Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Ep 119: Canyons Teacher Promotes Good Digital Citizenship Year-Round
To say we live in a digital age has become a bit of a cliché – but it’s true. From how we schedule appointments or make a reservation – to how our vehicles operate – to devices on our wrists and in our pockets – Technology has become a major part of our day-to-day lives.
The same can be said for children – According to a 2025 study by the Pew Research Center – Nine-in-10 parents of children ages 12 and younger – say their child watches TV – 68-percent say their children use a tablet and 61-percent use a smartphone – And that’s just 12 and under. Pew Research also found 96 -percent of teens across the country say they use the internet every day, if not “almost constantly”.
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyon School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great. Students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections. So connect with us.
SPEAKER_02:To say we live in a digital age has become a bit of a cliche. But it's true. From how we schedule appointments or make a reservation to how our vehicles operate, to devices on our wrists and in our pockets, technology has become a major part of our day-to-day lives. And the same can be said for children. According to a 2025 study by the Pew Research Center, nine in ten parents of children ages 12 and younger say their child watches TV, 68% say their child uses a tablet, and 61% use a smartphone. And that's just 12. Pew Research also found 96% of teens across the country say they use the internet every day, if not almost constantly. It's that time of year where we take these ever-rising numbers and sit down with experts who can help us apply good digital citizenship when using devices. Welcome to Connect Canyons. I'm your host, Francis Cook. Joining me today is one of those people who work inside of our schools helping students to understand and use good digital citizenship. I'm joined today by Melissa Crandall, social studies teacher at Brighton High School. Melissa, thank you for joining us. Hello. Glad to be here. As Mary Poppins would say, let's start from the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. Would you please explain what digital citizenship is?
SPEAKER_01:To me, digital citizenship is being able to navigate our current media landscape, finding reliable information, and then being able to pass along reliable information only and not contributing to the myths and disinformation that is running rampant.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Now you're at the high school level, which means, I mean, like we said, technology is everywhere. Students use it for schoolwork, they use it in their personal lives. Could you talk to the importance of being informed on how to digest what our students are seeing online?
SPEAKER_01:As I said before, there is so much mis and disinformation out in the world that our teenagers and younger are consuming that help them form their opinions about what is happening in the world today. And if they are basing those opinions on false information, then the consequences of that are drastic. And the decisions that they are going to make in their lives and in our country and world going forward can have drastic consequences.
SPEAKER_02:You think about when you're a teen, there's so much pressure to fit in, right? You want to wear the same clothes that the cool kids are wearing, do the same activities, be in the right circles. And that translates online as well, right? Your friend posts something, well, then you have to post it too, or else you're not gonna look cool. How are we encouraging good digital citizenship in our schools?
SPEAKER_01:So in my class at the beginning of my world history class, we go through an entire lesson on identifying the different types of mis and disinformation, because if they don't even know what those are, then how can they identify them and recognize that it is there? So we do that first to be able to identify it. And then we talk about strategies that they can use to try to find out if a source is reliable or not, if this information that they have found on social media or from their friend or on the internet somewhere else is reliable. And we talk about lateral reading and how we need to open up other tabs on our computer and research like where this source is coming from. Where is this information coming from? Do they have an ulterior motive? Or is it a journalistic source that actually has stringent editing requirements for it that we could trust?
SPEAKER_02:And finding multiple of those, right? You and I both have had experience in terms of media literacy when it comes to journalism and just again ensuring you're not just looking at one thing. You're looking at every side. And there's usually more than one, more than even two sides to things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, one of the historical thinking skills that I teach my students, one is sourcing, which absolutely fits in with this. Why is this source reliable? And is it reliable? And then one of them is cooperation. That's one way we can tell if a source is reliable if we are finding multiple sources that can give us a perspective, but also on the other side, like you said, getting multiple perspectives. Not everybody's saying the same thing. So let me read different reliable information so that I can then form an educated viewpoint on it.
SPEAKER_02:And asking those questions too, right? Whether you're asking in a digital format or going to a trusted adult, like a teacher who knows how to look for these things. Hey, I saw this online, but I can't seem to find another source. I think that's for me one of the very first red flags. If there's only one post and everyone's sharing that same source and you can't find it anywhere else, odds are there's probably something fishy going on there.
SPEAKER_01:For sure. There was one lesson, I can't remember the name now. It was an influencer that I used this last year, and there were reports that she had died. And the example was that all these news outlets were reporting, but they were all taking it from this one Instagram post. Yeah. And the BBC reporter refused to report on it because they could not find any other source. They were realizing that all these news sites were going back to that one source and he could not verify it. And then it turns out it was a false report, and this person had not died. And like she's going, hello. Yeah, the BBC had, because of their procedures in place, did not report. But it's the same thing. They were all taking it from the false information.
