Professional Practice Project

Inquiry Description

Personal Inquiry Question:  How might I best educate others on digital citizenship and online internet safety?

In trying to decide what to further investigate for my Professional Practice Project, I knew that I wanted to choose a topic that was both interesting to me personally but would also be helpful to me as an educator and a parent.  I researched the topic of digital citizenship and how I could be a resource for parents and educators on how to keep students safe online.  There was so much information on this topic that I needed to find a way to start to get information out to parents. I started by doing a lot of research on Common Sense Media, Netsmartz and Childnet as well as reading several articles.  I did training on Common Sense Media and Netsmartz.

I started to create a website that will be developed over the next several weeks.  I will continue to add resources and activities to this site.  I hope to use this site with parents, educators, and students to further educate them on how to keep students safe online.  Taking my own experience into account, there are a lot of resources for teachers to use to have discussions with their students about online safety, but not nearly as many sites for parents.  I will focus my research, website, and activities primarily towards parents.

Course Essential Question

C.  How might we ensure that educators and learners practice ethical, legal and safe use of technology?

This question fits the work that was done for this project to a tee.  I also want to add a component that includes parents as I personally feel there is a huge need in this area.  Most educators have participated in technology training in one form or another and are with students every day who can explain what current apps are being used by their peers.  I find that most parents, including myself, desperately need more education.  The speed of technology development is happening so fast, it is a challenge to keep up with it.  The students maintain the pace with technology because for the most part, they live in two worlds:  reality and the virtual world.  For them, it is easy for the lines to blur.  Most parents don't understand the depth of the virtual world in which they live and most kids do not have the vocabulary, emotional growth or even the desire to educate their parents.  Parents and educators often truly do not know what their kids/students are doing online so they fail to ask the appropriate questions to keep their kids safe.  This project is the first step towards opening the lines of communication between adults and their children about social media and internet safety. 

Course outcomes

3.  Plan for educational experience (of K-12 students or adult learners) that demonstrate the ability to use educational technology, sound educational philosophy, and plan for local context.

I have often felt that there was a huge gap in connecting the resources on Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship to parents.  Educators have a need to keep updated to the newest trends with technology that can affect the safety and ethical behavior of students with whom they work.  Educators are given periodical training on technology and they work directly with students and can see what they are doing.  Educators also have peers that will pass on what they are seeing in their classrooms.  Educators also might have immediate human resources available like a Media Center Coordinator or a Technology Integrator that can keep them up to date and help with lessons for the students.  With the knowledge I have gained I would like to design a curriculum that educates parents and also contains activities parents can do with their kis..  I will be designing information that educators can use in the classroom as well as workshops for parents and their children.

7.  Read and synthesize literature and research on educational technology to support personal experience and deepen conceptual knowledge.

Reading the literature and research on Internet Safety brought me to a place I was not expecting.  I really saw a lack of exposure for parents with the latest social media and apps that their kids are using.  Keeping this in mind, over the last two weeks I had informal conversations with several teens.  Most of them were friends of my kids and I was surprised at how forthcoming they were with what really goes on when they are using social media.

I also had conversations with my two oldest teens.  J is 15, a Freshman and very quiet with the adults at school but he is the only one of my four kids that will really open up to me.  Even though I have caught him in some inappropriate situations online over the years, he is mostly honest with us.  Out of my two older teens, J is a natural leader and athlete so we are constantly having discussions about morals, character, leadership and making healthy choices.  He is also the is the one that is most likely to want to fit in with his friends, so we have a constant discussion on choices.  S is 14 and is also a Freshman.  He is a diligent student and an athlete but is also shy and reserved.  He spends a lot of time in the virtual world because it is an environment where he fits in and feels comfortable.  It is extremely important to have conversations with him and maintain an open relationship. We often have to initiate conversation and be patient with him as he processes his thoughts and finds the words to communicate with us.

Both boys told me a lot of their friends were using social media inappropriately and that several never had parents ask them to see their devices.  They also do not have device monitoring software.  Both of my boys said the device monitoring software allowed them to have an "out".  For example, if someone wanted to send them something inappropriate or asks them for something inappropriate they can say that they will get caught because there is monitoring software on their devices that my husband and I check regularly.

We also must keep in mind that as teens transition into adulthood, they require autonomy and privacy.  The balance between granting them that privacy and keeping them safe online can be challenging.  Our kids know we can and will take their devices at any time, but with our two older teens, we try to open communication with them so they end up coming to us when they need help dealing an inappropriate situation online.  At the same time, if we do see something they have done that crossed the boundary of acceptable risk, we will discuss it with them directly.

