I believe it is important to teach students about digital citizenship and safety as well as practice digital citizenship ourselves. Students need to understand that they don’t need to put any personal information on the Internet in order to keep them safe. Students also need to be taught what is appropriate and inappropriate to post on social media sites. Many conflicts at school occur because of comments that students have posted on social media sites. Therefore, it is our job as teachers to educate them about digital citizenship. We should also teach them to think before they post comments that could adversely affect them in their personal lives and at school. Many schools conduct a “Cyber Safety Week” in order to bring awareness to students about digital citizenship and safety. I believe this is a worthy program that every school should consider especially as technology becomes even more a part of students’ lives.
As a future school administrator, I believe it is important to set expectations for school staff regarding things that may be posted on the Internet. Many teachers are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media networks and they need to be careful about what is posted on the Internet and how it may be perceived by parents or students. For example, a teacher at my school posted something on Facebook that she thought was harmless but was taken in a negative way by other teachers and parents. My principal asked her to remove it from Facebook and she did. I don’t believe that teachers should be restricted from social media sites or for posting comments on the sites. However, I do believe that they should be cautioned to review their comments before posting them. My principal always tells our staff that if you are in doubt about something you probably shouldn’t do it. The same could be applied to posting comments on social media sites.
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