Outcomes
CRB10.1- Comprehend and respond to a variety of visual, oral, print, and multimedia texts that address:
• identity (e.g., Diversity of Being);
• social responsibility (e.g., Degrees of Responsibility); and
• social action (agency) (e.g., Justice and Fairness)
CC B10.2 Create and present a visual or multimedia presentation supporting a prepared talk on a researched issue, using either digital or other presentation tools.
Digital Continuum Skills
Understanding the legal implications of online activity
Course Theme
Equity and Ethics
Overview of the topic and lesson
Privacy rights and other aspects of the legal implications of digital citizenship can be difficult to teach. These topics are dense and complicated. Even trained legal professionals could struggle to adequately explain how privacy rights work, and what the implications of them are, so how are teachers supposed to be able to properly prepare students to understand their rights online. This is a difficult topic to try and approach, but organisations have tried to give a road map for how to teach about this.
In 2016, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and MediaSmarts teamed up to try and create resources for teachers to teach their students about online privacy and some of the legal consequences that can come from being online. One of the resulting lessons was titled “The Privacy Dilemma.”
The lesson takes students through a series of case studies about students dealing with privacy issues online. The first one is about a Grade 10 student named Rick who notices a camera in his school cafeteria. Seeing the camera makes Rick think about all of the cameras he interacts with on a day to day basis, from school to the webcam in his computer. This leads Rick to do more research about cameras in public, and he presents a report to his class about what he learned. The second case study is about a Grade 12 student named Jill who starts to get targeted ads for dating services on a website she shops on. Jill begins to worry that she is getting sent ads that are someone far older than her, and she starts to think about whether her younger sister could get similar ads online. The final case study is about a Grade 9 boy named Jared who gets in trouble at school for photos that were posted online of him without his permission. A photo was taken of Jared drinking something, and people begin to claim that it was alcohol. Jared objects, but he gets into trouble with his parents over the photo (Johnson, 2016). Students are to be divided into groups, with each group doing a different case study before sharing their findings with the class.
Each case study has some value, but there is also potential for them to be elevated slightly. Instead of just reading and sharing about their case study, students could create a role play, or write an alternative scenario. This could allow students to start to think about a time in their lives when they experienced something similar.
After going through their case studies, students are to go onto the Privacy Commissioner of Canada website to the “What information is collected about me when I am online section?” Students are supposed to go through the website and see how much of the information on it applies to them. As well, they are supposed to learn about what information is collected about them as soon as they go onto a website, and try to learn what they can do to protect their privacy online (Johnson, 2016). The hope is that students will learn about the different ways their data can be collected, and what they can do to stop this, such as using private browsers and adding content blockers, as well as managing their internet history (Office of the Privacy Commissioner, 2020).
The culminating activity for this lesson is to have students create a video essay about what they have learned about privacy. To successfully do this, they are encouraged to go through the full process of creating a video, from storyboarding and scripting, to getting ready to shoot the video. This is a valuable part of the video creation process because it allows students to see the full process that is necessary to create a video. As well, their videos are not supposed to be too long. MediaSmarts encourages just a one to two minute video (Johnson, 2016). This could allow students to use platforms they may be more familiar with, such as TikTok, to upload their content to. As well, the content they create could be used to be shared with other students to teach them about privacy online, and what they can do to protect their data.
As well, there are other ways that students could use what they learned to help encourage others around the school to learn about online privacy. Students could create a podcast through a service like Audacity to communicate problems people have had with online privacy, or they could create posters and other marketing materials on services like Canva to educate their fellow students about these issues.
By providing students with opportunities to educate their peers about these issues, they may be encouraged to take more control of their learning, and they may be able to more effectively communicate a message about digital citizenship to their peers. By allowing students to use mediums they are familiar with, it may allow them to provide a more powerful message.
Refernces
Couros, A. & Hildebandt, K. (2015). Digital Citizenship Education in Saskatchewan Schools. Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. file:///Users/jordanhalkyard/Downloads/83322-DC_Guide_-_ENGLISH_2%20(5).pdf.
Johnson, M. (2016). The Privacy Dilemma. MediaSmarts. https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/lesson-plan/Lesson_Privacy_Dilemma.pdf.
Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2020, Jan.). What kind of information is being collected about me online? https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/about-the-opc/what-we-do/awareness-campaigns-and-events/privacy-education-for-kids/fs-fi/choice-choix/.
Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.
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