Technology and social media continue to evolve rapidly, which is why teachers are being encouraged to include lessons on digital citizenship to ensure students use the internet wisely.
During a recent Prairie South School Division board meeting, trustees heard about the need to teach youths digital literacy skills and help parents stay current on the latest technology.
“This work with digital citizenship is a community effort. There’s no way we can fully prepare students with what they need to go out into the world unless we bring together families with us as well,” said Gillian Crocker, vice-principal of Empire School.
“There is a lot of social media use that goes unsupervised and we know there are many things out there we can’t protect them from. However, we can teach them and prepare them and help them to at least become critical thinkers as they are navigating all this.”
Technology’s early beginnings
Computers were relatively uncommon in homes or classrooms in the 1990s, while video games were just starting to emerge, explained Charmaine Collinge, vice-principal of PSSD’s Virtual School.
The internet’s emergence in the early 2000s changed how people communicated, while social media platforms such as MySpace began, she continued. Technology exploded in use around 2006 after major social media platforms arrived on the scene.
“This is where we start to see people posting their lives for all to see,” Collinge remarked. “Along with that comes concern with privacy, safety, who children are talking to online, and that just exacerbates with the smartphone. Then everyone has access to the world in the palm of their hand.”
Explosion of technology
Online gaming exploded in the 2010s, with kids connecting with people around the world whom they didn’t know. Technology use also increased in homes and schools as it became less expensive and more of a tool than a toy.
Cyberbullying became a big concern, including over what people were posting or sharing, while there were concerns with kids being exposed to inappropriate content, said Collinge.
Parents and teachers began setting time limits since technology was becoming an addiction. They also became concerned about staying current since it was becoming difficult to know what kids were using and accessing.
“As an educator, we want students who are digitally literate, who can navigate the web to access it for information, who are critical thinkers who determine whether something is truthful and valid … ,” she continued.
Educators take action
Crocker began looking at online literacy skills after experiencing challenges at Sunningdale School in 2015. She and other school administrators realized it was more than online safety they needed to teach. They also needed to create digitally literate youths who could discriminate between real and fake information.
She and other teachers formed a team in September 2016 and used an existing Saskatchewan Digital Citizenship Education Guide as their foundation.
The team created lessons for each grade level and informed educators that teaching youths these skills was the role of schools, while many lessons integrated well into the curriculum.
“Each year, I continued to use this in my classroom to teach research skills and how to cite a site and how to narrow your key search,” Crocker said. “There are many different elements to digital citizenship. We taught, shared and modelled this.”
The Sunningdale team presented to all Moose Jaw elementary administrators in spring 2019 and offered to share resources and support.
In January 2020, the mayor approached Crocker to see how he could support this work in school. She shared literature and how that could be a starting point if he spoke to students.
Then COVID-19 came and stalled progress on the work being done.
Rebooting the system
Crocker moved to Empire School this year and decided to reboot the work on digital literacy and citizenship. The school community council (SCC) jumped on board while the school incorporated this issue into its mental health and well-being goal.
The school surveyed parents and learned guardians had trouble setting limits on their kids’ use of technology while they were struggling to keep up with changes.
So, Empire brought in a speaker who presented to parents and youths about digital literacy. The school also teamed up with Sunningdale and purchased new books about digital citizenship, with every child given one to read over the summer.
Technology moves fast
“Technology is moving very fast and things are constantly updating. All the work my team did in 2016 through ’19 has already become somewhat outdated … ,” said Crocker. “However, good things have come from this. This (updated Digital Citizenship Education Guide) is a great resource for teachers.”
The goal next year is to work with all SCCs on this issue, encourage school administrators to embed digital citizenship lessons into all classes, feature more police presentations, and create related podcasts to reach more people.
“We have lots of stuff in place,” she added. “We think that it will be very easy to happen in all the schools.”
