Netiquette: Every Day

Child using Laptop

“Our Blog: a place to enhance written discourse and media citizenship among students.”

What does that mean? How do we explain this to our students?

In our writing classroom, we review lessons from these sites:

Net Smartz
On Guard Online
I Keep Safe

I also added from Theresa’s Daily Question 2 Response, the following sites from which we can learn more:

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/

http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html

And we apply them to our class behavior. The sixth grade wrote skits about bullying, which we then discussed for online safety. Daily we review or remind ourselves what is expected. We use code names, or pseudonyms, instead of our real names. Each student signs an agreement to practice our guidelines of Netiquette. Parents sign permission forms. Second to parent permission, is our daily practice in the classroom of how we treat each other: respectfully and kindly. And online we never reveal personally identifying information.

In my previous post (Ready), I discussed guidelines from other bloggers, which we will discuss and apply to our work as we begin blogging about issues important to us.

On our class blog, we will review:

Guidelines (our expectations, purpose, and safety rules)
Why Blog (pedagogy for wikis and blogs)

The design of our blog, with three columns, allows the guidelines to be posted in the left margin, as a frequent reminder to us. I will take the advice of my colleages (Mrs. Krebs, Ms Ratzel, and Mrs W) and ask students to demonstrate online their netiquette before they are allowed to create their own posts. We will comment first, then advance to posts. Students will draft first for approval second. Our students have been working in Google Apps and wikis since the beginning of the year; we have had no incidents of negative work beyond one negative comment at the first of the year by a fifth grader. We quickly discussed the issue in our writing classroom, and have not had another incident. The students understand how serious online citizenship is. At least in school, they practice our expectations.

We’re finishing up our current projects, and then plan to begin work on our blogs.  How do you introduce your students to media safety and global citizenship?

Students, when you read this, what would you mention about online safety?


Photo Credit:

Child Using Laptop: Flicker CC Attribution 2.0 By P i c t u r e Y o u t h http://www.flickr.com/photos/45688888@N08/4191381737/

8 Comments

on “Netiquette: Every Day
8 Comments on “Netiquette: Every Day
  1. Pingback: Blog with students – Visit these Week 2 | Teacher Challenge

  2. I really like the ideas you’ve given….and look forward to seeing what all your students write about.

    Maybe we could write a collaborative story together. We could start it one one blog and have different students take turns adding a sentence or a paragraph to the story until it’s done.

    What would you think of doing something like that….maybe they could show both of us how well they use their netiquette to interact while writing the story.

    marsha

    ps….my Edublogs logon in doing something funny and I had to use a logon that I don’t have linked back to much of anything. So sorry for the username that goes no where. We’re at http://lmsblogs.org and you’ve already found my professional blog at http://www.teachingtechie.typepad.com

    C u around!!!!

    marsha

    • I like the idea. Are you thinking the story would be in the comment area through a writing prompt or story starter? We could start a different one on each class blog. An interesting idea! I wonder if we could tie it into Earth Day?

  3. This is a great post. I like the idea of keeping class blog guidelines in the sidebar as well as having students earn the right to have their own blog by posting comments.

    Thank you for sharing!

  4. Great guidelines and reasons why to blog. You give great explanations! When my students are ready to comment/share I would love to share with you!

    Mrs. Allen

    csrncomputers.blogspot.com

    • I noticed on your blog that you are connecting classes for projects. I hope the student blogging challenge includes class blogs. That would be a great start for us. I’m sure my students would love to share comments. Thanks for your comment. I’ve added your blog to our blog roll.

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