Best for
Digital citizenship units, school values discussions, anti-cyberbullying work, and online safety refreshers.
Digital Technologies / Hauora / Citizenship • Years 7-11 • Ready to use tomorrow
Digital Citizenship and Online Safety
Use this handout to help ākonga think about what it means to participate online with respect, care, and critical awareness. It moves beyond rule-following into the deeper question of how our digital behaviour affects others and reflects our values.
Use the handout, then localise it
Once students have the core framework, use Te Wānanga to generate school-specific scenarios, younger versions, or whānau communication tasks.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Use length: 20-30 minutes for a discussion-based lesson or 10 minutes as a values refresh.
- Best grouping: Small-group kōrero works well before individual reflection.
- Prep: Decide whether to connect the handout to a real school issue, a pastoral focus, or a generic discussion.
- Teaching move: Keep asking students what respectful, mana-enhancing online behaviour actually looks like in practice.
Resources already provided
- Core digital citizenship pillars
- Scenario and reflection prompts
- Action-focused discussion structure
- Curriculum companion for planning/reporting
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions
- We are learning how to participate online safely and responsibly.
- We are learning how our digital actions affect other people.
- We are learning how respect, privacy, and critical thinking apply online as much as offline.
Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria
- I can describe key parts of digital citizenship clearly.
- I can explain one or more risks in an online scenario.
- I can suggest a more respectful or safer response.
Curriculum integration / Te Marautanga alignment
This handout supports explicit teaching around digital citizenship, wellbeing, and respectful participation. Use the companion page to make those curriculum links visible when planning or reporting.
Digital citizenship in Aotearoa
Being a good digital citizen is not just about avoiding danger. It is about behaving with manaakitanga, protecting people’s dignity, and recognising that what happens online can affect real relationships, school culture, and whānau wellbeing.
Core pillars of digital citizenship
- Digital footprint: what you leave behind online.
- Privacy and security: how you protect yourself and others.
- Respectful communication: how you speak and act toward others online.
- Critical thinking: how you question what you see, share, and believe.
Think before you post
- Is it true?
- Is it helpful?
- Is it necessary?
- Is it kind?
- Would I be comfortable if whānau, teachers, or future employers saw it?
Scenario prompts
- A meme about a classmate is spreading quickly. What should happen next?
- A friend wants to post a group photo. Do they need to ask first?
- You receive a message from someone you do not know, but they claim to know your friends. What do you do?
My safer online commitments
One thing I will stop doing: ______________________________________
One thing I will start doing: _____________________________________
One way I will protect others online: _____________________________
Teach this tomorrow
Print / share
- This handout
- Your school digital behaviour expectations, if you want students to compare them
Decide before class
- Whether students discuss generic scenarios or current school realities
- Whether commitments stay private or are shared with a partner
Look for by the end
- Students can explain what responsible online behaviour looks like
- Students leave with at least one clear next action
Whakaaro Hoki · Student Reflection
1. Describe one situation where you have seen (or could imagine) digital behaviour that lacked manaakitanga. What would you do differently?
2. What is one concrete change you will make to your own online behaviour this week?
Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Alignment
Curriculum alignment for this handout has not yet been verified against the live curriculum statements. A generated placeholder that stood here was removed on 2026-08-29 because it matched no real statement.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
Māori Data Sovereignty is a real, named movement: Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network, advocates for Māori rights and interests in data about Māori people, communities, and taonga. That is a checkable starting point for a classroom discussion — what would it mean for a community, rather than a platform, to have a say in how data about it is collected and used? Whether and how concepts such as kaitiakitanga apply to digital spaces is a question for kaiako Māori and local authority to lead, not a claim this handout makes on their behalf; if your school has those relationships, this is a good place to use them.
Tuhia ōu whakaaro · Write Your Thoughts
Reflect on your learning. What was the most important idea? What question do you still have?
Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Support Materials
This is a standalone generic handout used by more than one unit; it does not depend on any other resource. Before class, make the two decisions named in the planning snapshot above — whether to connect it to a real school issue or keep the scenarios generic, and whether student commitments stay private or are shared with a partner. The wider Te Kete Ako handouts library has related material, including the Digital Privacy Audit Worksheet.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will work out what it means to act well online — privacy, consent, respect and responsibility — and will meet Māori data sovereignty as a real, named movement (Te Mana Raraunga) whose central question is worth thinking with: who should have a say in data about a community?
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Students can explain what Māori data sovereignty is, and why a community might want a say in how data about it is collected and used.
- ✅ Students can make an ethical decision about their own online behaviour in one of this handout's scenarios, and justify it.
Note for kaiako: this handout deliberately does not assert how kaitiakitanga applies to digital spaces — the Aronga Mātauranga Māori section states that this is for kaiako Māori and local authority to lead. Students are therefore not assessed on that claim. If your school has those relationships, the question is an excellent one to put to them; the handout opens it rather than answering it.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide sentence starters and visual frameworks to scaffold access at the entry level. Offer extension tasks that deepen ethical analysis — for example, comparing what Te Mana Raraunga asks for with the data-protection principles in international AI ethics frameworks.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach key kupu (kaitiakitanga, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga, tikanga) with bilingual glossaries. Allow students to express ideas in their home language first before translating to English.
Inclusion: Chunk tasks and provide clear visual instructions. Neurodiverse learners benefit from structured choice in how they demonstrate understanding (e.g., verbal, written, or visual). Affirm diverse digital experiences as valid starting points.
Mātauranga Māori lens: If you frame this handout through Te Ao Māori, do it with your kaiako Māori or local relationships leading — how tikanga applies to digital spaces is theirs to say, and it will differ by rohe. The bounded, checkable entry point is Māori Data Sovereignty (see the Aronga Mātauranga Māori section): a named movement students can research rather than a value statement asserted for them.
Prior knowledge: No specialist digital technology knowledge required for entry-level engagement. Best used after introductory lessons on tikanga Māori or as part of a digital technologies unit.