Trying to Teach About the Privacy Rights

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.

Digital Citizenship as a Tool to Combat Hate Speech

Outcomes

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 Citizenship Skills

Use digital technologies to engage as active citizens.

Curricular Themes

Equity and Ethics

How This Topic Fits with ELA B10?

For years, there has been a sharp rise in hate speech that is spread online, and this rise only got worse during the pandemic, when it was believed there was at least a 20% rise in hate online (BBC, 2021).

The way many people talk online is hateful, and there are real world consequences because of this kind of speech. In ELA B10, students have to engage with questions of equity and ethics, including if the way people are being treated online fits with our definition of equitable treatment. If online spaces are going to be considered a part of public life, then they should abide by the same rules of decency and respect that are present in the rest of society. Students should engage with these types of lessons so they can gain a better understanding of what online hate speech is, and what they can do online to help combat it.

Overview of the lesson

Like all Common Sense Education lessons, there are a set of slides, and a worksheet to go along with the lesson.

The lesson begins with having students watch a short video where other teens speak about their experiences with online hate speech. As students are watching the video, they should be listening to the experiences of the teens to try and create their own definitions of what hate speech is. Students should share their definitions so a class definition of hate speech can be created. Before moving on to the additional texts for this lesson, students will need to have a definition for hate speech and xenophobia.

Hate Speech= An attack using any form of communication targeting a person or people because of a group they belong to — race, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc.

Xenophobia= he fear or distrust of someone or something that is foreign or unknown.

Students will use this definition when they are reading or watching the two sources they choose for the next phase of the lesson. As students read or watch their texts, students will need to explain what their sources say about xenophobia and hate speech online, and how online hate speech can be addressed.

The sources students can choose from are:

Xenophobia: The Fear of Strangers– a guide that tries to give readers a basic overview of what xenophobia is, different kinds of xenophobia, and how they can see it in themselves.

Is YouTube Radicalising You? – a video from CBC News that includes an interview with a sociologist who tries to explain the role YouTube can play in spreading hate speech online.

Instagram Has A Problem With Hate Speech And Extremism, ‘Atlantic’ Reporter Says– An NPR News Story about how extreme content and memes has migrated onto Instagram, and what Facebook, Instagram’s owner, should do about it.

Common Sense did a good job here of providing a wide variety of sources students can choose from. These sources include multiple forms of media, including print, audio, and video mediums. Students can experience the medium they are most comfortable with and use that to go deeper into the topic. After reading with a partner, students can share their findings with the class, and this can help to students to understand why xenophobia and hate speech are problems.

The lesson concludes with a discussion of “counterspeech.” Counterspeech are messages that challenge extremism (Common Sense Education, 2019). Students begin with a video from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue about how online hate speech can be different from offline hate speech, and it provides a definition for what counterspeech is.

After this video, students will watch a piece from YouTube from the creator Hamza Arsad about how his life has been impacted by hateful ideas about Muslims, and how he tries to combat these ideas through comedy. As they are watching the videos, students are to note how Arsad uses counterspeech, and asks them to start to think of ways that they could use counterspeech in their own lives. Students are asked to think of broad areas of discrimination, such as racism or sexism, and students will then describe how they could use online platforms to go against these narratives.

How to extend the lesson

The lesson ends on a good note, students beginning to think about how they could use counterspeech to go against negative ideas. However, while it is great to have students begin to think about how they can use social media platforms to combat hate speech, it would be even better to see them actually try to do it.

To extend this lesson, students could have to actually create a social media campaign about one of the areas of discrimination they spoke about. Students could work in groups to create a campaign for their school to help combat racism they may see in their community, or they could create a vignette to talk about the dangers of hateful talk online. This would help to take the theoretical ideas presented in the lesson and make them more real.

Other Resources that Could be Used in this lesson

The Making of a Youtube Radical– the story of Caleb Cain, a West Virginia junior college student who feel down a rabbit hole of right wing online content, fits well with the ideas of how YouTube can feed viewers extreme content, and how consumers can be passive in their viewing as it becomes too late for them to combat the ideas they are presented with.

