Google’s Be Internet Awesome curriculum is a tool I plan on sharing my coworkers and administrators for the fall. Currently, our district is looking to revamp its computer courses for the middle school, and I think adopting this curriculum could be a great jumping-off point for all of our classrooms at the middle school, especially since the users do not have to have a Google account to play Interland, but the curriculum can still be used in Google Classroom.
I started with the curriculum first, and then I moved on to the Interland game. When looking at the curriculum, one of its biggest selling points was how well it aligned to our new social-emotional program, Second Step. Every Tuesday through Thursday, our school spends their Zero Hour (the first hour of the day, much like a homeroom) working through different social-emotional lessons and activities. In the case of the Be Internet Awesome curriculum, units like “It’s Cool to Be Kind” and “When in Doubt, Talk It Out” could be used alongside our Second Step work. I would propose that we utilize our Friday Zero Hour time to either teach one of the lessons or practice the skills on Interland. This would allow students to talk with their peers about internet safety and responsibility while not dumping it all into our computer teachers’ laps.
Another way I could see this program being useful to myself would be by taking the “Don’t Fall for Fake” unit and teaching it prior to any research done in my class. One of the first units I teach in the fall is primary and secondary source materials. With a big push from the state to adopt a more online-friendly Social Studies curriculum to align with the C3 Framework, teaching students how to properly identify reliable sources online would be a great use of my own classroom time. I often use the term “bias” when teaching sources, but some of the other vocabularies that came with this unit would open the doors to a lot of discussion on the legitimacy of sources (such as “disinformation” in the news).
Although this curriculum is not for the age I teach (7th grade), I think that this would be a great starting point in the fall for my students. I see far more benefits from this curriculum and Interland than I do costs. Even if Google’s curriculum and game were a jumping-off point for our district, having a canned program for all teachers to follow means that they could adapt it and make it better fit their individual needs as they use it. This is the kind of versatility the school district could use while moving toward a more digital citizen minded middle school.
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