SPEAKER_02:And I think that good digital citizenship goes both ways in that exact example. As a former journalist, I made sure I had a minimum of two sources confirming, if not three or four. You don't have to just stop at two. You can keep going and get that broader picture of things. But then as the consumer of that information doing the same thing, like you said, where is this coming from? Are they all pointing in the same direction? What are some other examples? You mentioned your first lesson is talking about kind of those misinformation or disinformation. Can you talk about the difference between that and maybe some examples that you give your students?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so misinformation is more people putting stuff out that maybe not intentionally is misleading people. They just didn't verify their sources, they didn't check them. Disinformation is on purpose. They are trying to give you false information to get you to believe a certain thing. Or as I talked about to my students last week, they're just trying to get you to believe that there isn't any reliable sources out there so that you question everything and don't think that there's any place you can go to that's reliable and become really cynical, which is not what we want. Not healthy. No, not healthy at all. So, I mean, we talk about the fact there's satire. Can you recognize that? Like people are just trying to make fun of, you know, that's a legitimate thing, but can you recognize it?
SPEAKER_02:Is it a joke or is it an actual factual statement?
SPEAKER_01:False context. Have they taken a picture from one thing and placed it in another place and said it's it's actually talking about this? One of the ones I show them is a picture of a child in a cage, and it was the post was trying to say that the government was taking immigrant children and putting them into cages, but actually the picture was from a protest at an immigration center that they were trying to pick to. Yeah, that was depicting it. So they had taken that picture and then put it in this false context imposter content. So somebody going on and pretending to be a celebrity or a politician and saying things that are not them.
SPEAKER_02:You mentioned celebrities and things, and there are a lot of these successful people who, especially teenagers, are looking up to and wanting to emulate the same things that they're saying. So if they're seeing these imposter posts, that can be really tricky to go back and say, okay, did Taylor Swift actually say this? Or is someone pretending to be Taylor Swift? That brings up another new aspect that we're dealing with now, and that's artificial intelligence. It's become so compounded in our lives, whether you're looking at a fake video, you have things like Chat GPT and Genesis that can help you create things which can be good. Like all things in the digital realm, it can be both good and bad. How are you addressing AI in the classroom?
SPEAKER_01:So, in uh multiple ways, I want to use AI responsibly and teach my students to use it responsibly and not ignore it because I think ignoring it is not the path to go down because it is there. It's not true. And they are gonna use it. Yeah. So one thing I've implemented this year is on my students' assignments, they have a traffic light. And if it's red, it means no AI. If it's yellow, it means yes, you could use it, but you need to talk to me about how to use it. And if it's green, it means yes, you can use it to help you generate ideas and brainstorm and things like that so that they know when it's appropriate to use this or not. I also have been utilizing Magic School to create uh custom chatbots where I have a project where students are creating a game about the decolonization of a country after imperialism, and the chat bot helps them like pick the type of game they want, and then it reminds them of the different parts of the assignment that they need to include in it and gives them ideas about how they can, you know, cards they might want to use or ways they can structure the game.
SPEAKER_02:You created kind of a chat GPT with parameters. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So I upload all of my rubrics, all of my background information. I tell it exactly what I want them to tell them and not. And that way it takes a project that could take a really long time, but it streamlines it and cuts that amount of time that the students need to spend on it down because this A, they have like a kind of a partner that's helping them. So in that way, it's teaching them like this is an appropriate way to use AI to help you generate ideas and things like that. But I tell them any factual information, you have to go find the verified source. It can give you an idea, but then you have to go back that source up. Sure. Because we talk about how AI can generate hallucinations and just make up information. And so they can't trust the like actual factual information. It can give you ideas, but then you have to go verify it.
SPEAKER_02:Right. I've found that as well. I mean, again, I think AI can be an incredible tool, like you said, if you're just looking to generate those first ideas. How do I get this project off the ground? I myself have used it for that. But then there are those instances where what you request from your whatever AI, you know, chatbot that you're using, they give you something that's completely out of left field.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I have another chatbot that we just used this week. It's for uh they're writing an essay, a document-based question essay. And I have put all the parameters into it that I want them to do, and it still can like mess up. I had a student that was asking about feedback on her thesis, and the chatbot said, Okay, well, what about you need to include this information about imperialism or the Islamic Empire imperialism during this time period? And she's like, What wait, that's not my prompt, and had to correct the chatbot.
