What's in the Digital Citizenship Unit

Digital Citizenship is the Typing.com unit on how to behave, think and stay safe online. This article says where it sits, how big it is at each grade, and what a student does in a lesson.

Digital Citizenship requires PLUS, and carries a gold crown in the curriculum rail to say so. It is in the Beyond Typing group of every grade-level curriculum, Kindergarten through 12th Grade and Adult Learner. At the head of the lesson list an overview card describes the unit and carries a thumbnail that opens its film, which is on YouTube as Digital Citizenship.

The unit runs to 4 sections at every grade: 22 lessons at Kindergarten through 2nd Grade, and 29 or 30 at every grade above that.

The sections are named for the grade band.

• Kindergarten through 2nd Grade - Kindness & Trust, Smart Sharing & Media Choices, Respect & Balance, Wrapping Up

• 3rd through 5th Grade - Identity, Privacy & Safety, Media & Information, Respect, Communication & Balance, Reputation & Reflection

• 6th through 8th Grade - Identity & Online Behavior, Privacy, Media & Platforms, Rights, Safety & Well-Being, Wrapping Up

• 9th through 12th Grade and Adult Learner - Identity, Privacy & Power, Participation, Ownership & Consent, Wellness, Security & Rights, Access & Reflection

Inside a section the unit works through one topic at a time. The ten topics at 5th Grade are Digital Footprint, Cyberbullying Awareness, Privacy & Personal Information, Media Literacy -- Ads & Influence, Fact vs. Opinion Online, Copyright & Creative Commons, Digital Communication Etiquette, Healthy Tech Habits, Online Identity & Reputation, and a closing Unit Review.

A topic is three lessons named after it: an Introduction, an Activity and a Reflection.

• The Introduction presents the topic. Most open on a short film with a passage to read beneath it, and end on Read Transcript, which puts the words in a window of their own, and Begin Quiz, which opens a set of multiple-choice questions.

• The Activity puts the topic into practice. Some sort illustrated cards into labeled bins, some drop the student into a scenario to type through and choose how it continues, and some are a typing screen on the topic. Digital Footprint: Activity, for instance, sorts six illustrated cards between Leaves a Digital Footprint and Does Not Leave a Digital Footprint.

• The Reflection is a short typing screen on what the topic came down to.

The lessons carry audio. The lesson bar holds Sounds and a Read Aloud control, and in a sorting activity each bin carries its own speaker button, so a young student who cannot yet read the labels can still work through the lesson.

Digital Citizenship has its own box on the Lessons tab of Class Settings, so you can switch the whole unit off for a class, or expand it and switch off lessons one at a time. Hide Specific Content and Lessons has the steps.

Typing.com sets the unit out lesson by lesson, grade by grade, with the standards it is aligned to, on the Digital Citizenship curriculum page. In the Teacher Portal, Curriculum in the left-hand menu opens the same lessons for the curriculum a class is on.