Developing Digital Citizens with Maryland Digital Learning Standards

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By Kerri Lambert, Instructional Technology Specialist


This is the second in a series of posts about the Maryland Digital Learning Standards. Read the first post about standard 1: The Empowered Learner here. 


Every year the third week of October is recognized as Digital Citizenship Week, so it’s only appropriate that our next post in our series on the Maryland Digital Learning Standards should focus on Standard 2: Digital Citizen.


Here is the standard:

2. Digital Citizen

Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world safe, legal and ethical. Students:

a) manage their digital identity being aware of the permanence of their actions in the digital world;

b) engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology and online social interactions;

c) demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property; and

d) manage their personal data to maintain digital privacy and security and are aware of Data collection technology used to track their online presence.


This is a very straightforward standard to understand. Going through each indicator, one can see how important this standard is for students to internalize. In today’s day and age, students must be made aware of the long term consequences of their interactions with websites, social media, gaming, and applications. Being able to hide behind a screen makes it easy to forget manners, the importance of being kind, and of authoring your own work. Not sure what to write? AI generators to the rescue. Beyond the ethical and moral issues, the easy sharing of private information becomes a safety concern. So the question becomes, how can we as educators help students learn these lessons without them learning them the hard way?


Thankfully, many of the applications we use in AACPS have fantastic lessons ideas and resources that teachers can use in their classrooms during this week and beyond:


Adobe Express:

Adobe Express is one of the newest applications available to all in AACPS. Try this Digital citizen hero card challenge with your class where each student creates a hero card giving advice on how to be a great digital citizen. It makes an excellent follow-up to several of the videos and podcasts found in Discovery Ed. Which speaking of…

Discovery Education:

Discovery Education’s channel, Digital Citizenship offers several activities for grades 3-5, as well as a podcast, 60 Second Civics, for grades 6-12. The podcast episodes range in length from a minute to just under 2 minutes and have printable transcripts, making them ideal for a quick discussion starter. Pair a podcast link with a Brightspace discussion board to get students thinking about the topic more deeply. Or, steal the idea from the Technology Classroom activity and have students create posters to hang around the school highlighting what they learned from the podcast. Adobe Express would be a great digital option for this project.

Lumio: 

Looking for a quick, interactive, all-in-one lesson for students on Digital Citizenship? Lumio has you covered with this Elementary Digital Citizenship activity.  

Minecraft Education:

It’s tough to find a better way to teach digital citizenship than with Minecraft Education. After all, the students take on the role of a citizen in a digital world! Going to the library of premade worlds and lessons, students have plenty of options. Jump into CyberSafe: Home Sweet HMMM and “stop and think before you click.” Network Heroes has minecrafters exploring a world about cyber security. And let’s not forget about the importance of keeping personally identifiable information safe! In Privacy Prodigy students are presented with everyday scenarios where they have to decide whether they should share certain types of information. Each of these worlds, along with several others can be accessed by students by going into View Libraries> Subject Kits> Digital Citizenship. Any of these would make indoor recess fly by!


Nearpod:

Nearpod has dozens of premade lessons, video quizzes, and Time to Climb activities focused on Digital Citizenship that make teaching the standard no prep/low prep for teachers K-12. Lessons cover a wide range of timely topics including cyber-bullying, the danger of TiKTok challenges, evaluating digital resources, and internet safety. The Time to Climb activities are fun and engaging; think about using these during morning meetings or as five-minute brain breaks. The longer activities are ideal for emergency sub plans or when you have to pivot for a virtual instruction day. For more on Nearpod’s Digital Citizenship offerings, read their blog post on the topic.

Typing Club:

Do your students need practice with their typing and mouse skills? Combine that with digital citizenship lessons by assigning your students the grade level appropriate (grades 1-5) Digital Citizenship courses in Typing Club. Students explore everything from the history of computers, their digital footprint, how the internet works, and phishing all while practicing their basic computer skills. Learn how to assign courses with this article from EdClub.

Wixie:

Not really sure how to get started? Do you want literature connections to go along with your digital citizenship lessons? Then Wixie has you covered with their guide on teaching digital citizenship. Covering six elements of Digital Citizenship including media balance, privacy and security, communication, and cyberbullying, the guide combines picture books with Wixie templates. Read the recommended stories and discuss as a class, and then assign the templates to students to complete during their independent work time.


Digital Citizenship is a life skill that students need to learn sooner rather than later. By incorporating these types of activities and encouraging ongoing dialogue about the importance of privacy and kindness, we are setting our students up for a lifetime of success navigating the ever-growing and ever-changing digital world.

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