Activity 9 - Legal contexts and digital identities

Examine the application of guidelines on social media policies within your organisation.

Online presences are increasingly a big part of life and for our students who are growing up with devices and internet being a daily part of their lives it is of extreme importance that they understand how their online presence can impact on their lives.  We as teachers need to understand this as well.


When each child enrols at school they and their parents are required to sign:

1) cyber safety agreement
2) permission to publish

The cyber safety agreement is a bit of a waste of time in my humble opinion.  No one reads it completely, they tend to just sign it.  It's very wordy and not at all inviting.  This is something that we as a school need to work on.
The permission to publish is explained to them at the time of enrolment.  A lot of parents don't really understand what it means to put their work or image online or the implications of what it could mean.  The only people that really don't sign are parents with custody issues in which case it would be detrimental to the child to have their image online.
Each teacher signs a cyber safety agreement when they get a school laptop.

In my class:

The first term this year was spent looking close at being a good digital citizen and what that means.  We spent many hours looking at cyber safety and good digital citizenship through a variety of sources (www.netsafe.org.nz etc) and discussing how this was going to work in our classroom.  We looked at examples of bad or silly digital citizenship and how the situations affected the people involved.  We created a class licence that the children had to earn to be given their GAFE account.  We wear that licence with pride at all times.  The rules are:
1) the only account you can use is your own
2) treat the technology with respect
3) be a good digital citizen
4) if you find a site that's inappropriate, close down and see an adult

If the rules are followed then everything carries on as normal.  The children progress through their licences (learners, restricted, full) as they would a drivers licence and the rules are the same.  Have you licence on you at all times, if you're caught doing the wrong thing then goodbye licence and here's a demerit.  It's working well for me and my class.  Because it's something I have taught well and they understand the implications!

I would trust my children to be able to cope with their level of social media.  Because I have taught them what to do and how to cope.  I'm hopeful they may remember those messages in the future!  My worry is the other children who are not being taught this and the problems they may cause or encounter in their social media journey.  I think it's important that schools now have a policy or view on this, that it's user friendly and that people see the importance.  Before it's too late!