References

Baggs, M. (2021, Nov. 15). Online hate speech rose 20% during pandemic: We’ve norlamised it. British Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-59292509.

Common Sense Education. (2019, August). Countering Hate Speech Online. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/lesson/countering-hate-speech-online.

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.

Laud, Z. (2019, June 7). Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons.

Roose, K. (2019, June 8). The Making of a YouTube Radical. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Starting off the semester with a technology survey

When looking through the Saskatchewan Digital Citizenship Continuum, one of the first key skills students will need to do is look at their schools technology policy and use that to co-create a “Responsible Use Policy” (2015). This policy should make it clear how students can use technology in the classroom, and what appropriate use would look like. However, before these kinds of policies can be created, proper modelling of what proper use means and what that could look like in the classroom.

In our current climate, the use of technology in the classroom is becoming a very hot topic. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has even recently found that one in four countries have banned the use of smartphones in schools, with it being mose common in South and Central Asia (2023). Proponents for such bans claim that they help to raise student grades, and help to protect students from the frequent distractions that come from frequent smartphone notifications. However, there is also contention that the outright banning of technology from schools will lead to even greater disadvantages for students as they will be unable to work with the technologies that make it necessary to succeed in the modern world.

This is why it is necessary to find a balance between the two sides. Students need to understand that technology is like any other tool. There are times to use them, and times when they may not be the best help. As well, outright bans of technology from schools takes one group out of the discussion: the students.

Students need to be empowered to have a voice in how technology will be used in their classrooms and how they use to look. At the start of the school year, students should take part in a discussion about what technology should look like in their classroom, and what appropriate classroom technology behaviour is.

The Purpose of the Survey

I created an example survey on Google Forms that could be used at the beginning of the semester to get an understanding of students use of technology.

My reasoning in creating this survey was to understand students access to technology at home, and to also get a feeling for what they think would be appropriate when it comes to classroom technology use. Their suggestions around what an appropriate classroom policy would be would allow for students to have more agency in how class is conducted, and it would also allow them to reflect on their own technology use. Hopefully, this would set a baseline for what appropriate behaviour would look like in the classroom. As well, the survey could be used as a way to gage what knowledge students are coming into the classroom with when it comes to technology. It should give some idea of what skills students have when they come into the classroom, as well as what technological skills they want to work on the most for the semester.

Conclusion

While some believe that using technology in the classroom should be limited to try and prevent distraction, forbidding technology in the classroom may lead to students being further behind in the digital skills they need to be developing. Hopefully, by allowing students to have a voice in how technology should be used in their classrooms students will feel like they have contributed to the discussion of what is appropriate or not, and they will have a clearer idea of what appropriate online behaviour looks like in their circumstances.

References

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.

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (2023). Global education monitoring report 2023: Technology, in Education: A Tool on Whose Terms? https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385723.

EC&I 832 Major Project Update

Hello everyone. It is almost time to send in our major projects for the class, and I am really excited for it!

For my major project, I am incorporating digital citizenship and media literacy lessons into ELA B10 (a course that may or may not exist in a few years). I chose this course to align with digital citizenship principles because of the core themes of the course, and because ELA tends to be a subject that fits really well with deconstructing media messages.

For those who don’t know, the core themes of ELA B10 are Equity and Ethics and the World Around Us. In both of these themes, there are many ways to incorporate digital citizenship principles, which was even more clear after spending time matching the Grades 10-12 aspects of the Digital Citizenship Continuum with some of the outcomes and themes for ELA B10. As well, I started to think about other high school level courses that fit well with these concepts for the potential of cross curricular work. Health and Wellness have seemed to be the best fits because of those courses focuses on healthy relationships. This was exciting for me because I have never thought about how to have Wellness and ELA work together.

I am hoping to present a series of posts outlining how to incorporate the digital citizenship continuum into ELA B10 to be used as a guide for the future. I will start at the beginning of the semester and work through different units to show how the principles of digital citizenship can help students to reflect on the principles of digital ethics and equity, while also thinking about how digital technologies help to shape the world around them.