I love Facebook. If for no other reason than it allows me to keep in contact with people from my past without really having to have a conversation with them. My daughter has been begging my wife and me for permission to open a Facebook account for two years now. We have been adamant about denying this request based on her age. As a fifth grader we feel it is important to fight for her childhood. As more and more of her friends are getting on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, it is getting harder and harder to maintain our position. It seems that today's children are more in touch with having online lives. They would just as soon e-mail or post on a friend's wall, then talk to them in school. Given this modern method of communication, it is important that students, parents, and teachers are all on the same page when it comes to understanding what that means and how they should best go about living their online lives.

Using the Common Sense Media curriculum, I am working to develop a plan that combines teacher training, student courses, and parent info packets to create a complete curriculum that best instructs our students about their online lives. Keeping them safe is the number one concern, but teaching them proper etiquette and cyber citizenry are also important in the lessons.

Teacher training can be viewed here.
Student curriculum can be viewed here.
Parent information can be viewed here.