Digital Norms and Responsibilities

This is a topic I feel like I circle back to with my students fairly often. I teach high school government and whenever we get to the section of freedom of speech, we look at cases involving online speech. We use those exact words, 'rights and responsibilities' when discussing what they can and cannot do online. Many students are surprised to learn that legally, they do have many rights to post or do what they would like on the internet (of course with the exception of illegal activities). However then we also discuss what their responsibilities are too in the context of responsibilities as a student, worker, family member, friend, etc. This obviously changes what they feel they should or should not do.

Some responsibilities of a student included:
*Representing their school in the best way possible. This mean not trash talking the school, teachers, or policies (we also discussed if they have issues, how to deal with these personally and not over the internet).
*Utilizing the internet to further their research on different topics presented in school
*Taking advantage to many different youtube videos that include review/recaps of topics that they are learning about in school
*Citing sources that you might use and giving credit to original authors for their work

Some responsibilities of a friend include:
*Not participating in bullying of others
*Keeping friends information private
*Being considerate when posting photographs of others (asking would they want this posted first), ask permission when it seems appropriate
*Using social media tools appropriately to stay in touch with others

Some responsibilities of an employee include:
*Representing your employer in the best way possible
*Not posting pictures of others at work without everyone's permission including your boss
*Knowing what is considered appropriate internet use (on phone or computer) for when you are at work
*Promoting your workplace if appropriate

Helping students understand these policies is incredibly important. They have so much more access to the internet than I ever did and many of their teachers did. There is much more potential for using it in positive ways but risks of many missteps as well.