By: Amber Petrusa

Digital Citizenship is someone's use of technology to actively engage online. There are multiple aspects that compose being a good citizen like being engaged, informed, alert, inclusive, balanced but for this post, I am going to focus on keeping your students alert.

Click here to find a brief video explaining what digital citizenship is!

Teaching your students to stay alert will help them stay safe online, it will help them protect their personal information, inform them about their rights online, and even protect them from cyberbullying. As teachers, you need to educate your students on stuff they will face on their day to day basis. The internet is vastly growing and becoming apart of our world today. As we see a shift in the way the internet and technology are used it is important to inform your students on the dangers and ways to stay safe online. There are numerous ways to help your students to stay safe and alert while using the internet. Some of those ways are knowing the dangers associated with internet use, knowing ways to stay safe on the internet, knowing the laws that protect your students online.

Click here to see a video on why you should teach online safety in your classroom!

Some of the most important things to educate your students on while they use the internet are:

1) To keep their personal information to themself- keeping things like their address, phone number, parent's names offline will help protect students from predators, and even identity theft.

2) Keep their privacy setting on- when their accounts aren't private it is easy for people to discover information about them where they can become a target to cyberbullying or be exposed to online predators

3) Have them practice safe browsing- distinguish the difference between dangerous and safe websites. Dangerous websites are an easy way for a virus to attack their computer and even have it hacked.

4) Informing them to be careful what they download- cybercriminals have apps that are programmed to steal information on the user

5) Having them be careful with who they meet online- inform your students that it is important not to trust everything they read online. People aren't always who they say they are and can have a personal agenda to talking to them like stealing information, or even predation

(information gathered from Kaspersky)

Another way you can keep your students safe is by familiarizing yourself with all the laws that protect your students.

Some of the most common laws to know are:

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)- COPPA makes it mandatory to have a guardians consent on what their child can access online until the age of 13. This law makes it illegal for a website to collect personal information of someone under the age of 13, unless the website has guardian approval.

Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)- Schools that receive discounted internet access through CIPA are required to follow distinct rules. Some of those rules include but are not limited to: using an application that blocks students from using ad seeing obscene content, restrict students from using dangerous websites, ensuring the security of students when using the internet

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)- FERPA protects students' academic records and protects personally identifiable information of students. It gives teachers the right to have access to their students' educational records and data. It also enables parents to have the right to request access to their child's educational records.

Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA)- PPRA is a federal law that allows parents to have rights over their child (that's a minor) participation in federally funded surveys. Some topics that this law protects are religious beliefs, drug use sexual activity, etc. This act provides parents with the right to access the surveys and even deny their child participation in them.

(information gathered from Connect Safety and Panda Security)

You want to educate your students on the importance of online safety, but it is also important that you don't scare them away from using it. A great way to do that is by using interactive materials in your classroom. There are numerous ways you can incorporate online safety in your classroom. There is a wide range of sources from videos you can show your class to interactive online games.

Some websites that help with this are:

https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us

https://www.missingkids.org/NetSmartz

https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-passport

There are even a lot of sources you can find if you google "teaching online safety in the classroom"

https://www.connectsafely.org/eduprivacy/

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/training/6-8/digital-citizenship-program

https://www.iste.org/explore/infographic-im-digital-citizen

https://www.pelhamcityschools.org/news___info/news_about_our_schools/news_feed/our_focus_on_digital_citizenship

https://www.graniteschools.org/edtech/digcit/

https://sci-techmaven.io/superposition/tech/practicing-digital-citizenship-part-3-from-consumers-to-participants-etgvgqU-OkSXczNkVz3XaA

https://safety.yahoo.com/AU/Resources/TIPS-TO-KEEP-YOU-SAFE-AU.html

https://www.learnersedge.com/blog/digital-citizenship-course

https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/family-safety/internet-safety-for-kids/

https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/preemptive-safety/top-10-internet-safety-rules-and-what-not-to-do-online