Digital Literacy in the Curriculum?

In my previous post Mandated Digitial Citizenship Education in the Classroom. I talked about how I think teaching cyber safety and digital citizenship in the classroom could be a step in the right direction in preventing things like The Amanda Todd Case and other situations like that. 

I am in the early elementary program so kindergarten to grade 5 so I looked through and I found a couple different outcomes in the younger grades of the Saskatchewan Curriculum that you could fit the topics of cyber safety or digital literacy into. Although I really only found connections in the Health curriculums. 

Grade 4 Health

• USC4.3 – Examine healthy interpersonal skills and determine strategies to effectively develop new relationships and/or negotiate disagreements in relationships.
• USC4.4 – Determine basic personal responsibility for safety and protection in various environments/situations.
• • A couple of the indicators in this outcome actually mention cyber safety – this really surprised me as I had no idea it was there. 

Grade 5 Health

• USC5.5 – Analyze the impact of violence and the cycle of abuse on the holistic well-being of self, family, and community.
• USC 5.6 – Assess peer influence and demonstrate a readiness to prevent and/or avoid potentially dangerous situations involving peer pressure (including lying, substance use, and bullying).

*There were a couple outcomes in the grade 3 health that could be stretched to include cyber safety and digital citizenship but they were a bit more of a stretch to connect it so I did not include them in this.*

I honestly think teaching digital citizenship in Kindergarten to grade 2 or even 3 could be really difficult. Especially in schools that do not have enough technology for all the students. Or in classrooms where students do not have technology access at home. I also think teaching about digital literacy could be hard for younger students to grasp – especially concepts like cyber safety, cyber bullying, social media usage, and the full extent of the horrors the internet can bring. 

If I were to teach digital citizenship in grade 4 or 5, we would cover a lot of cyber safety and things like cyber bullying, safe social media usage, how to distinguish between real and fake or scam things on the internet, and just overall what to do and not to do to be safe on the internet and technology. I think it is really important to include examples of both good and bad social media or internet usage and how to make good choices when it comes to the internet. 

Digital Citizenship in my classroom would include a lot of practical information and practice. Such as the Fake News or Spot the Troll quizzes. An example of an assignment could be students work together in groups to make a variety of fake and real websites, Wikipedia pages, fake news headlines, profiles, or other related  and then have another class in the school try to differentiate the real from the fake, and have them do the same for your students. Teaching about how the news and media can make things seem a certain way or have a bias depending on the news company, source, or reporter. There are so many ways to teach digital citizenship and it is important to utilize those ways and resources available.