Hello readers,
For this weeks’ assigned blog post, we were asked to cover the extent to which cyber safety – also known as digital citizenship – had been taught to us, as well as the methods through which they were taught to us as students.
For context, I graduated from high school in 2018 in Weyburn.
I don’t feel as though cyber safety and digital citizenship were topics that my teachers were prepared or equipped for. I don’t think many of them would have grown up in an era where cyberbullying, or the nine elements of digital citizenship made sense. Thinking about it now, I cannot really recall many discussions that were had surrounding the issues that have arisen from a highly digitized world, and that is strange considering it is the world I was raised into. I thought of one example where we were spoken to about topics that related to digital citizenship.
I’m not sure how many people are familiar with an app called YikYak (no, not TikTok), but when I was in high school it became a highly controversial app in which people could anonymously post anything. Anybody with access to YikYak within a certain distance could see these posts and reply anonymously. Obviously high schoolers gravitated towards it, and it became an app where stupid, and harmful rumours were spread. Kids would refer to whoever they were posting about by using their initials, so it was often very cryptic among teenagers. It obviously became a pretty big issue within the school I attended, and it got to a point where our teachers would openly discuss the harms of YikYak, and basically just told us how stupid of an app it was. I’m sure the app is still around, but after a while they were forced to take anonymity out of the app, which kind of killed it for our school. That is the one time I can clearly remember some of the elements of digital citizenship being brought up within my educational experiences.
While I did not often have these conversations with teachers and educators, or even my own parents, I did often see posters about stranger danger, or cyberbullying scattered throughout the hallways. These were more fear-mongering tactics than anything. That is what my memories of being taught digital citizenship consists of more than anything, and I am curious to hear if anybody’s experiences are similar to mine.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Wow. I mean, I knew that likely these types of apps existed…but still. Going to high school with that sort of technology would have been hard. I’m happy to hear the anonymous feature was removed, although I’m sure there was another similar app ready to take its place. I was teaching in a school about an hour away from Weyburn and in the same school division during 2018, and I’m shocked that I never heard about this as it was likely occurring in my school as well. It’s sort of scary how oblivious I perhaps was.
Yeah, definitely had a similar experience to you. It’s really unfortunate how little education we received about technology use. But to be fair to our teachers, they didn’t know much themselves. At least we can use what we’ve learned to educate our future students.
The Amanda Todd documentaries really show how important teaching cyber safety and digital citizenship is. Given the new wave of teachers heading into my old school, I hope they see the value and have the skills in teaching about this. Amanda’s story reminded me of the website Omegle and I imagine there are very similar things happening on there 24/7, it exposes kids to unsolicited images without warning…horrible things.