Managing Your Online Footprint Curriculum — Grades 10 to 12

List of 50 mn expanded digital litteracy lessons for Grades 10 to 12

As parents were caught off guard by the rise of online media, teaching teens in school to be savvy about the traces they leave online is crucial, not only for healthy social interactions, but also for their future studies and job applications. This is a necesary move to expand on what is called digital litteracy education in Canadian schools.

Common Sense Media, a San Francisco non profit, has developped a rich Digital Citizenship ( “ DigCit”) curriculum with Harvard that addresses one’s ereputation in both its good and bad aspects, with interactive, multimedia-rich lessons. I’m involved in helping Canadian and US schools adapt and implement this training, as part of job readiness, social studies, health and well-being or technology classes.

Grade 10 DigCit Lesson : Exploring Digital Selves

The objective here is to get students to reflect on how they portray themselves on social media and become aware of how to leverage these tools to their advantage.

The 50 minute lesson seeks to:

• Describe how their “curated” (online) self may or may not represent their real self.
• Analyze the benefits and drawbacks of representing different parts of their real self online.
• Create an avatar that represents both their real and curated selves.

Grade 11 DigCit Lesson: Who’s Looking at Your Digital Footprint ?

Our digital footprints can have a powerful impact on our future. This can be a scary thought, given that what’s in our digital footprint isn’t always in our control. Teach students to actively manage their digital footprints so as to showcase their best selves and craft a footprint that leads to future success.

Students will be able to:

• Learn that they have a public presence online called a digital footprint.
• Recognize that any information they post online can help or hurt their future opportunities (college admission, employment, etc.).
• Create a vignette that shows how a positive digital footprint can help someone take advantage of an opportunity.

Grade 12 DigCit Lesson: The Change You Want to See

Common Sense stresses research shows that happiness in life is less about what you do and more about why you do it. When your actions have purpose, they lead to positive results — both for you and the world. Help students use the power of the internet to turn their personal passions into positive impact.

In this 50 minute lesson, students will be able to:

• Explain what it means to find your purpose and why it is beneficial.
• Consider different ways that people have used their digital footprint to make a positive impact on the world and whether you would do something similar.
• Reflect on what your own purpose might be, including a problem you want to solve and how you might go about solving it.

A Canadian adaptation of the US-born March for Our Lives could be the Fridays for Future Canada movement, here on Twitter, and here on Facebook.

> The Common Sense Curriculum on Digital Footprint and Identity from grades K to 12 .

Get in touch if you’d like to discuss holding parent & teacher awareness programs and in class sessions for students in Canada and the US. Find me as a digital litteracy expert on the Canada-born Digital Human Library.