Digital Citizenship Week

This week, October 19-25 is Digital Citizenship Week.  I thought I would use that opportunity to share how we make sure our students at Magee are good digital citizens.  We use a variety of online resources.  One is Common Sense Media.  This site has a great scope and sequence for grades K-12 that I like to pull lessons from.  All the lessons are aligned to Common Core standards and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) student standards.  Here are a couple of examples of activities we do.

 In first grade we do the Going Places Safely lesson.  This lesson relates going to places online to going places in the real world.  Just as students need to stay safe and follow rules in the real world, they need to stay safe and learn rules for online places.

 In grades four and five the students take a Digital Citizenship Pledge that they help create
collaboratively.  I saw all of the fourth and fifth graders this week to complete that.  We talked about what makes a community, all the different communities we belong to and why it is important to have expectations in our communities.  We took a look at the Digital Citizenship Pledge that Common Sense Media provides.  Students then got into groups and brainstormed two more expectations that they felt were important.


We then came back as a whole group and found expectations that were similar.  We voted on two that would go on their pledge poster for their classroom.  They will all sign it.

 Digital Citizenship is something that is taught and practiced all school year at Magee, not just during Digital Citizenship week.  Here is a link to parent resources that are on the Common Sense Media site.  There is a lot of information there for parents of children all ages.