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With students learning from home due to COVID-19, teaching digital citizenship and choosing secure online tools are more important now than ever.

Bracken High School has always been focused on online safety and privacy. On the first day of each academic year, we set aside time for teachers to go through a Digital Citizenship Agreement between the school and the student. Keeping our students away from inappropriate sites and cyberbullying is essential. Students need to know that if suspicious activity occurs on their accounts, school management will investigate. Students should also understand that, as the Digital Citizenship Agreement stipulates, they are responsible for what happens on their device.

The agreement highlights the risks of sharing personal information and email passwords, as well as the prohibition on taking and/or posting photos or videos of students or staff members without their permission. Being a Google school also allows us to manage the students’ privacy. All emails are filtered and suspicious activity brought to our attention. Since schools closed for the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve taken some additional steps to make sure our students are learning in a safe and private online environment.

Connecting Teachers and Students Safely

With our schools building closed, all our students and staff members are collaborating in the brackenhighschool domain, which allows teachers to connect with their students via Gmail and Google classroom. Some teachers have also created WhatsApp groups to communicate with students.

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