Most of the students on my caseload consist of kindergarteners and a handful of third graders. Our students have limited opportunities to use technology in the school. Our kindergartners can only access the Mac lab one day a week, whereas the third graders have no access until fifth grade. And when our students have the opportunity to engage online, district controls limit most of what they can access. Regardless of their connectivity, I constantly have to remind myself of the importance of teaching digital citizenship.
Last week I was observing a fifth grader slyly maneuvering his way past district controls to unlock a blocked site. It only took him a matter of minutes to be successful. I stopped him immediately to review our school policy about accessing restricted material. He was unfazed by our conversation and continued to tell me that he accesses violent content on the Internet all the time. He also informed me that he has Facebook account that he uses on a daily basis. The legal age for a Facebook account is 13 and he is 11. I became increasing concerned about his digital identity.
“We are suggesting to young people that they can’t expect to have any agency in their relationship with digital technologies. By responding with surveillance and control, we effectively tell them that the solution to social problems is surveillance and control.”
As much as I agree with this quote from Our Focus on Internet Risk Fails Children, I felt the need to “control” what he was doing because I wanted to protect him. But, I realized that teaching kids about privacy and security is only one portion of our responsibility as teachers. I have no way of monitoring what my students do in the confines of their homes. We need to model and teach the correct behaviors so that they know how to conduct themselves in the technology world. It begins by selecting age-appropriate topics to teach. It makes sense to start with topics like how to use technology and the idea of cyber safety. As students progress in the digital world, they will hopefully understand the best practices on using the Internet safely and the “The 9 key Ps”. In addition to Common Sense Education and digital citizenship, I have really enjoyed Brain Pop’s lesson plans regarding digital citizenship as well (Check it out)!
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