Resources for Teachers - Privacy

This tutorial aims to teach students essential digital literacy skills through simulating their favourite online experiences.

This interactive tutorial teaches students the critical thinking skills they need to apply to their online experiences, including online safety, authenticating online information, recognizing online marketing ploys, protecting their privacy, managing online relationships and dealing with cyberbullying.

This lesson makes students aware of online privacy issues, primarily those relating to giving out personal information on social networking Web sites such as Facebook. Students will learn to assess the various types of information they provide in Facebook profiles, along with the different levels of access.

In the last year or two many writers and researchers have been trying to correct the common perception that young people do not care about privacy. While the public may finally be getting the message that teenagers do value their privacy -- as they define it -- the idea that younger children have any personal information worth protecting is still a new one. Certainly, most people would probably be surprised to learn how early children are starting to surf the Net: the average age at which children began to use the Internet dropped from age 10 in 2002 to age four in 2009 (Findahl, Olle, Preschoolers and the Internet, Presented at the EU-kids online conference, London, June 11, 2009); and, thanks to the iPhone and iPad, that number has probably dropped even lower.