Instructions for Running the Series
‘Maddie is Online’ aims to illustrate the dangers of online bullying and to teach children online information evaluation through animation. ‘Maddie is Online’ #maddiesonline is a free educational resource, which narrates the everyday life story of Maddie, a fictitious 10-year-old girl, who goes through some troubles while connected online. The series is aimed at schoolchildren (9-12 years old – which may cover the final two grades of primary school and the first grade of secondary school). However, the videos may be used with younger or older children, depending on their maturity in using the Internet and online social media.
The videos are available via the following links:
Series 1 Online Resilience: (8 episodes) (duration approx. 17min).
This series also contains a single video on Reflections on social media and cyberbullying: (4min 11sec).
Series 2 Misinformation: (11 episodes) (duration 1hr 11 min).
‘Maddie is Online’ started as a way to explore issues surrounding young children’s development of digital literacy as the online citizens of tomorrow. Young people are growing up online with a range of new social technologies but still need to master the guiding principles of online society and develop resilience in the online environment. Teachers, librarians and parents can play an important role in supporting children within the everyday life context to become digital citizens: informed, active, ethical, safe and responsible members of the online society.
In order to engage younger children in these issues, it is important to offer learning opportunities, which are interesting and relate to their everyday life online experiences. Previous research has found that there are diverse challenges and opportunities created in the online everyday life context as children (as young as 5 years old) are now using a wide range of social media enabled online tools for messaging, video sharing and online gaming to connect with others, learn and experiment. There are different educational material available for young children and their families, which could be highly valuable for educating young children. A few examples include:
- Ofcom has developed ParentPort with a range of guides for parents.
- The Digizen website provides information for educators, parents, carers, and young people to become responsible digital citizens.
- Childnet International has developed a parent/child agreement template that can be used by families to discuss issues related to children’s connectivity
- The Digital Resistance project promotes digital citizenship through inquiry-based learning methods and peer-education.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SERIES 1
Resilience: (8 episodes) (approx. 17min) together with Reflections on social media and cyberbullying: (4min 11sec). Series 1 asks children to choose the best scenario for dealing with issues of online resilience on social media.
Scenario
Maddie is almost 11 years old. Her morning begins with greeting her friends on iPhone ‘messages’ as she gets ready for school.
Maddie has an iPhone 5 and a tablet where she uses many different applications: FaceTime, Snap Chat, Pinterest, Instagram and Tik Tok, an App you can use to lip-sync to music and share videos of yourself. Maddie has her own Bitmoji and she regularly uses YouTube, Google photos, Gmail and Skype and she plays Roblox fanatically.
At school, she uses an app called SumDog, which is a maths game you can join with players around the world. Maddie’s phone is not just a tool she uses, it is a facet of her ‘self’. It is part of who she is - part of what makes her human in a growing interconnected online world. By extension, her knowledge and her network of friends online is also interwoven into her sense of self, it is an element of her identity. Although this is her techno self, it is also her real self in many ways.
Maddie’s mother: Maddie’s mother is 37 years old. She finished university in 2002 and she was educated within a fast growing online digital world. Maddie’s mum has good information and technology skills. She is a regular user of search engines, Facebook and WhatsApp. She has mostly learned about the world of social media at home. Maddie’s mum has a demanding job and sometimes she works in the evenings. She is aware that Maddie uses many different apps on her mobile phone but she is very busy to explore all of them or keep up. She lets Maddie play and connect online in the evenings and weekends and she can see that this helps her socialise and play with her friends. However, she is getting increasingly worried because Maddie is spending too much time on her phone. She recently noticed that Maddie is getting increasingly anxious and is not sleeping well but she is not sure what the best approach is. She has ensured that Maddie has a private account on all the different apps she is using but she is constantly worried that she is doing something wrong.
Instructions
- Read the above scenario to children (perhaps simplify the words a bit, depending on their age) and ask them what applications they use in their daily life and why.
- Ask children to watch carefully the first video (‘Maddie is Online – Introduction’), which introduces the scenario.
- Put together the children into teams of three or four.
- Explain to the children that there are six different options to choose from. Each team should choose only one option and explain the reason they chose it.
- Ignore the message.
- Confront the child.
- Go to mum and ask her what to do.
- Give the phone to mum
- Go to mum and ask her to speak to the child
- Unfriend and block the child
- Discuss the options chosen in class.
- Play to children videos 2-7 and ask them to reflect upon their choice.
- Play to children the last video ‘Maddie is Online – Final Thoughts’.
