Digital Citizenship Parent Evening

At this weeks staff meeting we ran through the presentation/discussion that we will be doing with our school parents around digital citizenship. Since we have been having regular discussions with staff along with incorporating digital citizenship discussions into our everyday teaching practice we also think it is important to get our parents in on this too. This on-line world can be one that is tricky to understand for the non digital natives. We want to shed some light on it and get parents thinking about what the on-line world means for their children. We have made a presentation using the haikudeck tool on-line. The run through went well - we have a couple of changes to make but on the whole we had really great feedback.

Digital Etiquette

Digital Etiquette refers to they way you conduct yourself on-line.

This was the topic of conversation at last weeks staff meeting. We showed a video talking about 'netiquette' which explained this in further detail to staff but was also a child friendly resource they could share with the kids in their class. New words came up for discussion such as 'trolls', 'trolling' and 'flame wars'. It is important to go over new terms with staff so they understand the world that their students are participating in daily. 

Digital Access

At staff meeting a couple of weeks ago we raised the topic of digital access with teachers. This is part of the digital citizenship staff meetings we are running that explore the many elements of digital citizenship we should be discussing with our students in this ever growing and important on-line world. 

We wanted the teachers to survey their class about what sort of access they have at home to computers, other devices and also the internet. It was just a simple survey and they were asked to put these numbers onto a Google doc that we have prepared for them. We stressed to them that it was not actually about getting numbers together to do anything with - it was about awareness and discussion. 

Throughout the school it was great to hear about the conversations people were having with their children around the access they have to computers, other devices and the internet. Some teachers were surprised at how many children have access to the internet and that they have many different devices at their finger tips.

We will continue to do 10 min sessions at the beginning of each staff meeting. The buzz and awareness being generated in the school is exciting.