My synthesis of the literature and research has resulted in a much stronger desire to teach other parents about the technology their kids are using today, especially when it comes to social media.  I hope to give them skills of how to talk with their teens, nurture their relationship and develop open lines of communication when it comes to Digital Citizenship and Online Safety.

Scholarly Articles

The Boundaries between: Parental Involvement in a Teen's Online World

I found this article to be very eye-opening for me personally. Being the parent of teens, I gleaned a lot of information about how monitoring teen's online activity can have different results as to how those teens develop problem-solving skills, ethical behavior, and safety online. This article is a case study of 12 parent-teen pairs and viewing their relationship through Petronio's Communication Privacy Management. (CPM). They found that there were 5 distinct challenges that parents and teen's faced when navigating the need for autonomy vs. the need for parents to monitor their child's safety online. They are: (A.) increased teen autonomy and decreased parental control resulting from teens’ direct and unmediated access to virtual spaces. (B.) the shift in power to teens who are often more knowledgeable about online spaces and technology, (c) the use of physical boundaries by parents as a means to control virtual spaces, (d) an increase in indirect boundary control strategies such as covert monitoring, and (e) the blurring of lines in virtual spaces between parents’ teens and teens’ friends. This study provided insight into boundaries parents may set for their children and the need for autonomy as a teen progresses into adulthood.

Citation:  Erickson, L. B., Wisniewski, P., Xu, H., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., & Perkins, D. F. (2015). The boundaries between: Parental involvement in a teens online world. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(6), 1384-1403. doi:10.1002/asi.23450

Internet use among Adolescents: Risk-taking behavior, parental supervision and implications for safety.

While this was a study that was performed in India, I found the results to be fairly universal and applicable to students in the United States. This study looked at adolescents ages 12-18 and specifically at their risk-taking behaviors online. Adolescents go through a number of changes ranging from physical to emotional to hormonal to social behaviors. These changes combined with the fact that the adolescent brain is still developing the mechanism that regulates those behaviors results in an extremely challenging time for parents and their teens. The risk-taking online behaviors that chatting with strangers, sexual online behaviors, online gambling and sharing of personal details with strangers.

Citation:  Lakshmana, G., Kasi, S., & Rehmatulla, M. (2017). Internet use among adolescents: Risk-taking behavior, parental supervision, and implications for safety. Indian Journal of Social Psychiatry,33(4), 297. doi:10.4103/0971-9962.218603

Sexting among adolescents: A nuanced and gendered online challenge for young people.

For me, this was a challenging study to read, but very important considering this is a risk-taking behavior that many adolescents face today. This was a study done in Sweden but like the Lashmana, Kasi and Rehmatulla (2017) study that dealt with Indian adolescents, I found this study to be Universal to adolescents in the technologically developed world. This study centered on the sending and receiving of sexts from romantic partners face to face friends, online friends, and online strangers. This study found that adolescents are in a place in their development where most naturally explore their sexuality. The internet can provide a seemingly private venue for this exploration. Surveys were sent to 10 Swedish schools and the students answered them anonymously only revealing their demographic information. The results found that most males found sexting to be a rewarding behavior while most females found it to be a situation that caused stress and anxiety. The examiners concluded that sexting was a fairly common behavior among student ages 12-16 and that open communication from the adults in the child's life is the best way to help them navigate through this complicated time.

Citation:  Burén, J., & Lunde, C. (2018). Sexting among adolescents: A nuanced and gendered online challenge for young people. Computers in Human Behavior,85, 210-217. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.02.003

How did your inquiry question support your professional growth? How do you know that your work advanced your learning?

For a very long time, I have experienced students that have seemingly free access to the internet while they are at home and on their phones.  I have seen students that are cyber-bullying and have seen other students that have been cyber-bullied and are scared to go to school.  I often wondered why parents weren't monitoring their children's internet and social media usage.  The more I talked to parents the more I realized that for the most part, it wasn't that they lacked the desire to supervise their children's online behavior, but rather, they lacked the knowledge and resources to be able to monitor and talk with their kids about how to be a good Digital Citizen.  Through my work with this project, I have much more knowledge about why students take risks online and how parents can talk with their kids about these behaviors as well as monitor them as needed.  This work has advanced my learning because I have a much greater base of knowledge when it comes to dealing with internet safety for my own children as well as the students I teach.

