Bringing digital citizenship into the school curriculum

Educators around the world have embraced digital literacy in the classroom, encouraging their students to create and engage on the the internet. They recognize digital literacy as an important future skill for their students, and also understand the importance of teaching kids how to be good digital citizens. And yet, teaching digital citizenship isn’t always straightforward—and can be pretty intimidating—given the many ways in which young people use the internet today.

This is why we are releasing a free online training course that helps educators equip their students with the foundational skills they need to create a safe and positive experience online. By reading, watching videos, and doing different activities in the Digital Citizenship and Safety Course, they can learn how to integrate digital citizenship and safety activities into their school curriculum.

The course includes five interactive units:  

• Teaching students about internet safety and privacy, including setting strong passwords and privacy settings
  
• Staying safe on the go by securing your mobile device and avoiding harmful downloads on your smartphone
  
• Savvy searching, to help students evaluate the credibility of online sources of information
  
• Staying safe from phishing and other scams
  
• Managing online reputation, including protecting sensitive information
  

Upon completion, educators will receive a downloadable Digital Citizenship and Safety Curriculum that they can use to introduce these critical lessons to their students. And teachers who successfully complete the course will receive a Digital Citizenship and Safety Educator recognition badge.

The online training course is now on the Google for Education Training Center, and available in 15 languages: Chinese, Danish, English, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai and Turkish.

We want to help ensure that today’s young people will become smart and responsible citizens both online and off. This is why we’ve developed programs like Be Internet Awesome and the Online Safety Roadshow that teach kids how to be safe, confident explorers online. But we also recognize that it’s important to partner with educators too, so we really look forward to seeing how the Digital Citizenship and Safety Course will help teachers tackle this important topic in the classroom.