Our kids come into our classrooms each day and go home to a world where they are surrounded by technology. I could make “Do not copy or paste from the internet” a classroom rule. Or, instead, I could address questions like the ones below. From the time my youngest students, 3rd graders, start in my classroom we begin digital citizenship. It’s not about my rules of what they can and cannot do. It’s about their understanding of the proper way to handle life in a digital world and every year we build on this.
Here are ten questions to get your class started. Just begin with one. Get the discussion going. Ask kids to think critically about online sources. Work these conversations into your language arts persuasive writing, into your science research, or even into social studies in looking at National Archives photos. Integrate digital citizenship into your classroom the way it’s integrated into our daily lives.
1.) Is Google a source?
2.) How do I know if a website is reliable?
3.) Can I use anyone’s photo in something I create?
4.) If I write something online, what’s the best way to delete it from the internet?
5.) How much does my digital footprint matter?
6.) If I draw a photo and post it online and someone else downloads and sells it, is that wrong?
7.) Is it okay to copy and paste someone else’s work? Why?
8.) What if I wrote a blog post and someone copied it and sold it? Is that fair?
9.) Is every photo online real? How do you know?
10.) What do you think of Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote, “The trouble with the quotes on the internet is that you never know if they are genuine”?
These are skills that we’ll feel like we don’t have time to teach or can wait one more year. But, these are skills that we just can’t afford not to teach and model on a daily basis.