Sunday, February 20, 2011

Digital Citizenship Resources

Well, barring another snow day, we return to school tomorrow, President's Day. How ironic it will be if a day chosen to be a make-up day to help with the excess number of snow days we've had to use, is itself a snow day.
Anyway, it is Sunday afternoon, and I've been getting myself prepped to go back to teaching and learning. I just read an email newsletter from Common Sense Media that had links to some very good information on internet safety, digital citizenship, and research and information literacy. I spent quite a bit of time watching the videos, and I want to share the links. They seem to be very balanced, not preachy, and offer up very good advice.
The first video is on the issue of "sexting." We could all hope this would never apply to our students/children, but the statistics show that "22% of teen girls and 20% of teen boys" have sent revealing pictures from their laptops or cell phones. Here is a link to the page with the video:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/talking-about-sexting?utm_source=newsletter02.17.11&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=feature1-title

The following link takes you to the page with the curriculum resources for the topics I mentioned above. Some of them are available right on the pages, while other require a registration. The registration is totally free. I have an educator's account, but parents are invited to join.
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators

Finally, I found a link to the 2011 video contest where participants are invited to make a video to share "What's Your Story?" on the topics of Being a Good Citizen Online, Using a Mobile Phone Wisely, and Maintaining Your Privacy Online. The grand-prize winner could receive $10,000. Click on the tab with links to the winners of the 2010 contest. I watched all of them - only about 2 minutes each- and I thought they were all really good, well-presented, cautionary videos.
http://whatsyourstory.trendmicro.com/internet-safety/pg/the-competition
 I hope others will find these resources valuable. Please leave me a comment if you saw something you found of worth.