Thing 21

I scored a massive 41 on my Responsible Digital Citizen test. I was surprised at how low I scored.
I think that parents should have a heavy hand and be highly involved with teaching their children digital etiquette. More than likely the responsibility will fall on educators in the near future. We do not have any social skills classes in the college track curriculum, and I don't see any coming in the near future. It will be extremely difficult to teach someone Nettequitte if they have not already attained a level of proficiency with standard manners. The social skills are a dying art form in my opinion. You would be shocked to know the number of times I hear the F-Bomb dropped in casual conversation. While I am monitoring the hall I can easily overhear conversations, but the students don't even bother to look around to see who might hear them. We do have a set of writing standards at our school which includes the lack of Internet/text style abbreviations. It is a small step in the right direction, but did you notice in the description it implies that those abbreviations are alright on the Internet or in texts. OMG ;)
If we are going to work on Internet security, it needs to start in early elementary grades. With security I think the parents have to be on the front line. Students should know how dangerous it is to post personal information on the Internet.
When it comes to your digital footprint students need to understand that once something is on the Internet it is out there for good. posting information about yourself, or others can come back to haunt you at every turn. Again I think that most of these moral decisions have to come from the home. We as teachers can tell a story about the cheerleader who was kicked off the team for inappropriate pictures on myspace, or the Teacher that was asked to resign over pictures used on Facebook, but I think this will have to be established at a much younger age.
Bottom line, if they already have these bad habits when they get to High School they will be much harder to break than if they never develop these habits at all.