Poway Unified School District (PUSD) has been accredited as a Common Sense District by the digital literacy nonprofit Common Sense Media, showing its dedication to promoting digital citizenship among its students.
To educate students on the importance of digital literacy, this year, Westview aims to be recognized as a Common Sense School—meeting criteria of teaching three lessons on digital citizenship, engaging the community of parents three times, and having two Common Sense certified teachers, according to Assistant Principal Shannon Parker.
Parker and librarian teacher Jennifer Radosevich have been working to meet the criteria to gain this certification. Radosevich said creating conversations about digital literacy is crucial for awareness.
“At Westview, we really want to make sure that we’re having conversations with students about the importance of digital literacy, because we consume a lot of [digital media],” Radosevich said. “[We want] to make sure that we send students out into the world with some digital literacy.”
Westview taught the first of three digital lessons required for the certification during an extended second period, Jan. 30. Students learned about filter bubbles, where algorithms only present ideas that already align with existing beliefs, and news media literacy.
“We wanted to make sure all students here have an understanding of how algorithms create the information they’re getting,” Parker said. “[We] wanted to help students be aware of their filter bubble.”
Two more lessons will be taught in the coming months on AI misinformation and relationships in a digital world. These lessons have been in the works since they were initially brainstormed two years ago and were recently introduced to the teachers.
“We did a rollout to our teachers on a professional growth day where we shared the district initiative with them,” Parker said. “We shared with them why our students need this education, and they got to hear from some of our students and how it’s directly impacting them. Then, we sent them a one-pager and allowed them to play around with the lesson and decide what they thought was best for their class.”
Parker and the other administrators visited several classrooms during the lesson to gauge student response.
“We left [the classes] feeling hopeful,” she said. “We saw student engagement in the conversations and some enthusiastic teachers delivering the lesson and facilitating the conversations. The student feedback was mixed. Some of the student feedback I got was great, but I also got the other side, which was [that they] didn’t do a lot of talking about it. I hope to get information from students to make sure we’re prepared for the next lesson and prepared to make changes.”
Radosevich said that learning digital citizenship is especially important now that technology is getting more and more advanced.
“Technology is so advanced right now that if you’re not aware of how to use it and how to consume it, it’s very easy to be misled,” she said. “It’s easy to say things that are not true by accident, to consume something you believe to be true, and then to use it when it’s not actually true, but you didn’t know. [Misinformation] is so sly that unless you have skills to detect it, it’s tricky [to find].”
Parker echoed the thought, saying that it is Westview’s responsibility to teach students how to navigate the digital world.
“Almost every student seems to have technology in the palm of their hands,” she said. “I think we would be remiss if we didn’t say that [it] impacts the students in all different ways. Being able to help guide and educate and give them an awareness about that is important.”
With rampant misinformation online, Radosevich said that combining teacher and student viewpoints could provide a valuable learning opportunity.
“Information is power and bad information is just as powerful as good information, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,” Radosevich said. “Adults and teenagers have different strengths in the digital world [and] if we can combine those and have some conversations, student-to-teacher, I think we’ll all be better off.”
