Breaking It Down: Today’s Digital Citizens Week Four

Breaking It Down is a blog series where we break down Youth Speak Out International’s curriculums week-by-week, exploring the major concepts and activities. This post looks at the lesson for Week Four.

In Youth Speak Out International’s Today’s Digital Citizens program, students have the opportunity to explore their relationship to the digital world in a creative and engaging way. In Week Three, students had a discussion about cyberbullying and began working on the design stage of their Public Service Announcements (PSAs). Students were tasked with going home and talking to their families about how to be effective digital citizens by introducing them to the Digital Citizenship Family Agreement.

Week Four starts with students recapping Week Three and sharing any interesting insights from their conversations with their families. How did their families react to the Digital Citizenship Family Agreement? How were they able to see how these issues impact their connections to each other and to other people in their lives? 

Once students have settled back into the digital citizenship conversation, they dive into the next stage of work on their PSAs. In Week Three, students created storyboards laying out how each scene of their PSA would unfold and began to think about who would do the voiceover. In Week Four, students finalize those storyboards, making any last-minute changes and tying up loose ends before they begin filming. 

As each group picks up their iPads and begins the recording process, the facilitator takes the students who are doing the voiceover to a quiet space where they can record their lines. After about 20 minutes of work, the students put down their digital devices and talk about the differences they notice in how they interact with and without the iPads. 

This conversation leads to the students’ homework: going home and talking to either a parent or a sibling about how we connect to people online vs. in-person. At this point, students can begin to see their creative project come together, and they are in a better position to have informed conversations with their families about the digital world and the impact on how we interact with our community. These lessons will continue to unfold as we look ahead to Week Five.