CyberCivics: Waldorf Schools are Media Literacy Role Models
CyberCivics photo consent lesson
CyberCivics is a curriculum that includes digital citizenship, information literacy, and media literacy using the Waldorf philosophy as a guide.
Waldorf education emphasizes thoughtful, intentional and developmentally appropriate technology use. We advocate for a low-tech approach in early childhood and the elementary grades, followed by a curriculum in middle school that helps students understand tech as a tool and engages them in conversations around digital ethics, privacy, media literacy, and a balanced use of social media and technology. Our approach gives Waldorf graduates the tools and knowledge they need to be independent, creative and ethical digital citizens.
In this article, Soni Albright, the CyberCivics Teacher from City Of Lakes Waldorf School in Minneapolis, MN shares how Waldorf Schools are leading the way in this important area.
“Waldorf schools have been quietly holding this conversation with intentionality and patience: asking families to be thoughtful, mindful, discerning, and slow with media access for children. Not to deprive them, but rather to give children the gift of childhood—the endless opportunities that come with downtime, boredom, and unscheduled freedom. To favor face-to-face interactions over abstract experiences. To work on self-regulation, problem solving, physical movement, and social-emotional regulation.”
CyberCivics rumors lesson
“By the time Waldorf students get to middle school, even though many aren’t using digital media at the same level as average kids their age, most are participating in weekly Cyber Civics lessons ranging from simple concepts such as what it means to be a citizen in any community and how to apply that to the digital world to more advanced topics such as: privacy and personal information, identifying misinformation, reading visual images, recognizing stereotypes and media representations, and ethical thinking in future technologies.”
The CyberCivics curriculum has been in existence since 2017 and Tamarack was working to put it into use just as the pandemic forced us into online learning. We had a dedicated CyberCivics teacher implementing the curriculum to our 5th-8th grade students virtually over the 2020-2021 school year. As we have moved back to in-person learning, the class teachers have now taken over the coursework.
You can learn more about Tamarack’s grades curriculum here.
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