SPEAKER_02:It's not even in the same country that I was looking into. Right. I think there's just so much information out there. We as humans certainly can't retain it all, and to expect this new technology to just at the snap of a finger be able to give you the perfect answer. Right. It's just not feasible. It's a cool tool and it can do some fun stuff. I mean, some of those videos that are coming out these days, you look at what AI was in terms of video generation three years ago, nevertheless, five, ten years ago, and you could tell, right? It's fake, it's computer generated, but now I think that is adding another layer of that need for digital citizenship where you're looking at a video of someone that looks completely real and they're saying something that may not actually be what that person believes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I try to include the news literacy group has some great activities. I try to include some in their starters, and we've had some that are AI videos, and it's it goes through like we watch the video and they're like, well, how can you tell if this is AI or not? And then it talks to the students about this is these are some telltale science, these are things you can do to double check the verification because again, we have to teach them the skills to be able to identify that there are AI-generated things that may or may not be true.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Some of it's fun, you know, a cat riding a horse, that's always gonna be funny to me, right? But there are times where I think it can become problematic. And that's as an adult who, you know, we've also grown up in this digital world. We may not be as immersed in it as some of these younger generations who are growing up with access to things like tablets and cell phones when they're toddlers. We didn't have that when we were toddlers, right? We had our phones when we were maybe junior high if you were a cool kid. But to grow up and even be an adult trying to navigate this world can be difficult. What advice would you have for parents on how they can help their children while they're at home practice good digital citizenship?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, reducing social media or at least talking to them about what they're seeing on the social media. I think the same thing we're talking about, talking about things in the news, talking about, but and then but not just talking about things in the news, but talking about where did you find that information. Yeah. Like talking about, okay, we've we saw this here, and then I also went and verified it in another source. Right. Like, or I went and found this to give me a different perspective. So practicing the good digital citizenship themselves and then telling their child about that, and then just being aware of what content they are consuming, like on TikTok and on social media and everything. I just think parents need to be aware of how they are using that really, really powerful device that they've got in their pocket.
SPEAKER_02:Very much so. I mean, I love, you know, finding recipes or how-to videos on reels and things, right? But then algorithms sneak in there and you just don't know what's gonna pop up. I think there's a difference between helicopter parenting where you're over their shoulder 24-7. But like you said, it's better to just have that dialogue, right? What are you watching? What are you reading? Let's let's have a conversation about it. The Pew Research study that I mentioned showed that more than 80% of parents say they believe that social media does more harm than good.
SPEAKER_01:And so many of our students are getting their information, like news and information about the world from social media, and a lot of it is maybe not accurate.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Again, it goes back to that sharing what your friends are sharing. Oh, I saw this on Fill in the Blank, Instagram, Snapchat, you name it. But then even I think having students have those conversations with each other. I saw you posted that, but I haven't seen that anywhere else, right? Where did you get that?
SPEAKER_01:I have a win from my classroom.
SPEAKER_02:We love celebrating wins. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:I had some girls that were, they were actually, they were gossiping with each other about like, oh, I heard this person like starting to date this person. And they broke up and all this stuff. And I was starting to walk over there to kind of tell them, like, hey, I need you to get back onto the assignment. Yeah. And as I was walking over there, one of the girls said, Okay, but where did you get your information from? Is it reliable? And then she sees me, looks up, and says, I got that from you. And I'm like, okay, now I can't even be mad about you talking.
SPEAKER_02:Win. That is a win. You know, that teacher moment of just, yes, I got through. That's so cool to see them even taking it beyond the classroom and beyond textbooks and fact-checking their work, but also just fact-checking their friends, right? You don't want to be spreading gossip. You don't want to be spreading things that could potentially be harmful or hurtful to other students, right? That is that is a big win. Congratulations. What overall message? I mean, there's so much, I think we could talk about digital citizenship for days and days and days. But if you could sum things up into one overall message that you want students to take home, that you want parents to take home, what would that be?
SPEAKER_01:That the internet and media can be very helpful and amazing, but it can also be extremely harmful. And we cannot keep our students from it. Like we can't just lock them up and not have them interact with it. So we have to teach them how to use it appropriately. And that means that we also have to be learning how to use it appropriately. We have to then, if we see something, we have to go verify it first before we pass it along or talk about it. So that then we can model that and teach our students to do the same.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. I think one of my key takeaways from our conversation here is when we were talking about AI, you said we can't just ignore it. It's here, it's not going anywhere. So rather than just say that's taboo, we're not gonna do that, we're not gonna be on the internet, we're not gonna use technology, finding those ways to use it mindfully. Melissa, thank you so much. This is obviously a very important conversation that needs to be had over and over again, whether it's with our students or student-to-peer or our parents with our students. And like you said, it's something that we can all put in the daily work on to make sure we're getting the right information out there and keeping things positive.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you for having me. It's a topic I'm very passionate about.
SPEAKER_02:Me too. I think we could go on for quite some time. And thank you for listening. If there's a topic you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, send us an email to communications at canyonsdistrict.org.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram at Canyons District or on our website, CanyonsDistrict.org.
.png)
