The purpose of this resource is to provide teachers and parents with a guide for teaching digital citizenship and netiquette to students. Here, you’ll find the definition of “digital citizenship” as well as its application in the classroom and beyond. You’ll learn how to teach safety and privacy in an online learning environment, and about cyberbullying and how to prevent it. Furthermore, we’ll cover digital property and copyright laws, with an emphasis on preventing plagiarism and encouraging fair use online.

The internet can be a dangerous place for students, where mistakes can have grave consequences. Alternatively, the internet can be a great place for students to learn, get a jumpstart on the future, and connect with each other.

With proper education on the issues covered in this guide, students can learn about internet safety and may be better prepared to reap its benefits, while steering clear of the potential pitfalls.

As a teacher or parent (or both), you know that an interactive dialogue with students is essential to education. Students learn when they are engaged and thinking critically about the material. To teach kids about digital citizenship, you must spark their interest and engage them in a dialogue. Fortunately, kids are usually intrigued by the internet. Educating a child on digital citizenship is a matter of relating the interest they already have with your knowledge on this important subject.

Ann Collier of NetFamilyNews defines digital citizenship as, “Critical thinking and ethical choices about the content and impact on oneself, others, and one’s community of what one sees, says, and produces with media, devices, and technology.”

As it applies specifically to the internet, digital citizenship is the set of best practices that describe how a person can navigate safely, ethically, and appropriately on the World Wide Web. This includes efficacy — a digital citizen who adheres to best practices is able to use the internet effectively, for whatever lawful purpose, without compromising their security and that of others.

A good digital citizen knows which types of websites, apps, and online interactions to stay away from, as well as what types of websites are reliable sources of information. They also know what a digital footprint is, and that visiting certain websites and downloading certain files compromises it.

When it comes to cyberbullying and privacy, a good digital citizen follows something akin to the golden rule of the internet: when you engage with others online, treat them the way you want to be treated. This brings us to netiquette.

Netiquette is a portmanteau of network and etiquette. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, netiquette is a set of “guidelines for courteous communication in the online environment.” Netiquette guidelines include rules for both social interaction and technical activities on the internet.

Albion, the longest-running commercial site on the web, includes a resource on the core rules of netiquette, from Virginia Shea’s book, Netiquette. The core netiquette rules are:

Just as proper table manners are a part of dining with a group, netiquette is a part of digital citizenship. Unfortunately, many members of the online community don’t have proper table manners. However, children are now digital natives from a very young age — teachers and parents are well-equipped to influence them positively.

The classroom is the training ground for digital citizenship and netiquette. Through primers, exercises, and discussion, students learn the best practices of digital citizenship in a structured environment. They learn how to use the internet to accomplish goals, and how to be critical of content. Teachers accomplish this through curriculum and hands-on exercises specifically tailored to match practice to curriculum.

Any discussion of digital citizenship should include “Vicki Davis’ “9 Key P’s.” Teachers and parents can use the 9 P’s to shape and curate digital citizenship curriculum. Because the 9 P’s cover a lot of important ground, there are many corresponding resources you can use to create your curriculum.

Here are the subjects that the 9 P’s address:

The above resources provide a starting point for the 9 P’s — there’s a wealth of information about these topics available on and offline. Next, we’ll delve into one of the most important subject for kids who are active on the internet: safety and privacy.

Being able to navigate the internet safely is a necessary computer skill for kids. Internet safety applies both to human users and the information and equipment they leverage online. There are hackers and cyber bullies who seek to compromise networks at schools and in homes. At the same time, there are users who seek to gain access to personal information and try to lure people into vulnerable situations. Staying safe requires an understanding of responsible behavior and responsible use of equipment and resources.

To begin, students should be aware of their digital footprint and its implications. A digital footprint is the unseen record of a user’s activities online, including the websites they visit and the files and apps they download. The footprint exists in passive form, as when a website records a user’s IP address as a “hit” — which includes information about how long they spent on the site and the pages they visited — or in active form, as when a user logs in to a site and makes changes to their profile and/or the content they post.

The implications of a student’s digital footprint are as follows:

Social media is just one place where people can examine a student’s digital footprint. A simple search on Google and any other search engine can reveal information a student doesn’t know is still there, such as profiles they created on old sites.

To schools, teachers, and future employers, the records of a student’s online activities — especially their social media posts — provide a picture of the student’s digital citizenship, which reflects on their ethics and everyday interactions.

To teach middle school students (grades 6-8) about their digital footprints, consider the following best practices and resources:

Middle schoolers are just beginning to step out into an intriguing online world where they can potentially talk to anyone and be anybody. Impart critical thinking skills so they can realize newfound independence without stepping into the danger zone.

To teach high school students (grades 9-12) about their digital footprints, consider the following best practices and resources:

High schoolers are confident digital natives who want to hear the facts and solutions concerning their digital footprints so they can decide for themselves. Parental and school filters aren’t necessarily going to keep them from illegally downloading files and engaging in risky interactions online. It’s the educators’ and parents’ job to help them think critically and ethically about internet safety, in part by modeling digital citizenship.

Modeling digital citizenship is about giving attention to good behavior and “walking the talk” that students hear from authorities on this subject. In other words, if you see a student practicing digital citizenship, commend them for it, and do your best to be a digital citizen they look up to.

