Robyn Treyvaud Digital citizenship, Growing up digital

Today I had the opportunity to work with Robyn Treyvoud who
is visiting our school. Robyn is from Australia and specialises in raising
awareness of the roles and responsibilities of growing up in a digital world
and being a digital citizen.While Robyn uses the words digital citizen and digital citizenship she prefers to focus on citizen. She believes and I would support her reasoning that, what you do as a citizen is no different to being a digital citizen. You take precautions to keep safe on line and off line.
This morning she worked with a group of Year 5 and
6 children from my TX Campus. Robyn is up-skilling and empowering this group of
children who are then going to be the digital citizens who lead the discussions
and workshop back in their own classes. Robyn talked with the children a lot about
roles and responsibilities, and posed this in a rings of a circle with self
inside moving through to family and then community. What can you as a child do,
what are your roles and responsibilities and then that of your family. In her
discussions, slides and video, Robyn talked about cyber bullying and how
children can deal with this. The students quite rightly answered ” tell an
adult”. Her next question was, “ what would you want the adult to do?” I found
this comment rather thought provoking as I
listened to the students answers and I reflected on what I would be able to do
within my power to curb cyber bullying. Robyn’s concluding focus was that of
our digital footprint and the small pieces of information we leave behind each
time we log on. All thought provoking issues, and points that each and everyone
of us needs to consider in this the digital age. A great morning and some excellent responses
and questions form the Year 5 and 6 students........... and issues for me to address. One of the first things I MUST do is now develop an Internet policy that is child friendly. The one we have is huge and loads of words. I want something short and meaningful to the students and especially with their ownership. Something  school values we need to address and rewrite with the staff at the beginning of the year.