Teachers/Librarians/Parents (if they are Twitter users) should tweet the name of the school, the different teams’ choice + the reason for choosing it to #maddiesonline. In that way, schools will be able to compare findings and learn from each other.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SERIES 2
Series 2 Misinformation: (11 episodes) (duration 1hr 11 min).
Series 2 aims to teach children the importance of information evaluation on the Internet. The series includes 11 episodes. Episode 1 introduces the scenario, where Maddie has been asked to prepare a presentation on a country called ‘Kaione’ (it is a fictitious place for the purposes of the story) and particularly to find information on its culture and its people. However, Maddie is not allowed to use the Internet and therefore she needs to find other sources of information for the country and this is where the story unfolds as Maddie tries to find information. When Maddie meets up with Miss Mason, the new Computer Class Assistant (Episode 2), she promises to help her.
However, Miss Mason tries to misdirect her to sources that are confusing and unreliable. For example, Miss Mason sends Maddie to a travel agent who tries to sell her a holiday rather than give her information. She also sends her to a scientist who gives her very technical information she cannot understand, and then to a journalist, the editor of a dubious newspaper, ‘The Bold Voice’ who tries to mislead her to believe that the wind turbines recently installed in the country are only dangerous (episodes 3, 4 and 7). Maddie also meets up with some helpful people, Betty, a girl from a community centre and with the Top Class Librarian, who both try to help her and teach her about good information evaluation criteria and critical judgement (episodes 5-6).
In the end, it turns out that Maddie has not listened to her teacher’s advice and went to check the Internet instead. At the same time, it is revealed that all the sources of information that Miss Mason sent her to were actually websites and that Miss Mason herself is misinformation personified. Episodes 8-10 reveal this secret. The story then presents the importance of evaluation criteria such as currency, authority, point of view, and highlights IFLA’s ‘How to spot fake news’ infographic (Episode 10).
Image 1. Maddie meets with the Top Class Librarian
It is important to note that this story presents a mixture of fantasy and reality. Miss Mason in the story directs Maddie to all the websites presenting them as physical places rather than as online. This is an intentional addition to the story, which aims to demonstrate metaphorically the thin borderline between the online and physical information world in today’s online connected environment (and a possible basis for discussion with the children who watch the videos, especially those that use the Internet and social media as part of their everyday life).
Image 2. Maddie presents IFLA’s ‘How to Spot Fake News’
Instructions
It is important to not reveal the scenario to the children but let them watch it to keep their interest going. As the videos require more than 1 hour, you may wish to play them over a number of days and not necessarily in one go.
- Play ‘Episode 1 Introduction’. Q. Ask the children if they have access to the Internet at home using a laptop, a computer or a phone. How do they search for information for class assignments? Where do they go? How do they find information?
- Play each video and ask questions related to the characters and the events featured:
Episode 2 ‘Meeting Miss Mason’. Q. Why did the school recruit a Computer Class Assistant?
Episode 3 ‘Mr Sherlamond’. Q. Who is Mr Sherlamond? Why was he trying to sell a holiday to Maddie?
Episode 4. ‘Meeting with Ms Kanabera’. Q. Who is Ms Kanabera? Did she give helpful information to Maddie? What were the main facts she shared about Kaione? You may ask children to search for information on Australian dropbears and report back.
Episode 6 ‘The Community Centre’. Q. Was Betty helpful to Maddie? Why? What did Betty teach Maddie?
Episode 7. ‘The Bold Voice’. Q. Was Andy’s story true? What did he say about the wind turbines? You may ask children to search for information on the positive and negative aspects of wind turbines.
Episodes 8-9. Q. What is Miss Mason’s real name and what does it mean? Have you ever been in a situation like this where you came across/were told something that was not true and you believed it? What happened?
Episode 10. ‘The Teacher Meeting’. Q. What is information evaluation? Do you evaluate the information you find? You may discuss with children different information evaluation criteria for online information (see https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/evaluatinginformation/criteria).
- Play the concluding video until the end (it has a hidden part).
- Ask the children, ‘what did you think of this story?’ and ‘What would you do if you were in Maddie’s place?’ Teachers/librarians/parents (if they are Twitter users) are invited to post the name of the school and some key lessons the children learned from watching the series to Twitter using #maddiesonline (see question above). In that way, schools will be able to compare findings.
If you are interested to pilot the series, please get in touch with Dr Konstantina Martzoukou k.martzoukou@rgu.ac.uk
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