August 17th 2011

In setting up a class to support digital citizenship, what guidelines/expectations would you use?


  Respect and understanding are two key components to my classroom environment. I think that these two virtues would be what I would highly value when setting up my class as a digital environment. I think the key word in citizenship, if we a re teaching students how to be positive contributors to society then I feel that this should also carry over into the digital environment. Morals, ethics and respect should guide all the decisions that are made. Students can participate in problem solving and frank discussions can occur around possible issues such as cyber bullying. At the grade 3 level many of my students are unfamiliar with overt bullying especially on the computer as their computer time and web access is controlled/monitored by their parents. When I have had discussions with students around the cyber bullying issue they are honestly outraged that "teens" would behave this way.

  Digital literacy is also a focus in my primary class. Demonstrations of sites and  research on approved sites is encouraged. I have used youtube clips to further students learning, however I have not allowed them to search individually at this age.

   Everything changes so fast.......all is so new..................