As students practice digital citizenship, help them build self-confidence in the classroom by engaging them in activities that help build self-esteem. Combining digital citizenship with confidence-boosting activities helps students build associative pathways that link a positive self-image with digital citizenship and netiquette.

Furthermore, since your students are undoubtedly on social media, consider the best practices for modeling positive interaction on the medium. Nikki Robertson, president-elect of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Librarians Network, recommends the following:

The key is to embrace social media, model positive usage, and set clear expectations and boundaries.

Next, study the Educator’s Guide to Social Media, which provides “a framework for thinking about how to best use social media.” The guide covers ways to protect your privacy on various social networks, how best to interact with students on social media, protecting student privacy, and a host of other relevant topics, including cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying is the use of digital technology to harass, intimidate, threaten, or humiliate a victim. A cyberbully may use texts, social media, email, websites, or website comment boards and forums to troll and bully victims.

In a survey conducted by educators from the Cyberbullying Research Center, nearly 61% of students said they had been bullied online, to the extent that their “ability to learn and feel safe” was affected. Of those who had been cyberbullied, 10% said they had stayed home from school because of it.

To promote internet safety, digital citizenship, and netiquette, it’s crucial to curb cyberbullying. Because cyberbullying affects a student’s psychological well-being and can lead to physical abuse, you must be prepared to help students deal with it.

To help middle school students handle cyberbullies, consider the following best practices and resources:

Middle schoolers know all about bullying, but many of them may not be aware of cyberbullying yet (even if they’ve experienced it), because kids are used to thinking of bullying in the physical sense. Give them illustrations and solutions, and help them engage in a discussion to recognize the different forms bullying, and cyberbullying, can take. Most importantly, work to gain their trust and encourage them to tell you if an incident occurs.

To help high school students handle cyberbullies, consider the following best practices and resources:

Help high schoolers understand they can get help and help others fight cyberbullying. Remind them to save evidence of cyberbullying and report incidents to a trusted adult.

Cyberbullying can include incidents in which a bully steals another student’s identity or digital property with malicious intent. In that sense, it’s helpful to acquaint students with the idea of digital property and its importance.

As any teacher knows, plagiarism is a major issue, and any discussion of digital citizenship and netiquette inevitably must answer the question, “What is plagiarism?” To answer this question in a way that is relevant to the internet age, you must first establish the idea of digital property.

Digital Property

Digital property is any data someone can access digitally, including any kind of file, website and social media accounts, images, intellectual property (such as articles and blog posts), software, and contracts. Unless data is marked as fair use and available to the commons, it is someone’s property and is subject to digital copyright law.

Copyright Law and Digital Property

Copyright law applies to any digital work that is fixed in a tangible medium (i.e. on a hard drive, in the cloud, on a USB drive), original, and creative. The law specifies that creativity can be very minimal and elementary (e.g. a stick-figure cartoon or game). For your work to qualify for copyright, it must be entirely your own. If you plagiarize a blog post and post it on your own site, you are responsible for copyright violation. The second you create an original work under your name, whether online or off, it’s subject to copyright law, meaning other people can’t use it without your permission.

For students, the common issues are plagiarism and illegal downloads. There’s also the issue of making hard copies and sharing documents that do not have a Creative Commons license, or using copyrighted works under the auspices of fair use.

Plagiarism isn’t just the act of using another person’s words and claiming they’re your own — it’s the act of appropriating another person’s ideas or thoughts as well. In short, plagiarism is the act of stealing someone’s work and passing it off as your own.

This applies to images, blog posts, songs — any sort of data that qualifies as the creator’s original work. Even if a creation is licensed under the most lenient Creative Commons stipulation (CC BY), and the student can “distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon” the creation, a student must attribute the source of the creation.

U.S. copyright law permits the “unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances.” In layman’s terms, students and educators can most likely use a copyrighted work if:

Courts determine whether the use is fair on a case-by-case basis.

Fair Use Resources:

Creative Commons: Search portal for all content with a Creative Commons license

Canva: Free online tool that enables photo editing and graph creation, and houses a wide variety of document templates

Clipchamp: Free online tool that enables video editing

In one case, a student had to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and distributing 30 songs. Under federal law, the penalty is anywhere from $750 to $30,000 per copyright infringement. Students may be tempted to illegally download the type of digital property most stringently protected by copyright law: songs, movies, and other creative, original work. They should be reminded of their digital footprint and the penalties they could face for downloading.

To teach middle school students about copyright and digital property, consider the following best practices and resources:

Middle schoolers are at critical time in their lives where they must gain a clear impression of digital ownership boundaries. Help them understand the problem with plagiarism by impressing upon them how it would feel if someone stole their work, as well as the consequences they could face from educators and authorities. Additionally, acquaint them with the flexibility and possibilities of appropriate fair use.

Teaching High School Students About Copyright and Digital Property

To teach high school students about copyright and digital property, consider the following best practices and resources:

High schoolers are enamored with much of what they see online, and they want freedom. Give them plenty of preparation on fair use and provide them with resources to promote it.

The internet is a powerful tool for social networking, research, and education, and it has become almost ubiquitous in modern schools and households alike. Like any tool, though, it has potential for abuse and requires thoughtful use. Students and educators at every level can benefit enormously from learning to be more conscientious users, and understanding the risks and responsibilities of going online in the modern internet age.