When working online, digital citizenship is something you need to be successful at. Digital citizenship can be defined as who you are online…so who are you online? Depending on the reasons you are online, it depends what type of citizenship you need. Who Are You Online? Considering Issues of Web Identity by Kelly Schryver gives a lot of information about digital citizenship but I will only be talking about a few points.
One way Schryver talks about is Googling yourself. Will this search be positive or negative? This all depends on how you act on the internet. Now, Google is not going to tell you if you are a good or bad person online. It just allows people to see what you post online. My best advice for this is thinking about what you post before you post it. Once you post something, it is online forever even if you delete it. There will always be access to a post or photo that is on the internet. This brings me to a huge problem I want to talk about which is Cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying has become so popular now because people are able to make profiles that are not them. It is important to be aware in the classroom of cyberbullying. Sometimes, cyberbullying can be worse than physical bullying because it is not face-to-face and you might not know who is behind the comment. Paula Green wrote an awesome article about 7 Ways to Prevent Cyberbullying. While there is seven different points, I will onlybe discussing a couple.
The first point is engaging parents and youth. Depending on the age, most parents are not every tech savvy. This is not a problem but it does not make them aware of what they need to be on the look out for. Cyberbullying can be so easy to hide but still gives the same impact on the victim. It is important to teach parents some signs to look for and form a community that is against cyberbullying. The parents also need to raise their kids to know cyberbullying is not acceptable and there can be major consequences whenbeing a cyberbully.
The second point is building a positive climate. It is important for teachers to creative an environment with parents in order to make a positive influence on the students. This is where forming a community is important. As I said before, the students need to know that this type of behavior is not tolerated.
These are just a few points I found interesting and could include in my future.
Until next time,
-Rachel
Rachel's Mind 
I love the graphic with the words being shown in action. Bullying is so scary. The “Thirteen Reasons Why” show on Netflix has had a huge impact on our youth. As parents and teachers, we have received information to help students process the topic of suicide as portrayed in the show.
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I’ve heard positive and very negative things about “Thirteen Reasons Why.” What is your opinion on it?
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It is something so scary and with hidden accounts, parents and teachers are almost useless to put a stop to it. I think it is just important we do all we can.
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Cyberbullying is one of the things I am most scared about as a teacher. I think most of my students have realized if they say or do something in school (especially my room) to hurt someone else, they will get called out on it and in trouble. But the places I, and other adults, can’t be is on all of their social media accounts. They are able to hide so well, yet hurt so much. 😦 That’s why I’m going to try to emphasize using technology/social media to build each other up, like the WestHighBros!
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I agree completely. Technology can be a great thing if used correctly
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I think it is so important to educate parents about cyber bullying. It is not something many people of that generation have had to deal with.
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I agree!
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