The House Tutors have had another ‘interesting’ week dealing with students and the inappropriate use of cell phones in class.

Sometimes we might be tempted to just ban cell phones at school. However according to this article (http://www.core-ed.org/research-and-innovation/ten-trends/2013/digital-citizenship/ ) this is not a good idea:

“A swimming pool analogy is helpful to understand this sort of quandary. We are lucky that so many schools have pools to teach water safety. However, what if a school became worried that one of their students might drown and they resorted to getting rid of the swimming pool? We know, however, that the parent community would be up in arms. Pools in school provide an amazing opportunity to teach students water-safety skills so they can be safe when they leave the school grounds, when they finish their school career. Yet, when applied to mobile phones and the Internet, the school chooses to ban the swimming pool, effectively cutting off an incredible opportunity to foster their students digital citizenship, to let their students rehearse and play around, make some of the mistakes they need to make while they are younger, when they are still protected by the school where they have that support. The last thing we want is for them leaving without that knowledge so they are let loose on society without skills to keep themselves safe, and more importantly to protect other people.”

Sadly the continual issues with inappropriate use of devices have led many students to think that when we talk about something like ‘digital citizenship’ then that is all we are talking about. As the diagram above illustrates there is a lot more to digital citizenship.

Although we did some work on Digital Citizenship with our junior students this year, surveys tell us we need to be doing more. Next year we are going to enrol our juniors in this course: 

https://www.digitallicence.co.nz/ 

Created by the Alannah & Madeline Foundation in 2015, the Digital Licence was developed by a team of cyber safety experts, technologists and teachers to keep children safe online.

The Digital Licence is a certification programme providing online safety for kids, educating them on what to do if they are exposed to unwanted, inappropriate and offensive content; encounter cyber bullying; or consequences of putting their privacy at risk when interacting in an online environment. Some of the material covered will be:

• Risky behaviours (relates to privacy and relationship practices)
  
• Online reputation (creating a positive digital footprint for future employers)
  
• (Private) Messaging and Location-based Apps (trending issue relating to privacy & bullying)
  
• Internet and technology addiction/obsession/compulsion
  

Hopefully with programmes like this there will be no need to “drain the swimming pool”.