What an informative and useful presentation this week on Digital Citizenship by Jacki Mechanic and Melissa King. Jacki and Melissa put together an impressive collection of resources for us and gave us lots of time to explore resources and consider the importance of Digital Citizenship.

To listen to the recording, click below:

Recording of TLP-C session Digital Citizenship March 20th

Melissa and Jacki began by outlining the different aspects of Digital Citizenship and then lead us in a discussion about some the reasons is it so important to teach Digital Citizenship. They also shared the relevant National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers that address digital literacy, cyberbullying and copyright information. We also discussed how important it is to model the same behavior we are expecting from our students.

Some of the most popular resources that were shared were:

Commonsense Media – has a K12 curriculum with lessons on information literacy, creative commons, cyberbullying, and social media safety. Also has great parent resources (including movie and video game reviews).

Professor Garfield – In addition to this website, there are four iPad apps that deal with Digital Citizenship

Netsmartz – sponsored by the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children, this site has a number of activities that students can complete as well as a wealth of resources for teaching about Digital Citizenship

EverFi Ignition – a series of online modules that walk students through several aspects of Digital Citizenship designed for grades 6-10. See Heath Brown (heath.brown@acps.k12.va.us) to create accounts for your students.

The other fun things that Jacki and Melissa tried out had to do with Blackboard Collaborate itself. They used the web camera for their presentation which was super fun – nice to be able to see the people presenting. We also tried out the web tour with mixed results. Was nice to be able to start the videos all together but for some reason, it didn’t seem to work for everyone. We’ll keep experimenting with these tools to see which we like using and the best way to incorporate them into our presentation.

While we were a small group for this presentation, I think we all appreciated the chance to learn more about Digital Citizenship, to share ideas about how we teach these topics to our students and to explore the great resources that are out there.