Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World- a new digital ethics curriculum

[Frank W. Baker]

Everyone is talking about the opportunities and risks of new digital media, especially for young people. Research suggests that young people often lack mentorship in their online lives, especially from adults who are savvy about the ways of the web and can offer them guidance into what it would mean to take an ethical course through their digital lives. Many young people want to do the “right thing” online, even as they are confronted with a range of dilemmas, but may need some help identifying good courses of action.

In an effort to address this gap, researchers at Harvard, MIT and USC spent three years developing a casebook of curricular materials called, Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World. Our Space is a curriculum designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments such as Facebook, YouTube, online games, and blogs. The curriculum contains role-playing activities and reflective exercises that invite youth to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people online, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These are raised in relation to five core themes and units in the curriculum: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation. All curricular units and lessons are free and available for download.

For more information, visit:http://www.goodworkproject.org/practice/our-space/
or http://newmedialiteracies.org/our-space-being-a-responsible.php