Have you ever taken a photo off of Google to go with an assignment or even downloaded a song without paying for it, even if it's for personal use? Students in Red Deer Public Schools are learning more about digital citizenship thanks to new monthly lessons.
"Kids are growing up in a digital world and it's our responsibility as educators to prepare them for the future and to give them every opportunity and advantage to be successful in society and to be contributing society members too," said Stephen Pottage, Educational Technology Coordinator with Red Deer Public Schools.
The curriculum, which is in support of the District's digital literacy initiative, started in October. They include ready to go lessons for students in Kindergarten to Grade 12. The lessons can be found on the Red Deer Public Schools website.
"Right now we're using resources provided by a couple of different websites. The advantages are there is a lot of content and in multiple languages - English, French and Spanish," said Pottage. "We're just taking existing lessons and making them available for teachers. We're aligning them so everyone in the District is working on the same theme every month."
He added Red Deer Public Schools felt it was important to incorporate the curriculum at all grade levels throughout the District.
December's theme is Creative Credit & Copyright. In this topic students will learn about copyright, plagiarism and piracy.
"When people talk digital citizenship, primarily people talk about the bad - the dangers of being online. But we also want to talk about the advantages. If your an artist or a creative and you want to share your work online, there's hundreds of thousands of experts out there that you can share your information with," said Pottage. "We want to get kids to understand the rights that are afforded to them when they are publishing stuff online and also to respect those same rights when using media or mediums from other people."
Stu Henry, Superintendent of Schools added one challenge is that digital citizenship is not currently in the Alberta curriculum.
"We're hopeful when the new curriculum comes out that digital citizenship and digital literacy is embedded across all curriculums," he said.
However, the District has tried to make it as easy as possible for teachers to incorporate this topic in their lessons.
"We're not trying to add things onto teacher's plates. We are utilizing existing resources - we are not asking anyone to create anything, but at the same time we are also cognizant that time is precious, so we are only picking resources where everything is there and laid out for the teacher," said Pottage.
As for parents, Pottage said the message can be applied to them as well.
"If you're a business owner and you are taking images and putting them on your website then you need to understand the legal ramifications. Copyright is a big one too - it's about how we education people on respecting the intellectual property of others."
For more information, check out https://sites.google.com/rdpsd.ab.ca/rdpsd-digital-literacy/digital-citizenship. Parents can also check out https://sites.google.com/rdpsd.ab.ca/rdpsd-digital-literacy/parent-resources.
