Community reviews for Digital Passport

After completing the unit with the Grade Three and Four students, I would definitely want to use this resource again as it prompted many excellent discussions and teachable moments. We often have the perception that this generation of students are really tech savvy and technology comes very natural to them. However, I believe that is mostly true about their own technology and interests. This resource was useful in our digital citizenship activities because it challenged their thoughts, ideas and experiences with realistic “what- if” scernarios. In class, I enjoyed many teachable moments where I could offer advice reinforced by the videos and activities to help them make excellent choices when online. Overall, Digital Passport is a useful resource for teaching and exploring digital citizenship questions with Grade 3 and 4. However, completing the games is not guarantee of mastery. Activities from the “expert zone” (another area of site), other resources like Brain Pop, media smarts, Netkidz and Cybercafe provide and much discussion, questioning and modelling are an excellent approach to covering this topic comprehensively. Any suggestions or improvements? More activities would be great. Topics that might benefit from expansion might be media awareness (i.e protecting against advertisers), creating a good balance on-line and off-activities, and effective communication (i.e when best to text, email F2F etc.). Also a version for Grade 6 to 8 with particular emphasis on mobile devices and the benefits and risks of social media would be helpful. (Hello Digital Compass!) I understand that an iOS version is also on the way which is great too. (Done now!)

I love it as teaching tool. I like the video clip because kids can relate to the kids that are on the video and they see that they are not the only one facing that problem. I like the idea that student can practice their choices on a game and that at the end it gives them feedback. Love it!

I will be using this again. My students and I both love Digital Passport. While I wish that the iPad version were free like the web version, it is nice to have the flexibility of mobile devices.