October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Bullying is no longer relegated to the playground or the neighborhood. It now regularly happens in the cyberworld. Kids don’t expect that and often don’t know how to handle it.

In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet after suffering months of cyberbullying. She believed her tormentors’ horrid insults, never thought she could find a way to stop them, and killed herself. She’s not the only one. In fact, according to StopBullying.gov, 52 percent of young people report being cyberbullied and over half of them don’t report it to their parents.

Everyone knows what bullying is — someone being taunted physically or mentally by others — and there are endless resources devoted to educating both students and teachers on how to combat bullying. But what about cyberbullying? Wikipedia defines “cyberbullying” as:

the use of information technology to repeatedly harm or harass other people in a deliberate manner

Cyberbullying occurs on not just social media like Twitter, Facebook, and topical forums, but multiplayer games and school discussion boards. Examples include mean texts or emails, insulting snapchats, rumors posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing photos or videos.

How serious is it? (more…)

Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between school bells or the struggling budget of an underfunded program. Now, education can be found anywhere — teaming up with students in Kenya, Skyping with an author in Sweden, or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on class research.

Learning has no temporal or geographic borders and is available wherever students and teachers find an Internet connection. This vast landscape of resources is offered digitally, often free, but to take that cerebral trek through the online world, children must know how to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This used to mean limiting access to the Internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) to discourage students from using an infinite and fascinating resource. It didn’t work.

Best practices now suggest that instead of cocooning students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent. Here are projects to teach kids authentically, blended with your regular lessons, the often complicated topic of becoming good digital citizens, knowledgeable about their responsibilities in an Internet world.

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Ask a Tech Teacher has a passel of online resources to help you introduce, teach, and reinforce digital citizenship to your students. Here’s our long list–and click here for updates if you arrive at this page late: (more…)

Digital Citizenship Week — October 20-24, 2025

You can get a lot of great ideas from Common Sense Education on their Digital Citizenship Week page:

• Digital Citizenship Week calendars, with fun activities and suggested lessons for each day
• AI literacy resources, like AI foundations course for educators, and AI literacy lesson collection for students
• Webinars and events to help build your teaching practice and implement digital citizenship in your classroom
• Family engagement resources to share in your community

Here at Ask a Tech Teacher, we will offer three days of Digital Citizenship resources and lessons. I’ve provided links, but they won’t work until live:

• Digital Citizenship Week: What to Teach When–a video (this one)
• Digital Citizenship Resources–Lots of Them
• 8 Projects to Teach Digital Citizenship–by Grade

We’ll start with a great video (40 minutes) we use in training, available for free today to Ask a Tech Teacher readers. It is a reprint so you may have seen it last year. If not, enjoy!

Digital Citizenship: What to Teach When

Summary

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October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Bullying is no longer relegated to the playground or the neighborhood. It now regularly happens in the cyberworld. Kids don’t expect that and often don’t know how to handle it. This longish article will address cyberbullies–those who bully online rather than in person:

Who are cyberbullies?

Cyberbullies are too often everyday kids with no idea of the damage they’re doing. Their profile is as disturbingly common as it is unremarkable:

1. May be introverts, underdogs or underachievers.
2. May have low self-esteem.
3. Often feel like a victim themselves.
4. May not know how to express anger in an appropriate manner.
5. Would be unlikely to say to someone’s face what they say in cyberspace (especially if there’s a parent or teacher to witness it).
6. Use the Internet as a way to “get even” or vent their frustrations.
7. Often unwilling to take responsibility for their actions.

Almost 70% of cyberbullies also bully in real life. More general characteristics include: (more…)

Hacking, cracking, malware–all these are the reality of life on the internet. Here are a couple of ideas from the Ask a Tech Teacher team ripped from the headlines:

From Social Apps to Classrooms: How the Telegram Hacked Case Can Inspire Cyber Awareness

Telegram is one of the top social media apps globally, with over 1 billion monthly users. Features like encryption, message self-destruction, and Secret Chats have made it popular. Hackers have proactively learned how to hack this platform and succeeded in many cases. Some users lose accounts, others are frauded and others are exploited. 

Educational institutions have a lesson to learn and proactively teach cyber awareness. Educators should teach students how to practice cyber safety and secure everyone. They can present real Telegram hack cases to inspire learners in social media cybersecurity.

Image credit: Unsplash

Lessons students can learn from Telegram hacked cases

Telegram security compromises happen through malware, phishing, hijacking, etc. These social media cybersecurity issues happen due to device security gaps. Such gaps may allow physical access or online malware infection. Weak default settings, like a lack of multifactor authentication, also make devices vulnerable. 

Young users stay active online, and real hacking cases help them understand the seriousness. The first thing users should learn is the signs of the hacked Telegram account. Next, understand how to remove devices from Telegram. Another lesson is how to delete Telegram account if its security is compromised. No platform is entirely cybersecure as long as it is connected to the internet. (more…)

Real world is the best way to teach digital citizenship and what is more real than paying bills. Check out this article from the Ask a Tech Teacher team on teaching digital ethics via their bills–in this case, family health issues:

Teaching Digital Ethics Through Inclusive Medicaid Survey Simulations

As digital citizenship and real-world simulations grow in popularity across classrooms, educators are looking for more meaningful ways to combine technical learning with civic responsibility. One innovative strategy is teaching students about digital ethics through the design of inclusive health survey simulations, specifically those inspired by Medicaid outreach.

This approach blends digital literacy, ethical data use, and healthcare equity into one dynamic learning experience that connects classroom learning with real-world impact. (more…)

I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m going to take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

Overview

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum––9 grade levels. 17 topics. 46 lessons. 46 projects.

A year-long digital citizenship curriculum that covers everything you need to discuss on internet safety and efficiency, delivered in the time you have in the classroom.

Digital Citizenship–probably one of the most important topics students will learn between kindergarten and 8th and too often, teachers are thrown into it without a roadmap. This book is your guide to what children must know at what age to thrive in the community called the internet. It blends all pieces into a cohesive, effective student-directed cyber-learning experience that accomplishes ISTE’s general goals to:

• Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology
• Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity
• Demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning
• Exhibit leadership for digital citizenship

(more…)

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: 7 Netiquette Tips

Category: Internet

Sub-category: MS Office, Keyboarding

Q: What are the most important netiquette tips for students when using the Internet?

A: Here’s a poster:

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

#digcit

(more…)

I get a lot of questions from readers about what tech ed resources I use in my classroom so I’m going to take a few days this summer to review them with you. Some are edited and/or written by members of the Ask a Tech Teacher crew. Others, by tech teachers who work with the same publisher I do. All of them, I’ve found well-suited to the task of scaling and differentiating tech skills for age groups, scaffolding learning year-to-year, taking into account the perspectives and norms of all stakeholders, with appropriate metrics to know learning is organic and granular.

Today: K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

Overview

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum—9 grade levels. 17 topics. 46 lessons. 46 projects. A year-long digital citizenship curriculum that covers everything you need to discuss on internet safety and efficiency, delivered in the time you have in the classroom.

Digital Citizenship–probably one of the most important topics students will learn between kindergarten and 8th and too often, teachers are thrown into it without a roadmap. This book is your guide to what children must know at what age to thrive in the community called the internet. It blends all pieces into a cohesive, effective student-directed cyber-learning experience that accomplishes ISTE’s general goals to:

• Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology
• Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity
• Demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning
• Exhibit leadership for digital citizenship

(more…)