Talking Digital Reputation with High School Students
By: Julie Daniel Davis
Tags: Digital Citizenship, Social Media, Digital Reputation, Education, Critical Thinking

Talking Digital Reputation with high school students with the help of common sense media education

This is interim week at our school. This is a week of nontraditional learning opportunities for high school students that can range from traveling to a foreign country to learn about the culture there to learning how to play disc golf and spending some time cleaning a course as a service project. There are so many options for our students to choose from! One option was called Adulting 101 where students learn how to create a resume, learn how to interview, how to sew on a button, learn about banking and all those adulting things that we as adults do.

I had the opportunity to speak to the two different Adulting 101 groups this week about their digital reputation and how that might impact their chances at future job opportunities. If you know me at all, you know that I am a big fan of Common Sense Media for Education. The first thing I did when asked to speak to these students was go look for resources to get the job done. If you are an educator and you aren’t familiar with this website, get familiar with it and share it with the parents of the students you teach.

Common Sense has an entire series of lesson plans and resources to teach digital citizenship to all grade levels. My first step was to download these resources and adapt it by personalizing it for myself and my students.

I started with sharing two stories in my own life where I have been majorly misunderstood via social media- the Obama donut was one of those stories. I also shared how social media has made a positive impact on my life by getting my missing dog back because of it after her photo was shared on social media over 3,000 times.

Part of this lesson included critically analyzing a scenario. Students read the scenario and wrote their gut reaction to the punishments received. Students then worked in groups to look at people that might be impacted by the scenario and share two reasons or reactions those individuals might have had due to the scenario. They were then asked for the group to come up with 3 different ways the administrator could have reacted to the issue. Lastly, they were asked to individually pick the idea that seemed best and say why.

Of course, I then wanted to personalize it for the students and asked the following questions:

“What do you think would happen if that scenario had taken place at our school?”

“Is it fair that our school holds students accountable for things they do on social media off campus?”

We had some spirited discussions and varied viewpoints were shared. We talked about being part of a community and the rights and responsibilities one has to that community. I played the devil’s advocate. I asked deeper questions to further the conversation. In the end, I asked them “What questions can we ask ourselves before posting something, to protect the reputation of ourselves and others?”

Here are their responses:

How could this impact me in the future?

What would Grandma say? What would younger kids think?

Who is going to see this?

Does this represent me well?

How does this affect the people around me?

How will this impact relationships with others?

Did I ask permission to post this?

How would I feel if someone posted this about me?

Why am I posting this?

Would I still post this if I waited until tomorrow?

Does this make the other person look good?

I share this with you to say, if you give high school students the opportunity to think critically about their digital presence, they will rise to the occasion. The resources are out there ready to be used, lead them forward!