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”. 

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by
Canyon School District.
This is a show about what weteach, how we teach, and why.
We get up close and personalwith some of the people who make
our schools great.
Students, teachers, principals,parents, and more.
We meet national experts too.

(00:21):
Learning is about makingconnections.
So connect with us.

SPEAKER_02 (00:26):
To say we live in a digital age has become a bit of
a cliche.
But it's true.
From how we scheduleappointments or make a
reservation to how our vehiclesoperate, 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 forchildren.
According to a 2025 study by thePew Research Center, nine in ten

(00:49):
parents of children ages 12 andyounger say their child watches
TV, 68% say their child uses atablet, and 61% use a
smartphone.
And that's just 12.
Pew Research also found 96% ofteens across the country say
they use the internet every day,if not almost constantly.

(01:09):
It's that time of year where wetake these ever-rising numbers
and sit down with experts whocan 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 thosepeople who work inside of our
schools helping students tounderstand and use good digital
citizenship.

(01:30):
I'm joined today by MelissaCrandall, social studies teacher
at Brighton High School.
Melissa, thank you for joiningus.
Hello.
Glad to be here.
As Mary Poppins would say, let'sstart from the very beginning.
It's a very good place to start.
Would you please explain whatdigital citizenship is?

SPEAKER_01 (01:49):
To me, digital citizenship is being able to
navigate our current medialandscape, finding reliable
information, and then being ableto pass along reliable
information only and notcontributing to the myths and
disinformation that is runningrampant.

SPEAKER_02 (02:11):
Absolutely.
Now you're at the high schoollevel, which means, I mean, like
we said, technology iseverywhere.
Students use it for schoolwork,they use it in their personal
lives.
Could you talk to the importanceof being informed on how to
digest what our students areseeing online?

SPEAKER_01 (02:30):
As I said before, there is so much mis and
disinformation out in the worldthat our teenagers and younger
are consuming that help themform their opinions about what
is happening in the world today.
And if they are basing thoseopinions on false information,
then the consequences of thatare drastic.

(02:54):
And the decisions that they aregoing to make in their lives and
in our country and world goingforward can have drastic
consequences.

SPEAKER_02 (03:04):
You think about when you're a teen, there's so much
pressure to fit in, right?
You want to wear the sameclothes that the cool kids are
wearing, do the same activities,be in the right circles.
And that translates online aswell, right?
Your friend posts something,well, then you have to post it
too, or else you're not gonnalook cool.

(03:25):
How are we encouraging gooddigital citizenship in our
schools?

SPEAKER_01 (03:30):
So in my class at the beginning of my world
history class, we go through anentire lesson on identifying the
different types of mis anddisinformation, 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 ableto identify it.
And then we talk aboutstrategies that they can use to

(03:53):
try to find out if a source isreliable or not, if this
information that they have foundon social media or from their
friend or on the internetsomewhere else is reliable.
And we talk about lateralreading and how we need to open
up other tabs on our computerand research like where this

(04:15):
source is coming from.
Where is this information comingfrom?
Do they have an ulterior motive?
Or is it a journalistic sourcethat actually has stringent
editing requirements for it thatwe could trust?

SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
And finding multiple of those, right?
You and I both have hadexperience in terms of media
literacy when it comes tojournalism and just again
ensuring you're not just lookingat one thing.
You're looking at every side.
And there's usually more thanone, more than even two sides to
things.

SPEAKER_01 (04:47):
Yeah, one of the historical thinking skills that
I teach my students, one issourcing, which absolutely fits
in with this.
Why is this source reliable?
And is it reliable?
And then one of them iscooperation.
That's one way we can tell if asource is reliable if we are
finding multiple sources thatcan give us a perspective, but
also on the other side, like yousaid, getting multiple

(05:08):
perspectives.
Not everybody's saying the samething.
So let me read differentreliable information so that I
can then form an educatedviewpoint on it.

SPEAKER_02 (05:18):
And asking those questions too, right?
Whether you're asking in adigital format or going to a
trusted adult, like a teacherwho knows how to look for these
things.
Hey, I saw this online, but Ican't seem to find another
source.
I think that's for me one of thevery first red flags.
If there's only one post andeveryone's sharing that same

(05:41):
source and you can't find itanywhere else, odds are there's
probably something fishy goingon there.

