Are Your Students Responsible Digital Citizens?

Digital Citizenship Week (October 20–24, 2025) is your chance to spark conversations about what it means to be kind, safe, and responsible online. 

Students begin using technology at a very young age—whether it’s playing a game, using a learning app, typing assignments, researching online, or connecting with friends. Teaching them how to navigate the digital world safely and thoughtfully is essential. 

Users of Keyboarding Without Tears program can reinforce this with age-appropriate lessons and interactive activities found in the Teaching Resources section of the educator dashboard, +Live Insights. 

Through engaging, hands-on lessons, students can explore important topics like data privacy, online safety, and cyberbullying in a developmentally appropriate way. Activities guide children to think critically about what personal information should remain private, how to identify safe online spaces, and how to respond if they encounter hurtful online behavior. These real-world examples and discussions help students practice empathy, kindness, and caution when communicating in digital environments. 

As students build their keyboarding and digital fluency skills, they also learn about the digital footprints they leave behind. Understanding that their words, photos, and actions online can have lasting effects empowers them to make smart choices. Digital Citizenship Week reminds us that it’s never too early to build these lifelong skills—and that resources like Keyboarding Without Tears make it easy for educators to weave digital responsibility into everyday learning. 

Through a collaboration with Common Sense Education ®, there is simple access to Digital Citizenship lessons through your +Live Insights dashboard in the Teaching Resources section. Simply click on the Digital Citizenship & Digital Literacy tile, and create an account if you’re new to Common Sense Education. Once your account is set up, you have access to all the engaging, offline activities that can be sorted by grade level. Many of the activities are appropriate across K-5 and the resources are available in both English and Spanish. 

During Digital Citizenship Week, you might incorporate a digital citizenship activity each day. You could also send home the resources available in the For Families section at the bottom of each activity, which offer activities, tips for families, and engagement resources. We all need to do our part to educate students on how to properly use the devices we give them access to. You wouldn’t allow a teen to drive a car without instructions and lessons on how to drive. Similarly, we owe it to our kids to teach, model, and reinforce responsible online behavior if we allow access to technology.  

Activities may take as little as 15 minutes or longer at 45 minutes. And what fun! There are Digital Citizenship Certificates that you can print, sign and date to award to students after they complete the teacher-led digital citizenship lessons.  Find your Certificates in the My Classes & Students section by clicking on the 3 black dots in the upper right corner.   

After reviewing the Digital Citizenship activities, be sure to check out the Tech Readiness Digital Literacy activities too, for hands-on, unplugged activities to teach general computer readiness. By building these skills we contribute to a safer online environment one student at a time!