Digital Citizenship

As part of Task 1 we have been required to research Digital Citizenship and investigate a number of technologies to produce a poster on a chosen area relating to the topic. My research took me to numerous websites where I found some fantastic tools for children to use and learn about digital footprints www.kidsmart.org.uk/digitalfootprints/; online safety www.netsmartz.org/NetSmartzKids/BeSaferOnline; interactive game for online safety pbskids.org/webonauts/; and two other sites referenced on my poster in regards to netiquette; you can find links here: www.cybersmart.gov.au/Kids/Get%20the%20facts/Netiquette.aspx and www.netsmartz.org/NetSmartzKids/BadNetiquetteStinks I also researched copyright guidelines found on the Murdoch University website for students library.murdoch.edu.au/Copyright-matters/Copying-text-and-images-from-the-internet/.

I decided to focus my poster on netiquette after reading through Internet User Agreements that my children and I were required to sign for their school. Since parents are required to sign the agreements stating that they have discussed positive internet use with their children, I thought it would be helpful to design a poster targeting parents to encourage discussions within the family on what it means to use positive internet netiquette.

After attempting to begin the poster on mural.ly and infogr.am I decided to try piktochart.com/. On Piktochart I found a template that I liked that mimiced a news article. I thought would be appropriate as appearance wise it looked like a newsletter and would grab the attention of parents. The template was easily altered, to insert the map all I had to do was click on the map of the template and a menu to the left appears with different maps to select from. Once I selected the world map I clicked on the save button and the map was inserted on the poster. It was a similar process for inserting the icons. Initially when saving the poster the option allowed it to be saved as a jpeg file. The PDF save function was included for a fee. I did not want to upgrade as suggested to be able to save the file as a PDF so instead I used Pixillon Image Converter to change the file to a PDF. Pixillon is a program I have had experience with previously to convert files and can be used for personal use. It can be downloaded free from a number of sites on the internet. I have McAfee Security on my computer and I only download from McAfee checked sites (a little green tick can be seen next to the link) to avoid any potentially damaging software.  

I decided to employ some authentic learning practices in the poster by directing parents to websites that they could gain information from. Encouraging parents to look for ideas of positive netiquette suitable for children, engages the parents in the process of using the very technologies and skills that are to be discussed. I hoped by sending them to these two sites it would offer a starting point and plant the seed, leading them to look for other areas of useful information in regards to being a positive digital citizen.