SPEAKER_01 (05:46):
For sure.
There was one lesson, I can'tremember the name now.
It was an influencer that I usedthis last year, and there were
reports that she had died.
And the example was that allthese news outlets were
reporting, but they were alltaking it from this one
Instagram post.
Yeah.
And the BBC reporter refused toreport on it because they could

(06:07):
not find any other source.
They were realizing that allthese news sites were going back
to that one source and he couldnot verify it.
And then it turns out it was afalse report, and this person
had not died.
And like she's going, hello.
Yeah, the BBC had, because oftheir procedures in place, did
not report.

(06:27):
But it's the same thing.
They were all taking it from thefalse information.

SPEAKER_02 (06:30):
And I think that good digital citizenship goes
both ways in that exact example.
As a former journalist, I madesure I had a minimum of two
sources confirming, if not threeor four.
You don't have to just stop attwo.
You can keep going and get thatbroader picture of things.
But then as the consumer of thatinformation doing the same

(06:53):
thing, like you said, where isthis coming from?
Are they all pointing in thesame direction?
What are some other examples?
You mentioned your first lessonis talking about kind of those
misinformation ordisinformation.
Can you talk about thedifference between that and
maybe some examples that yougive your students?

SPEAKER_01 (07:09):
Yeah, so misinformation is more people
putting stuff out that maybe notintentionally is misleading
people.
They just didn't verify theirsources, they didn't check them.
Disinformation is on purpose.
They are trying to give youfalse information to get you to
believe a certain thing.

(07:30):
Or as I talked about to mystudents last week, they're just
trying to get you to believethat there isn't any reliable
sources out there so that youquestion everything and don't
think that there's any place youcan go to that's reliable and
become really cynical, which isnot what we want.
Not healthy.
No, not healthy at all.
So, I mean, we talk about thefact there's satire.

(07:51):
Can you recognize that?
Like people are just trying tomake fun of, you know, that's a
legitimate thing, but can yourecognize it?

SPEAKER_02 (07:58):
Is it a joke or is it an actual factual statement?

SPEAKER_01 (08:01):
False context.
Have they taken a picture fromone thing and placed it in
another place and said it's it'sactually talking about this?
One of the ones I show them is apicture of a child in a cage,
and it was the post was tryingto say that the government was
taking immigrant children andputting them into cages, but

(08:22):
actually the picture was from aprotest at an immigration center
that they were trying to pickto.
Yeah, that was depicting it.
So they had taken that pictureand then put it in this false
context imposter content.
So somebody going on andpretending to be a celebrity or
a politician and saying thingsthat are not them.

SPEAKER_02 (08:42):
You mentioned celebrities and things, and
there are a lot of thesesuccessful people who,
especially teenagers, arelooking up to and wanting to
emulate the same things thatthey're saying.
So if they're seeing theseimposter posts, that can be
really tricky to go back andsay, okay, did Taylor Swift

(09:04):
actually say this?
Or is someone pretending to beTaylor Swift?
That brings up another newaspect that we're dealing with
now, and that's artificialintelligence.
It's become so compounded in ourlives, whether you're looking at
a fake video, you have thingslike Chat GPT and Genesis that

(09:25):
can help you create things whichcan be good.
Like all things in the digitalrealm, it can be both good and
bad.
How are you addressing AI in theclassroom?

SPEAKER_01 (09:36):
So, in uh multiple ways, I want to use AI
responsibly and teach mystudents to use it responsibly
and not ignore it because Ithink ignoring it is not the
path to go down because it isthere.
It's not true.
And they are gonna use it.
Yeah.
So one thing I've implementedthis year is on my students'
assignments, they have a trafficlight.

