World Web Tutorials
How to Evaluate a Website: When using online sources for formal research, how do you determine credibility in order to validate the reliability of your own research?
RADCAB: Your Vehicle for Information Evaluation
Edutopia: a collection of articles, videos, and other resources on internet safety, cyberbullying, digital responsibility, and media and digital literacy
Embrace Civility in the Digital Age: promotes approaches to address youth well-being and risk in the digital age in a manner that promotes positive norms, increases effective skills and resiliency, and encourages young people to be helpful allies who positively intervene when they witness peers being hurt or at risk.
Media Smarts: “brings together the various concepts and competencies that define what it is to be literate in today’s complex media culture. Here we explore digital literacy and media literacy and their underlying aspects and principles” Young Canadians in a Wired World backgrounders from MediaSmarts:
Profiles of Kids in Grades 10-11
Common Sense Media: offers free materials are “designed to empower students to think critically, Internet Safety, and participate responsibly in our digital world.”
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Dr. Jason Ohler’s MOOC is a great introduction to digital citizenship for teachers and parents.
Click her to watch: Digital Footprints by Michelle Clark
It’s interesting that they call it the World Wide Web
Because like foolhardy flies we all ultimately get trapped.
But it’s imperative that when we surf, we start using our head
To proactively protect and navigate our own social map.
Sign in. Username. Password. Click. “Whoo! Now I’m safe.”
Not necessarily because our every interface on a digital device is recorded somewhere
And you better believe there’s a price.
It is not enumerated in dollars and cents, it’s a more constant currency
In the form of a digital footprint.
When we make our lives public it’s hard to keep a secret.
Billions of people access the internet and not everything gets deleted.
Don’t quite believe me? Well let’s take a walk down that path
And let’s see what you learned from your social graph.
t’s the global mapping of everyone and how they’re related:
Your friends, your family, the questionable people you’ve dated.
In cyberspace a visible history of our lives and interests has accumulated
And there are serious consequences for leaving our thoughts and actions ungated.
Still not convinced? Well I’ve seen it with my own eyes:
A young and intelligent high school student. Ahead of him, his whole life.
Accepted into an Ivy League school, but had his admission rescinded.
Let’s just what was on his profile page cannot be commended.
And it’s not just universities, it can be utilized by enquiring employers.
You think they don’t do their research? They’re quality-control voyeurs.
Something we view as harmless, “Freedom of self-expression!”
From a professional perspective? You’ll be fired, no question.
Whether it’s YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
Before we upload, download, type on those keys, press Enter,
We need to slow down. Take time. Think. Consider:
How will this instant information impact our hopes and our dreams?
How could this careless communication be interpreted? Or released?
“What’s the solution?” you ask, “How can we really be safe?”
Well, if there are aspects of our lives we want private, then we should keep it that way.
We do not need to post every part of our pedestrian progressions
And we don’t have to constantly coexist solely via internet connection.
There is a whole world out there.
We can hear, see, smell, touch and taste it.
The chain tying you to that screen? Antiquated. Written in pencil. Erase it.
And when we do sign in again? We’ll be thoughtful, we’ll use tact
Because we understand our digital decisions can have a lasting impact.
Life has no Apple or Ctrl-Z. You can’t take everything back.
The internet is a remarkable resource
And if we make intelligent choices now there’ll be no need for recourse
Especially if we empower ourselves to censor what we enter on our keyboards.