Digital Citizenship Curriculum for Elementary Students
What is Digital Citizenship?
Digital Citizenship is a crucial skill to introduce to students early in education. A Digital Citizenship curriculum should teach safe browsing habits, how to identify disinformation, responsible and respectful digital etiquette, and how to protect privacy online.
There are 3 core principles of the Digital Citizenship Curriculum that students should be introduced to early and reinforced throughout K-12 education:
• Respect
• Educate
• Protect
In our previous digital citizenship article our experts go into further detail on these 3 core principles of Digital citizenship. In this article, we provide handy tips, activities and new ways to approach teaching and instructing students of elementary school age practical ways to implement these guiding principles.
Define Digital Citizenship in Relatable and Understandable Ways
Teachers have a responsibility to relate the key principles of digital citizenship to their students in a way that they respond to and find engaging. Applying digital citizenship to everyday online interactions, the reasons for safeguarding in schools, and how to effectively conduct research online help build a wider understanding of how to be a digital citizen.
Demonstrating good digital citizenship as an authority figure is important to inspire appropriate action from students. This responsibility included using the internet and integrating technology into the classroom learning environment. Teachers are increasingly using digital learning as a tool not just for teaching specific subjects but for continually applying a digital citizenship curriculum. By sharing how to find accurate results online, signs of trustworthy sites, and the dangers of social media, even younger children will begin to understand the importance of responsible internet use and develop positive habits when online.
Good Digital Etiquette Safety Tips to Promote Computer Safety and Respect
As well as ensuring safe internet use, a knowledge of digital citizenship can also create a better and safer shared online space for everyone. Promoting digital etiquette as part of digital citizenship helps to form good online habits, fostering respect and kindness.
Lessons on cyberbullying and general classroom citizenship can help students understand how their actions impact others, even online, where they may not be able to see the immediate consequences. This on top of the implementation of real-time monitoring with software that includes monitoring tools for Microsoft Teams chat logs that address behavioural issues as they arise, helps to maintain a healthy and happy classroom atmosphere.
Activities to Encourage Digital Citizenship for Elementary Students
Keeping digital citizenship lessons engaging and fun helps students to remember and appreciate the importance of what they learn. Integrating the principles of digital citizenship into everyday lessons, assignments, and homework projects is a great way to teach digital citizenship without interrupting typical lessons.
Digital citizenship for elementary students should be introduced in a fun, friendly way as part of their typical education. Teachers can set out a checklist of challenges that young internet users should meet to become “Super Digital Citizens” as they complete online assignments in the classroom. Each task should involve a different element of safe internet use, for example, identifying reliable sites for research, using search engines effectively and safely, and communicating effectively with others on digital projects.
For more online games designed by experts in cyber safety and digital citizenship, visit the Media Smarts website from Canada’s Centre for Digital Media Literacy.
Monitoring Tools Used to Manage Digital Citizenship in the Classroom
Active monitoring in the classroom allows teachers and staff to observe how students interact with their peers and engage with the Internet. With thumbnail view as part of our Class Cloud Classroom Management, teachers can see any student device screens in a group to observe their actions and which sites they access.
For more serious violations, content filtering software using AI-based visual monitoring and automatic keyword-based content monitoring sends weekly email alerts so that staff become aware of any harmful content accessed or inappropriate language used. Catching safety concerns and cyberbullying behaviours early enables a fast response from safeguarding teams to address the issue.
Senso Promotes Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety for Students across the US
Senso’s team works with schools all around the US providing the best tools to encourage safe access and use of the internet. Our software helps to guide healthy online behaviour to foster digital citizenship in K-12 education.
If you think our School Software Solutions are right for your students, book a demo with us today or call our reliable experts at 866-664-1520.