(09:58):
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 useit.
And if it's green, it means yes,you can use it to help you
generate ideas and brainstormand things like that so that
they know when it's appropriateto use this or not.
I also have been utilizing MagicSchool to create uh custom

(10:18):
chatbots where I have a projectwhere students are creating a
game about the decolonization ofa country after imperialism, and
the chat bot helps them likepick the type of game they want,
and then it reminds them of thedifferent parts of the
assignment that they need toinclude in it and gives them
ideas about how they can, youknow, cards they might want to

(10:40):
use or ways they can structurethe game.

SPEAKER_02 (10:42):
You created kind of a chat GPT with parameters.
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (10:46):
So I upload all of my rubrics, all of my background
information.
I tell it exactly what I wantthem to tell them and not.
And that way it takes a projectthat could take a really long
time, but it streamlines it andcuts that amount of time that
the students need to spend on itdown because this A, they have
like a kind of a partner that'shelping them.
So in that way, it's teachingthem like this is an appropriate

(11:09):
way to use AI to help yougenerate ideas and things like
that.
But I tell them any factualinformation, you have to go find
the verified source.
It can give you an idea, butthen you have to go back that
source up.
Sure.
Because we talk about how AI cangenerate hallucinations and just
make up information.
And so they can't trust the likeactual factual information.

(11:30):
It can give you ideas, but thenyou have to go verify it.

SPEAKER_02 (11:33):
Right.
I've found that as well.
I mean, again, I think AI can bean incredible tool, like you
said, if you're just looking togenerate those first ideas.
How do I get this project offthe ground?
I myself have used it for that.
But then there are thoseinstances where what you request
from your whatever AI, you know,chatbot that you're using, they

(11:56):
give you something that'scompletely out of left field.

SPEAKER_01 (12:00):
Yeah.
I have another chatbot that wejust used this week.
It's for uh they're writing anessay, a document-based question
essay.
And I have put all theparameters into it that I want
them to do, and it still canlike mess up.
I had a student that was askingabout feedback on her thesis,
and the chatbot said, Okay,well, what about you need to

(12:20):
include this information aboutimperialism or the Islamic
Empire imperialism during thistime period?
And she's like, What wait,that's not my prompt, and had to
correct the chatbot.

SPEAKER_02 (12:30):
It's not even in the same country that I was looking
into.
Right.
I think there's just so muchinformation out there.
We as humans certainly can'tretain it all, and to expect
this new technology to just atthe 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 dosome fun stuff.

(12:52):
I mean, some of those videosthat are coming out these days,
you look at what AI was in termsof video generation three years
ago, nevertheless, five, tenyears ago, and you could tell,
right?
It's fake, it's computergenerated, but now I think that
is adding another layer of thatneed for digital citizenship

(13:14):
where you're looking at a videoof someone that looks completely
real and they're sayingsomething that may not actually
be what that person believes.

SPEAKER_01 (13:22):
Yeah, I try to include the news literacy group
has some great activities.
I try to include some in theirstarters, and we've had some
that are AI videos, and it's itgoes 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 thestudents about this is these are
some telltale science, these arethings you can do to double

(13:43):
check the verification becauseagain, we have to teach them the
skills to be able to identifythat there are AI-generated
things that may or may not betrue.

SPEAKER_02 (13:55):
Yeah.
Some of it's fun, you know, acat riding a horse, that's
always gonna be funny to me,right?
But there are times where Ithink it can become problematic.
And that's as an adult who, youknow, we've also grown up in
this digital world.
We may not be as immersed in itas some of these younger
generations who are growing upwith access to things like

(14:17):
tablets and cell phones whenthey're toddlers.
We didn't have that when we weretoddlers, right?
We had our phones when we weremaybe junior high if you were a
cool kid.
But to grow up and even be anadult trying to navigate this
world can be difficult.
What advice would you have forparents on how they can help
their children while they're athome practice good digital

(14:40):
citizenship?

SPEAKER_01 (14:41):
I mean, reducing social media or at least talking
to them about what they'reseeing on the social media.
I think the same thing we'retalking about, talking about
things in the news, talkingabout, but and then but not just
talking about things in thenews, but talking about where
did you find that information.
Yeah.
Like talking about, okay, we'vewe saw this here, and then I

(15:01):
also went and verified it inanother source.
Right.
Like, or I went and found thisto give me a different
perspective.
So practicing the good digitalcitizenship 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

(15:22):
media and everything.
I just think parents need to beaware of how they are using that
really, really powerful devicethat they've got in their
pocket.

