The teaching of Digital Citizenship presents many challenges for all schools. Each faces slightly different challenges, and these challenges can quickly change and evolve in response to new social media products or features.

There are two main approaches that we have tried in the recent past. This blog has described the utilisation of outside experts and the deliberate ‘teaching’ of content to allow students to create resources for others within the College. While both of these approaches are beneficial and produce some, albeit potentially temporally, impacts on the behaviour of students, it has always been a particular challenge to find an appropriate, robust scheme of work that guides students through some of the myriad of issues and content that the internet and in particular Social Media produce.

In 2017 we have introduced a new Y9 course; Digital Literacy. All year 9 students spend 1 period a week with me, covering a wide range of topics such as computer knowledge and care, the O365 suite, and basic programming. This term has been dedicated to Digital Citizenship. Earlier this year, a P.E and Health teacher at our College, Mrs Nicola Richards, alerted me via twitter,to an Australian online Digital Literacy course developed by the Allannah & Madeline Foundation.  They have created a Digital Licence, an eight module course designed to guide students through a range of different topics:

• Digital Devices
• Protecting Privacy
• Searching and Researching
• Creating and Sharing
• Social Networking and Gaming
• Communicating Safely Online
• Relationships and Reputations
• Coins, Credits and Tokens

The licence has been in use in Australia for a number of years, with current estimates indicating that up to 200,000 students there have completed the program. There is a small AUD$10 charge per student, but in 2017 that charge is generously being meet by Google NZ for all NZ Y8 & 9 students.

Student Management

A great feature of the program from my point of view was the ease of enrollment. A simple CSV export from our SMS of each of my classes names was imported into the site – and usernames and passwords were easily generated. Students then go to the site and get started. With 8 different classes, it was important that it was easy for me to manage the module’s content, and track student progress easily; and the site delivered. It was simple for me to lock and unlock modules, and track student progress through the site.

Planning and Task Development

For a teacher, each of the modules is well planned, and a range of suitable activities are provided, along with a number of links to appropriate video resources.

Example of the planning section for the Protecting Privacy Module

Because I only see my Year 9 students 1 period a week, I was pretty restricted in the amount of time that I could invest in each module – so I adapted the suggested tasks and videos to be a more discussion based teaching method. Ideally there is the potential to make each of these modules a weekly focus to add a little depth and context to the course.

Assessing Student Progress

Perhaps my favorite feature of this course are the engaging quizzes at the end of each topic. Through a combination of basic animation and realistic examples, the completion of the quizzes became a motivating tool for many of my students. Each 10 question quiz has an 80% pass mark – and all 8 modules must be passed to enable a student to receive their Digital Licence.

The quizzes are relatively difficult – so I have a couple of classes where students progress is quite varied, but I have turned this into an opportunity for students to buddy up to help each other with their progress.

Overall, I have been really impressed with this scheme of work. I feel that it has good coverage of the important issues facing Y9 students, and the site is well structured, really easy to use, and engaging for students. The level of difficulty is relatively high which I think is a positive, as it has lead to higher levels of engagement from my students. I would be happy to recommend this program to other schools, though I would encourage them to carefully reflect on the aspects of it that you wished to use.