'Maddie is Online': Introduction and Available Resources to Use

'Maddie is Online’ is an educational video cartoon series that has been developed by Dr Konstantina Martzoukou, Teaching Excellence Fellow, at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.  The project has been funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council, the Scottish Government with the support of Digital Xtra Fund and the Robert Gordon University Innovation Accelerator. 

The series aims to illustrate the dangers of online connectivity and to teach children digital literacy skills through animation. ‘Maddie is Online’ @MaddiesOnline is an educational resource, which narrates the everyday life story of Maddie, a fictitious pre-teen 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 in the U.K.). However, the videos may be used with younger or older children, depending on their maturity in using the Internet and online social media. 

There are a number of introductory videos and talks on the project.

The videos are available the following links:

• Series 1 Online Resilience: (8 episodes) (duration approx. 17 min). 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).
• Series 3 Copyright: (8 episodes) (duration 1hr 18 min).
• Series 4 The ethics of Online Safety and Security.

The video resources are accompanied by resource toolkits with lesson plans and external resources:

2022 Versions in eBook format:

Series 1 Online Resilience eBook 2022

Series 2 Misinformation eBook 2022

Series 3 Copyright eBook 2022

2021 Versions of booklets on SlideShare:

Series 1 Online Resilience

Series 2 Misinformation

Series 3: Copyright

Scenario

Maddie's morning begins with greeting her friends on her messaging app as she gets ready for school. Maddie has both a smart phone 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.

‘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, school nurses, 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.  

Read our paper on Series 1 which explains our approach in more detail. 

There are different educational material and resources available for young children and their families, which could be highly valuable for educating young children.

A few examples of educational material/resources 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. 

You may also find useful this report: Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report by Ofcom.

If you are interested to pilot the series in your school or library, I would be grateful if you could fill in this short 10 minutes evaluation questionnaire which aims to collect anonymous data from you in relation to how you have used the resource in your teaching and how your students interacted with it. 

Our work addresses children's lifelong development of information and digital literacy. Your contribution and participation is very valuable.

Thank you for your interest in our project and for taking part.