How do you get 500+ students, their parents and their teachers on the same page with Digital Citizenship?
I mean that as a question, sure I have some approaches that I am using and I am constantly seeking new ways.
I use a combination of student assemblies paired with parent tech talks to bring everyone together on common technology and digital citizenship topics. Over the course of the academic year I will host 3 to 4 student assemblies that are sequenced to build upon each other in digital citizenship awareness. Previous topics have included: Dealing with Spam/Phishing, protecting digital Privacy, Piracy and Creative Commons, Cyberbullying and social media. An overarching theme I put into all of my student assemblies, is the expectation of "responsibility". I remind them that I am not speaking "at" them but rather "to" them when I ask for integrity and responsibility in their actions. I can only ask that they think about these topics and let their choices speak for themselves.
During student assemblies, I use a polling app called Socrative and encourage students to respond in real-time to the discussion. This participation-based assembly has changed our student community. Students have begun to take ownership of their community and have helped to re-shape behaviors surrounding technology use in very positive ways. I typically limit device use to one student per advisory (homeroom) which gets us to the application limit of 50 or so respondents per session. If the limit is lifted, I would absolutely consider opening it up to all 500 students independently. Data is king when you get everyone's opinion.
Do I worry about students getting off task during the assembly?
-No, there's teacher supervision on top of my very frequent requests for feedback that keeps the students in the discussion. They love it when I display the "live" responses. If the responses get off topic I just toggle back to the presentation and move to the next discussion point.
For Parents, I used to host a Parent Tech Talk on the same night as a school dance. Parents would drop their kids off at the dance and then join me in a separate location for the talk. The topics would typically mirror the same recent student assembly topics. I would incorporate some of the actual responses from the students and also include information about realistic expectations for adolescents. My messages would frequently ask parents to allow freedom of expression with their students, within limits.
This year I am starting a different twist on the Parent events. I will be trying out a Coffee Talk and will be separating the direct-pairing of topics from the student assemblies. I will be polling parents on topics that they want to learn more about in conjunction with the topics in the assembly. I want to make sure parents feel like they are getting the information they truly value.
Where did you get all of this information?
I use information from a variety of sources. The most trusted source that I point everyone to is CommonSense Media. They have amazing resources for students, teachers and parents. All of their resources are free to use and are of the utmost quality! They have curricula for teachers and you really need to look no further for starter info on any digital citizenship program you might be trying to start.
On to another action-packed school year of building strong digizens! Feedback and Comments are always welcome!
How do you engage young minds to become and remain positive Digital Citizens?
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