As a part of our computer science curriculum, we are helping our pupils to understand what it means to be a digital citizen.
As the world of the Internet becomes more essential to our social and economic organisation, it is important that we show the children that how we behave online is just as important as how we behave offline.
In this workshop, we looked at cyberbullying and how to react to it if we experience it. Nobody in the real world likes a bully and so it should be the same online. Digital citizens are citizens with rights and obligations, just like citizens offline.
Sadly, not every citizen offline is polite and supportive, and neither is every digital citizen. So as we teach children how to deal with a playground bully, we are also teaching them how to respond to cyberbullies. Where possible, as with a playground bully, the emphasis is as much on helping them to overcome their problems as it is with developing the self-confidence in victims or observers to stand up to them.
Human history is full of people being, well, human. Good and bad. Our society today has been formed by citizens who did not stand by and allow the bullies to take over. We are helping to give the next generation of digital citizens the tools they will need to carry that work on in the future.
