Topics in Digital Citizenship

Safety of Personal Information
I chose to explore the safety of personal information on the internet because it affects every person and every student.  Personal information includes anything for your name, address, and phone number to your bank account and social security number.  While this is something that may not typically be discussed in an art classroom, it is pertinent information for every student to learn as a pioneer on the digital sea.  I think that all too often, we (as a society) take the safety of the internet for granted and often send out personal information without hesitating to think about where it may be going.  It is increasingly important that students learn to navigate the tricky path that is giving out their information.  While this may be typically studied in a business class, it would be easy to tie this in to an art-related project.  In my classroom, we do a small unit on technology in which we discuss issues of privacy.  It would be easy to incorporate information safety into a unit like this.

Sexting
Sexting is a particularly fascinating topic to me, and one that sort of goes along with the safety of personal information.  Sexting seems to be increasingly popular among kids due to smartphones.  Picture messaging and snapchat (where your image disappears after a few seconds....unless you take a screenshot) make it effortless to send sexually charged messages to others.  However, the issue that I find with sexting doesn't seem to be with the images themselves, but rather with the trust you have with the person you send the images to.  In high school, it's easy for immaturity to take the lead and trust to go by the wayside, which is when trouble with sexting happens.  Sexting is an interesting and difficult topic to teach to kids, and in all honesty, it is probably something I would not discuss with my students. It may be more applicable in a health or FACS class, where the teacher can lead a discussion on why sending racy images might be dangerous, and how they could end up in the wrong hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_efkV0jAA0

Both of this week's readings had one theme in common: respect.  Using the internet requires more respect than even some personal relationships because there is so much gray area where what is said can be taken into different contexts.  It seems to be increasingly pertinent to teach kids to respect others, themselves, their rights to free speech, and privacy.  What most kids do not realize when posting on the internet is that their images and words can easily end up in someone else's hands.  I think the big lesson to be learned is that the idea of respect does not apply only to real life, but also to your digital life.  The more information that an individual has on a topic, the more likely they should be to proceed in a cautionary manner.  The real question becomes how to teach students this concept of digital respect in a way that really resonates with them, because I think that students have a tendency to sort of "shut off" when it comes to discussions on how they should behave.  When I was thinking of a solution to this problem, I was drawn back to our week spent on copyright, and thought that talking about those issues with your students might be a good segue into digital respect and responsibility.  Once students realize that what happens digitally has as much weight on life as what happens physically and verbally, they may open up to bigger discussions on internet safety.