E2T2 Reflections

“Digital citizenship should be built into media literacy —media literacy as a must-have skill for the 21st century.”-In post by Gail Desler (6/13/11)

what are you doing to ensure student safety online?

I just clicked on this  link to an article on student safety online. In light of the recent media frenzy about yet another public figure behaving badly with his cell phone, I think we as educators must address some standards for responsible behavior online. If we don’t discuss this with our students, who will? I think many parents don’t know what their kids are doing on line. It’s been my experience that they aren’t monitoring  what music or tv shows their kids are tuning into, either. When I responded to a student’s comment about a cable comedy show (one pretty graphic in terms of sexual explicitness and violence) the student was shocked that I’d seen the show, as though this was a teenage secret I wasn’t supposed to know. It got me thinking that we really aren’t paying attention to what the kids are doing in the big, wide, multimedia world. How prevalent is cyber-bullying among my students? What constitutes appropriate use in their eyes? When we go back to school in August, I plan to survey my students about online behavior, and begin an ongoing discussion about digital citizenship. This is definitely a topic that should be addressed by all teachers who have kids using computers in the classrooms.