Working with my PLN

Our group worked together through Backchannel chat.  I really enjoyed working with my PLN.  We all have such diverse backgrounds and I believe that was beneficial to all of us as we were able to present a different point of views depending on our experiences.  We all presented feedback and differing ideas.  The people on my team are very knowledgeable and were helpful when creating this project.

Evidence of Work

Common Sense EducationDigital Citizenship Training Certificate

Common Sense Digital Citizenship Training

I knew that in order to tackle this topic,  I needed to educate myself more on Digital Citizenship and parental involvement with monitoring the use of social media and online activities of our children.  The first training I did was through Common Sense media.  The training took about an hour and gave a general overview of Digital Citizenship, Digital Footprints, maintaining privacy online and ethical behavior.  I took the training for Grades 6-8 and will eventually do the training for grades 9-12.

Common Sense also has training for Educators that want to be an ambassador and go into classrooms to work with students on Digital Citizenship. 

The entire training took about one hour.

Netsmartz.org Teaching Digital Citizenship Training

Netsmartz.org Teaching Digital Citizenship Training

I also did an online training through Netsmartz.org.  Netsmartz is an online resource that has a partnership with Disney and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  The training took about an hour and a half and I found it to be very enlightening.  The training was thorough and comprehensive.  It covered the topics of Digital Citizenship, Digital literacy and ethics, inappropriate content, online sexual solicitation, online privacy, sexting, sextortion, cyberbullying and practical cybersecurity.  Each section had a video that took anywhere between four and a half minutes to twelve minutes.  Viewers watch the video and then took a quiz.  In order to receive the certificate of completion, the learner had to pass all quizzes.  I liked that you could take the sessions in any order and if you stopped a session, it kept track of all of the sections you had completed and where you were in the current training. This training is geared toward Educators, but parents would also benefit from the information presented here.   I highly recommend this training.  I learned so much from it.

Website Development:  Think Before you Click

In order to synthesize all of the information that I have learned, I am starting to develop a website through Google Sites called "Think Before you Click". I will continue developing this site as I go into my Capstone project using the information I have learned from my research on this topic.  I will talk more about this endeavor as I explain my next steps.

Helpful Resources

In doing research for this project, I found that these four sites were geared toward my goals of this inquiry.

Common Sense Media:  Common Sense Media is a site that I have been familiar with for many years.  This site not only looks at online safety for parents and educator but it even looks at current books, movies, and TV shows.  I really like that Common Sense presents the content of different media that kids may encounter and lets the parents form their own conclusion as to the appropriateness for their own children.  Common Sense has information for Educators, Media and Kid Action.  Common Sense also will gear their information to Educators, Parents, Advocates, and Kids.

NetSmartz:  I had heard of Netsmartz before I started this project but I had never really dug into this site.  This site works in collaboration with Disney and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There are two subsites; NetsmartKids and NSTeens that are specifically aimed for those demographic groups.  I was incredibly impressed with the number of resources available for parents, educators, and children.  I was especially impressed with the games for the younger students that have them practice decision-making skills for situations they may face online.  If you have not checked out this site, I highly encourage you to do so.

Childnet:  Childnet has been around for 20 years.  Their mission is to work weekly with students ages 13-19 to find out what their online experiences are.  They also work with parents, educators and carers and professionals. This site based in the U.K. offers a plethora of resources to use with students.  A subsite of Childnet is Digizen.org.

D.A.R.E. org:  I surprisingly stumbled on this site when doing my research.  I think of the D.A.R.E. program as being primarily related to drug and alcohol awareness but the site offers so much more now.  A major component of the site is Internet Safety Awareness and especially cyberbullying.

Sharing my research and my next steps

I am very excited as to where I'm going with this project.  For my Capstone Project, I will be developing the "Think Before you Click" website and creating a series of workshops for Tweens, Teens, Parents, and Educators.  My primary goal is going to be to provide resources and education for parents as to how to help their children navigate through the teen years and their use of the internet and social media during that time.  Eventually, I would love to be able to go into classrooms to work with students and educators and then to have workshops for parents and carers in the late afternoon and evening.  In preparation for these workshops, I will request meetings with principals, other educators, and school police resource officers.  I feel the need for education of parents will be my primary goal, but it is challenging to make that the only area to be addressed.  I am very excited about the future work I will be doing from the research I've done over the last semester.