Given the importance of keeping our young people safe, we’ve kicked off the year 7 curriculum with a series of lessons looking at digital citizenship and esafety. This gives students an opportunity to come in to the school and familiarise themselves with our learning systems. It tied in nicely with a piece I’ve just written for the local ‘Bristol Post’ newspaper on digital parenting and esafety. In the lesson today students were able to use the piece as a stimulus for their work.
Today we looked at how they were the digital champions of their households but how their parent/guardians might need a bit of help; not only with what is out there but also what it is they do with social media and technology AND how technology can be of benefit to them.
Students were asked to create a set of rules themselves for a family esafety / digital citizenship agreement. Students were given free reign of the software and devices that they wanted to use with the idea that they would be able to show off and show case their creativity as digital champions to show off their skills. We had approximately half the class using iPads and the other half opting to use various web tools.
I was particularly struck with how they were able to take the topic, discuss their thoughts and be creative with the process. I’ve received videos, raps, all sorts. Simply amazing creativity from them. It goes to show what can happen when you give students the opportunity to showcase their skills wrapped around a project. They made progress in their understanding of how to use technology for a purpose and in their understanding of the topics of esafety and digital citizenship. I was impressed with the piece of work above particularly as I learnt something new today about a free App called ‘Phonto‘. In short it allows you to simply add text to photos. This student app smashed it with other apps to produce the above document.
How are you covering esafety in your school? It’s a massive issue but I really wanted to avoid the stranger danger, don’t forget to check out ‘thinkuknow‘ and watch out for your digital footprint kind of lessons… not because I don’t think those messages aren’t worthwhile covering – I wanted to give students the opportunity to work out their own thoughts based upon the written stimulus. I’d love to get some more ideas if you’d like to leave some in the comments!
Thanks to Nina Jackson @musicmind for sharing some of her ideas on this topic.
I use the resources from http://www.digitalme.co.uk/safe
Really good and aimed at the right level. Backed up with a mock up of social network on Moodle.
That’s brilliant Mike, thanks – will take a look!