Last week a school near me suffered a social media mishap involving its students. This, an increasingly common byproduct of our day, unfortunately catches many a school by surprise. So I received this call:
"Help! Can you come to our school to give an "Internet Safety" presentation? And can you keep it to under an hour?"
Seriously?
Given the deficit of time and resources at most schools today, this "solution" to a social media or Internet incident is understandably commonplace. But the problem is that if you ask for an "Internet Safety" presentation that's only an hour long, chances are you're going to get a talk about the "Big 3": Cyberbullying, Online Predators, and Sexting. While I suppose addressing these topics in an hour is better than doing nothing at all, I believe it is mistake to teach students about serious issues like these in a silo.
It would be like teaching them how to drive by focusing solely on car accidents.
Internet Safety (a.k.a. Digital Citizenship, Digital Literacy and/or Media Literacy...terms commonly used interchangeably) is a complex topic with lots of moving parts that take much more than an hour to explain and/or understand. So before your community schedules its next presentation, for adults or students, ask yourself which of the following topics is THE most important to you:
- Reputation Management. Do your students know how to be proactive managers of their "digital footprints"? Do they (this includes adults and students) even know what a "digital footprint" is? Do they know it's how future friends, employers, and college recruiters will likely judge them? Do they understand that their "footprint" includes not only what they post about themselves, but also what others post about them? This includes when they are "tagged" by friends and/or followers. It also includes all those baby pictures mom began sharing years ago.
Is your head spinning yet?
I don't know about you, but I want my children to know about ALL these things. They're equally important and integral to how they will live their lives as engaged digital citizens who will most likely use their connected devices far more than they will use their cars. I shouldn't have to make a choice between the topics above, and neither should you.
Here are some steps you can take if you agree:
- Support a brand new organizations called the Coalition of Digital Educators (C.O.D.E.). It's mission is to promote digital citizenship through education about the responsible, respectful, and safe use of technology.