Dive Brief:

• Part of the curriculum for graduate students pursuing a master’s degree in education at the University of Michigan includes teaching digital citizenship to Ann Arbor middle school students while learning about ed tech.
• EdTech: Focus on K-12 reports Liz Kolb, a clinical assistant professor of education technologies, realized the school was not preparing future teachers to have complex conversations about what is safe, kind and responsible in an online environment so she built those lessons into a student-teaching experience.
• The program, which creates a win-win for graduate students and their counterparts at Scarlett Middle School, offers grade-specific lessons in privacy, security, phishing, copyright infringement, online reputation and cyberbullying.

Dive Insight:

Teaching students digital literacy has become a key priority in K-12 schools across the country as digital technologies take an ever-larger place in classrooms and in students’ lives. Beyond teaching students about the dangers and consequences of cyberbullying, schools are being tasked with making sure students understand how to keep their personal data safe, along with their devices.

Following revelations that fake news could have swayed the presidential election results, educators have done some soul-searching. A recent survey by Stanford University professors found students of all ages have trouble assessing the validity of online content, including whether it is coming from reliable sources. Recent events seem to make clear schools should build more digital literacy training into their curricula.