Digital Citizen Advocate

The very first step for helping all members of the school community to protect their personal data will be through my introductory email and Canvas announcement to make sure that everyone has at least the baseline of knowledge on common methods such as spam, spoofing, phishing, and pharming. Within the school, I would ideally create posters to help as PSAs to safeguard against nefarious activities which seek to gather personal data. While informational, posters should be eye-catching and informative to get the attention of as many people in the building as possible. Possible phrases might be plays on popular phrases (i.e. “Gone Phishing” or “Don’t open Spam” with a can of Spam as the focal picture). These can also be integrated into school activities between “issues plays” put on by the drama department at some schools put on as cautionary tales to help warn students. The other important part would be the inclusion of pages and links to helpful resources on Canvas pages and school websites to help prevent all members of the school from publishing too much information publicly or using common passwords. These links can make sharing of the information easier and will certainly be an easy addition to my email signature.

Positive digital citizenship practices can be shared in tandem with the emails and Canvas announcements on personal data. An easy time to reach parents can be through inclusion of resources to tips in school literature at the beginning of the year and in school events like “back to school night.” Tips can include not oversharing family information on social media, posting and responding positively online (“would I say this to someone in person?”), choosing strong, diverse passwords, and reporting activity which may not exhibit the best digital citizenship practices, especially if it is a threat to safety. After providing the proper authorities to report activity to, there could also be an opportunity to (either by volunteer or using a test profile) show what kind of information can be found through usernames and social media profiles.

For teachers, the principles of digital citizenship can seem like another box to check. In order to alleviate this pressure, it is first important to highlight to teachers how practices they already use in their classroom are already inclusive of digital citizenship. Examples can include the use of blogs on Canvas (which many teachers used especially during the pandemic) and class discussions or the process of peer review in person and the feature for peer review within Canvas. For younger students, conversations about bullying can include examples of cyberbullying, exercises in empathy (especially when anonymous online), and the balance between a digital presence and life outside of technology. While the pandemic made these issues of express concern, it important to stress that there are benefits to good digital citizenship. I plan on developing resources on this subject (similar to those on personal data) to help educate all members of the school, but also as template exercises for teachers to use. These can be as simple as exercises used with parents to exhibit how easy it is to gain personal information from social media profiles when not protected properly or from usernames. These can be performed as daily activities or as part of the beginning of class routine conversationally so that students may relate the topics to their own lives and connect them to content. For math, the teacher may provide a statistic from a study on digital citizenship or social studies may co-opt a topic for debate in relation to their curriculum.

In order to determine that teachers understand what digital citizenship really is, observations of classrooms or the opportunity to demonstrate lessons within an actual classroom could help within a smaller school, but prove taxing within a larger school. Professional development, especially within the first week, could be very helpful. To gauge the understanding of the instructional staff as a whole, there could be an opportunity to set up some sort of game or competition in the early weeks to have teachers develop and share their own resources. Each group will get a different topic covered under digital citizenship and have to share out their ideas for including it within the subject they are teaching. This will prove that they both understand digital citizenship and can later teach it within their classrooms. When possible, group teachers who teach within different disciplines in order to ensure they come up with a plethora of ideas for teaching digital citizenship with content that is actually applicable.

A main way to promote a safe and secure environment is by using only the resources which are approved by the school division. While there are some exceptions, a good rule of thumb is anything that is available via Clever. Since Clever offers secure sign-in using school accounts, the security of students and staff can be better monitored. Otherwise, stressing the strength and originality of passwords can be a useful tool. While website blocking by the school division does a lot of the heavy lifting, instructing all staff and students on what kind of websites are safe and how to make sure your connection is secure could be beneficial.