Digital Citizenship

In a time where bullying, fraud, pirating, and other cruel and mostly illegal things are taking place online, it is important to teach students how to be safe, responsible, and good citizens on the internet. Because it is so important, North Carolina has developed standards to be taught in the classroom called Common Sense Media. In this blog post, I will be showing how to teach the Kindergarten standard of remembering internet safety rules. 

One way of teaching internet safety that I found was a lesson plan developed specifically for kindergarteners written by Mary Beth Hertz. The lesson is designed to teach students about "Stranger Danger" on the internet and what is and isn't okay to tell a stranger on the internet. Check out the article which contains links for videos, quizzes, and other resources for teachers to use.

One of the links in Hertz's articles is for a website called NetSmartzKids. This website has tons of videos, games, songs, and other great tools to let children explore and learn about staying safe on the internet, like this video below:

The video discusses ethical uses of the internet, including why it's wrong to steal music or movies and how to avoid strangers on the internet. NetSmartz uses creative songs, games, and activities for students to learn about the dangers of the internet and stealing. So if a class were to have a day in the computer lab, having the students explore around NetSmartzKids would be a great idea.

Finally, it is important to teach students how to treat others on the internet. Common Sense Education is a website full of lesson plans to teach digital citizenship to students from grades K-12. On the website, there is a lesson plan designed for grades K-2 entitled "Screen Out the Mean". In order to download the PDF of this lesson and others, you will have to create an account, but the process is simple and painless. The lesson plan contains warm-up and wrap-up activities, videos, handouts, and is even scheduled out with how long each section should take you. 

As students continue to have access to the internet at a younger age, it is important to teach them how to have common sense online. This includes teaching them how to be safe and how to be a good citizen online.