Bringing Digital Safety Into the Classroom

My group and I did a project on digital safety and the topic was cyberbullying. In our presentation, we defined and listed the types of cyberbullying. In addition to that, we also discussed how cyberbullying happens, the GDOE policy and the consequences for it. We used the site Powtoons to present our information to our classmates and teacher. There were challenges doing this assignment, but we all did our part and pulled through.

There were four topics in total: fair user practices and copyright issues, digital safety and privacy, cyberbullying, and pharming and phishing. What these specific topics have in common is that they all deal with digital safety which extremely important to learn about and teach others about, especially since technology is much more advanced and convenient then it was before. According to Discovery Education, “As a teacher it’s important to make digital safety a priority in the classroom and ensure that your students know how to act safely, responsibly, and thoughtfully online.” If students aren’t being safe, responsible, thoughtful, etc. then there can be major consequences. They can get into trouble with the law. Proper digital safety etiquette is important to teach students because they don’t always have someone there to guide them.

Despite the challenges faced during this assignment, I truly enjoyed doing it because I got to revisit a topic I’m somewhat familiar with, as well as learn about new topics I’ve never heard about before from my peers. I think what could have made this assignment much more interesting is if the topic textual harassment and sexting were included. I understand that there weren’t enough groups, but I thought it shouldn’t have been dismissed overall. The teacher could have presented that topic as an example to the class.

As a future teacher, I would teach my students about digital safety, so that they know how to protect themselves online. There are multiple examples of digital safety activities online that teacher could use in their classroom, but my favorite one by far is found on Edutopia. Hertz (2012) stated that, “Teachers could have students watch the Internet Safety video at BrainPOP Jr. and then afterwards have students act out scenarios to show their understanding of the main concepts of the video.” I fancy this approach because students can work together as a team to brainstorm ideas of a scenario that isn’t digitally safe and then propose ideas of how they would solve the problem.

Sources:

Hertz, M. B. (2012). How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/internet-safety-younger-elementary-mary-beth-hertz

Discovery Education. Digital Safety Resources. Retrieved from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/DigitalSafety/