The digital world has been a part of MY world for the majority of my life – be that Club Penguin, MSN, or the more popular platforms now such as Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. This puts me in a group that navigated many social media platforms much before their parents and teachers had, which, resulted in a gap between what our parents and educators knew and what was really happening on these platforms. Though, I am confident this gap still exists, many adults are now on these platforms so they are at least exposed to some of the things their children and students are.

My first memories of cyber safety being mentioned in school would have been with regards to instant messaging on MSN, this was when the idea of “not everyone is who they claim they are” first came into the picture. Though, I do not remember this being stressed by teachers or truly understood by students as we just thought it was too far-fetched.

Unfortunately, digital and cyber safety wasn’t stressed much more than what I explained above while I was in school. Now that I reflect, it was only ever introduced as a reaction to something that had already happened rather than in a proactive nature. I understand that this could be related to the fact that the online world is one of constant change, but, I don’t think that is enough of an excuse.

I think that teaching students the importance of cyber safety is just that, important, BUT I am not entirely sure what the best approach would be in doing so.

Does the scare tactic REALLY work?

To reflect on my experience in school, when teachers brought up cyber safety it was in a response to something that had happened. When it was taught, it was done so with the scare tactic approach – we heard stories about 50-year old men pretending to be our 14-year-old peers or that anything posted online can never be deleted. Did this work? No, not always. I do not think you can tell these stories in hopes it will “scare your students straight” – I think this is an outdated approach to education. Students in this “day and age” (LOL – this made me feel so old in saying that), are aware of what can happen, but in some contexts, are doing it anyways.

If not the scare tactic, than what? 

I think like many things in life, cyber safety can be taught through the teaching of other things. For example –  Cyber bullying is bullying on steroids, but, it is still bullying – what has changed is there is now a  computer and the ability to be anonymous. I am not sure if I am being naive, but would emphasizing kindness and embracing students’ differences as a positive thing in the classroom not help with bullying?

Would guiding students through activities where they build and explore their values create a more lasting lesson with a stronger emphasis on transferability?

Instead of scaring students about what is out there, could we teach them the tools to act in a pro-active way?

With relation to cyber bullying – would how we address face-to-face bullying in our classroom apply to cyber bullying with a few alterations?

Anyways, to summarize, I guess my question is – can we teach cyber safety by building strong value-based foundations in our students?