Digital Safety for Teenagers and You!

          The digital safety group project was an informative lesson that will be useful material to share with not only my middle school students, but for everyone who goes online.  I learned essential information from my fellow classmates on Fair User Practices and Copyright Issues, Cyberbullying, Textual Harassment and Sexting, and Phishing and Pharming.  If we had enough time, I feel it would be essential to add Digital Safety and Privacy.  Students should be knowledgeable on how to be safe while perusing the internet.

         According to Lenhart et al. (2011), “Ninety-five percent of teens between the ages of 12-17 are online.”  Although the internet is easily accessible to deeper knowledge on a plethora of topics, it can also be a dangerous and risky place if teens are not being safe on the internet.  Parents and educators have the responsibility of teaching teenagers how to practice safety measures and notice potential warning signs to prevent them from becoming victimized while exploring online. 

          Designing a lesson for a digital safety activity for my students would require further knowledge on all four topics.  Additionally, I must be well-informed on the different interactive online tools that are available.  As an educator, I would have to gather useful information to share with my students and briefly illustrate why these topics are important not only for educational purposes, but for life in general.  The lesson would include a group project to create a five- minute PSA on one of the topics that demonstrates vital information that their fellow classmates could learn from.  Each student would also be required to write a reflection paper on what they learned from their assigned digital safety topic and include what and how they contributed to the group project. 

        

       For my group topic, Textual Harassment and Sexting, we used Google docs to communicate online.  We divvied up the sections and were able to share with one another our research information. It was quite simple using Google Docs as an interactive tool.  We decided to use Wix to build our website.  Although it was the first time for each of us, Wix was actually user-friendly and easy to navigate.  Another online tool called Weebly would be a great way to collaborate on group projects.  Each member can login and create their own portion of the website. 

      Although Google Docs  and/or any other online tool is an efficient and effective way to  interact for group projects, I feel that it is also necessary for students to meet face-to-face when working on group assignments.  As a teacher, it can be quite challenging and may have some disadvantages to assigning group projects.  According to Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (2014), “It is difficult to accurately evaluate the contribution of individual students within group work. Valid and fair assessment of individual competence in the group setting is difficult.”  There can be a handful of students who do not contribute to group work/projects, so I would suggest including a short essay or reflection paper to what each student had contributed to the assignment.  Furthermore, the teacher can give a fair and valid grade to each student.  Although there are some disadvantages to group work, I think the benefit does outweigh the disadvantages and educators simply need to be more diligent about it.  

     I enjoyed working on this digital safety project.  I appreciated that instead of a class lecture, this assignment was student-centered and gave us the opportunity to learn while researching our group topics.  Allowing students to “teach” each other gave us the chance to learn effectively in a more fun and interesting way. 

References

Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. (2014). Group Assessment. Retrieved

     from http://ar.cetl.hku.hk/group.htm#3

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Smith, A., Purcell, K., Zickuhr, K., Rainie, L. (2011). Teens, kindness

     and cruelty on social network sites. Pews Research Center, 1-86.