Digital Citizenship 101

Are you part of the 46% of smartphone owners who can't live without their device?
Do you spend the majority of your day in front of a screen?
Are you one of the 17.6 million US residents that experienced identity theft in 2014?

Without digital citizenship as a part of K-12 education and beyond, the answers to the above questions will become more and more alarming!

There was several resources out there to help educators with discussing the multiple areas of digital citizenship with students of all ages.

Common Sense Media
This is probably my most favorite digital citizenship resource for K-12 educators.  CSM provides a free K-12 curriculum for educators. The lessons are divided into grade levels and units. Each lesson is approximately 45 minutes, but can be divided into small chucks with ease.  I love how everything is right there for you. You don't have to feel nervous about discussing the topics, because of how CSM has it laid out for you.  There are also several digital resources available as well as student and parent resources in multiple languages.

InCtrl
These lessons are geared toward 4th - 8th grade.  There are lesson plans and video resources available for teachers and students.

ConnectSafely
This is a great resource for parents and teachers.  This site has great resources, blog posts, and suggestions on all things digital.  I had the chance to hear Kerry Gallagher at FETC, which drew me to this resource.

Classroom Read Alouds
I came across this blog post that talked about digital citizenship read alouds.  Ten minutes later I found several other books you can use to discuss various digital citizenship topics with students in both lower and upper elementary.

Some of the books include:
Goodnight iPad, by Ann Droyd
If You Give a Mouse an iPhone, by Ann Droyd
Webster's Email, by Hannah Whaley
Webster's Friend, by Hannah Whaley
The Pirates of Plagiarism, by Lisa Downey
Bully, by Patricia Polacco

There are also resources out there for you, the educator!  If you have on Twitter, do a search for #digcit. This is a a great hashtag related to all this digital citizenship.  You also want to check out Susan Bearden's book, Digital Citizenship. These two resources are a great start to learning more and becoming more familiar with digital citizenship.

Do you have a great resource, share with us here!