I had the joy of growing up in the 90s and the early 2000s. I grew up with a GameBoy, SEGA and a N64. The big difference between video games today and back then, other than the obvious point of the sophisticated graphics and massive processing units, is of course that there was no online play back then. Once I hit middle school, in comes MSN Messenger, cell phones (flip phones of course) and an early introduction to online video games.
In school, we really did not have any digital literacy or cyber safety taught to us until high school. While I was in elementary school, kids being online seemed to be a fairly new thing and teachers were not talking about it very much. Although we were chatting with MSN, using webcams, and sharing photos, it felt as though teachers and most parents had no clue what was really going on while kids were on MSN and online, whether it was good or bad. Once in high school, I remember a little bit more digital literacy happening, but as discussed with some classmates, it was more of the police coming in and scaring you with committing a crime. Teachers were not educating about online usage. Teachers were not involving themselves with students’ online lives when I was in school.
Now that I am a teacher, I make a point of explaining and teaching my students about digital literacy. One of my favorite ressources is from Common Sense Learning. It is a great interactive resource for all grade levels which includes videos, activity sheets, and stories. I think it is very important to teach digital literacy because our children and students are online so often. It has become such a part of regular life for most people that we often forget the risks of being online so often. My students often tell me about things they’ve done or said online and most of the time I’m pretty surprised and I try to teach them about the dangers. Some students do not take it seriously and I do not think that they will until something bad happens to them unfortunately. I do my best with the resources that I have and hope that it helps most students be more conscious going forward!
Photo by ibreakstock
Hey Marcus! I can relate to you when you mentioned that your teachers did not really teach you about digital literacy. In my blog post, I wrote about how I do not have a memory of learning about digital literacy at the school that I attended. I think the main reason is that when I was in school, technology was not near as advanced as it is today!
I learned nothing about the internet when I was growing up, because there was no internet! LOL. We played a lot of video games, but that was about as bad as it got. thanks for sharing about Common Sense Learning. I will have to go and check it out. I am always looking for new resources!
Thanks for sharing that resource last week during class and in your blog post! It is book marked on my computer.