One of the unit I teach my student in Information Literacy is Digital Citizenship.  We spend time sharing and discussing netiquette, digital privacy, maintaining a digital footprint, and cyberbullying.  I have found that this provides a sounding board for many of my students and we have had some amazing conversations.

More than 90% of my students own a cell phone and most of them are on social media.  The issues we are discussing are real and need to be discussed.  This is one of the few classes that takes the time to discuss digital citizenship at length.  I have found that many of my parents have no idea where to start and some are even unsure about some of the newest social medias like Snapchat.

Last year I decided to not only discuss the issues, but also to spend time creating with technology so students could promote digital citizenship themes through 21st century technologies.  Specifically my 7th graders created projects that I am especially proud of.  Students created Animoto videos on a digital citizenship topic.  Did you know that Animoto offers free accounts to educators and their students.  Here is a link with information for getting educator accounts.  https://animoto.com/education/classroom My students enjoyed making the videos and were very proud of their finished creations.

Digital Citizenship Animoto Videos

1. It was explained to students that they will be making a PSA with Animoto on a specific area of digital citizenship (digital privacy, cyberbullying, keeping a clean digital footprint)
2. Students picked a partner and began planning out their video using a storyboard paper.
3. Students were instructed on using Animoto, and began creating their video.
4. Videos were created using at least 5 slides (most of my students opted to do more)
5. Students added their videos to Padlet so we all could share.