. Know Your Rights
Educators should help students recognise that digital rights and responsibilities come with both pros and cons. For example, staying anonymous online can allow for more self-expression and less peer pressure, but it also enables cyberbullying. Likewise, buying things online can be convenient, but it may leave credit card information vulnerable to identity theft.
Being a good digital citizen means knowing Internet lingo and using it appropriately, such as not typing in all caps (that’s SHOUTING). It also means understanding that whatever is published on the web can remain there forever, and that employers do social media background checks. It also means being considerate of others and seeking experiences and perspectives that differ from one’s own. In addition, good digital citizens know that they can’t always agree with their friends.
2. Be a Good Neighbour
Just like being a good citizen in the real world depends on treating people with respect and responsibility, digital citizenship is the same. It includes knowing how to treat others in a digital community, avoiding cyber bullying and other types of mistreatment, keeping an open mind when discussing controversial topics, and providing helpful information to the community.
Empathy is one of the key concepts to teaching students to be a good digital citizen, because it requires them to look beneath the surface of what they are reading and seeing online. This may mean questioning a writer’s motives or reaching out with words of comfort to someone in distress online.
It also includes understanding netiquette (the basic rules of conduct for using the internet) and knowing how to report inappropriate behavior to trusted adults in school.
3. Be Respectful
Educators can help students learn to be respectful to others online and encourage them to develop helpful-seeking protective behaviors. This section also addresses digital commerce and the need to balance freedoms with safety hazards online, such as phishing scams and illegal downloads.
Teaching empathy is a vital aspect of this area, as it helps students learn to understand the different motives behind someone else’s statement. It also gives them the courage to question the validity of a news article they read that contains inflammatory or false information.
Lastly, it’s important to teach students that what they post online may stay on the internet forever. It’s easy for students to assume that hitting ‘Delete’ will erase all of their posts, but in reality, even deleted content can be reshared and reposted with others.
4. Be Safe
Modern life is deeply intertwined with the internet. As a result, there is an increased risk of being scammed or hacked online, especially for vulnerable groups like children and older adults.
This can happen through phishing, spam email, trolling, social media impersonation, or unintentional disclosure of personal information such as address or phone number. It’s important to teach students how to recognize the dangers of these activities and how to avoid them.
This includes avoiding digital health issues such as eye strain and addiction, and security issues like passwords, virus protection and backing up data. For example, Google’s Be Internet Awesome curriculum supports students in grades 3 – 5 in becoming safe, confident explorers of the online world.
5. Be Responsible
As with any citizenship, it’s important to understand that digital freedoms also come with responsibilities. Responsible digital citizens realize that their actions online will impact other members of the community, and they are careful to avoid cyberbullying, trolling or spamming others. They also know to protect their privacy by not posting identifying information in public forums or on social media and are wary of sites that request too much personal information or ask for passwords, which could be used to hack into their account.
Parents can help their students understand digital citizenship by creating a list of rules and guidelines for them to follow at home. They should also invite guest speakers to the classroom, such as police officers, network security experts or social media managers, to discuss their areas of expertise.