SPEAKER_02 (15:33):
Very much so.
I mean, I love, you know,finding recipes or how-to videos
on reels and things, right?
But then algorithms sneak inthere and you just don't know
what's gonna pop up.
I think there's a differencebetween helicopter parenting
where you're over their shoulder24-7.
But like you said, it's betterto just have that dialogue,

(15:57):
right?
What are you watching?
What are you reading?
Let's let's have a conversationabout it.
The Pew Research study that Imentioned showed that more than
80% of parents say they believethat social media does more harm
than good.

SPEAKER_01 (16:11):
And so many of our students are getting their
information, like news andinformation about the world from
social media, and a lot of it ismaybe not accurate.

SPEAKER_02 (16:22):
Right.
Again, it goes back to thatsharing what your friends are
sharing.
Oh, I saw this on Fill in theBlank, Instagram, Snapchat, you
name it.
But then even I think havingstudents have those
conversations with each other.
I saw you posted that, but Ihaven't seen that anywhere else,

(16:42):
right?
Where did you get that?

SPEAKER_01 (16:44):
I have a win from my classroom.

SPEAKER_02 (16:47):
We love celebrating wins.
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (16:48):
I had some girls that were, they were actually,
they were gossiping with eachother about like, oh, I heard
this person like starting todate this person.
And they broke up and all thisstuff.
And I was starting to walk overthere to kind of tell them,
like, hey, I need you to getback onto the assignment.
Yeah.
And as I was walking over there,one of the girls said, Okay, but
where did you get yourinformation from?
Is it reliable?

(17:10):
And then she sees me, looks up,and says, I got that from you.
And I'm like, okay, now I can'teven be mad about you talking.

SPEAKER_02 (17:15):
Win.
That is a win.
You know, that teacher moment ofjust, yes, I got through.
That's so cool to see them eventaking it beyond the classroom
and beyond textbooks andfact-checking their work, but
also just fact-checking theirfriends, right?
You don't want to be spreadinggossip.

(17:35):
You don't want to be spreadingthings that could potentially be
harmful or hurtful to otherstudents, right?
That is that is a big win.
Congratulations.
What overall message?
I mean, there's so much, I thinkwe could talk about digital
citizenship for days and daysand days.
But if you could sum things upinto one overall message that

(17:58):
you want students to take home,that you want parents to take
home, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 (18:06):
That the internet and media can be very helpful
and amazing, but it can also beextremely harmful.
And we cannot keep our studentsfrom it.
Like we can't just lock them upand not have them interact with

(18:27):
it.
So we have to teach them how touse it appropriately.
And that means that we also haveto be learning how to use it
appropriately.
We have to then, if we seesomething, we have to go verify
it first before we pass it alongor talk about it.
So that then we can model thatand teach our students to do the

(18:47):
same.

SPEAKER_02 (18:48):
Absolutely.
I think one of my key takeawaysfrom our conversation here is
when we were talking about AI,you said we can't just ignore
it.
It's here, it's not goinganywhere.
So rather than just say that'staboo, we're not gonna do that,
we're not gonna be on theinternet, we're not gonna use
technology, finding those waysto use it mindfully.

(19:12):
Melissa, thank you so much.
This is obviously a veryimportant conversation that
needs to be had over and overagain, whether it's with our
students or student-to-peer orour parents with our students.
And like you said, it'ssomething that we can all put in
the daily work on to make surewe're getting the right
information out there andkeeping things positive.

SPEAKER_01 (19:33):
Well, thank you for having me.
It's a topic I'm very passionateabout.

SPEAKER_02 (19:36):
Me too.
I think we could go on for quitesome time.
And thank you for listening.
If there's a topic you'd like tohear discussed on the podcast,
send us an email tocommunications at
canyonsdistrict.org.

SPEAKER_00 (19:50):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect
Canyons.
Connect with us on Twitter,Facebook, or Instagram at
Canyons District or on ourwebsite, CanyonsDistrict.org.