Privacy and being a good digital citizen

How do you explain privacy to students? Start offline by talking about how everyone has personal information that is special to them.

What are those things? Your fingerprints, your name, your address, a photo of you, your birthday… it’s all information that could be used to know who you are. Everyone has personal information, and whether you share it or not is your choice.

Another way to talk about privacy is to begin with bodily privacy, which is an idea that students are likely to be more familiar with. Talking about not wanting everyone to watch you (like in the bathroom, in the street, or at home) can usefully set the scene for talking about information privacy (how your personal information is handled).

Your personal information is power online and keeping it safe is important. Being a good digital citizen is also about caring for your community and thinking about how you’re using others’ information too.

Netsafe has tools on this, including Hector’s World (relaunching this term), that can help support your teaching of privacy to Years 1–6. Their episode, Running a Tight Ship is all about privacy and covers points like owning your own information, staying safe online, and explains why personal information is valuable.

Good digital citizenship

A good digital citizen respects others by making sure they don’t share other people’s personal information without asking.

Talk to students about respecting others by thinking about what they share before they share it – that includes photos, videos, or other information like a phone number, email address, or social media handles.

I was recently asked to comment in the media about an intimate video that two teenagers had made of themselves on school property. The video had been leaked and shared around their respective schools. It was, simply and clearly, a privacy breach.

Schools can always contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for guidance about next steps and how to support students in such situations. They can also contact Netsafe who can advise if the material or its circulation breaches the Harmful Digital Communications Act, and the Police if the school thinks a criminal offence has occurred.

Would you be OK with people sharing a video of you? In what situations? Talk with students about the clues that tell you it’s OK, or not.

Sometimes people share their personal information because they know about it and they’re OK with how you’re going to use it. Sometimes they don’t.

Ka pai or creepy?

Here are some things you can consider yourself, with your colleagues, and with your students.

Posing for a photo that someone knows you’re going to share on Instagram? Ka pai. But taking a photo without someone’s knowledge and sharing it round? Creepy. Someone giving you their phone number? Ka pai. You passing it onto other people without asking first? Creepy. It’s important to ask first so everyone knows what’s happening.

Much of the magic in keeping safe online is pausing before taking an action and asking, “Am I OK with this being on the internet forever?” or “Am I OK with people other than my friends seeing this?” Even on private groups and pages, people can always screenshot information and share it.

Taking care before sharing personal information matters because some websites will sell your data (like your email address) to other companies called data brokers, then you won’t always know where your information is going.

Encouraging students and colleagues to stop and ask themselves, “Do I really need to enter my email address to access this website/service?” and “Do I trust them to use my information responsibly?” are good first steps.

Doing privacy well and being a good digital citizen is often as easy as taking a pause before completing an action. Be aware and take care.

A good digital citizen is careful about what information they share, conscious about their digital footprint, and understands how their actions can affect others.

5 ways to do privacy better in 2024

Ask before you take photos

Your school should already have signed consent forms in place that tell you how photos can be used. Checking those annually is a useful administrative task.

Another easy way to be open about what you’re doing, and model good behaviour is to ask students whether it’s OK to take their photo before you do. Ask, “Are you OK if I take your photo to share with [your parents, guardians, in the school newsletter]”.

Asking first gives students a choice about having their photo shared.

Clean up your personal device

If you must use your own phone to take photos and videos in the classroom (perhaps photos that may be used for Education Gazette articles), schedule a regular appointment to move the content that you need to keep off your personal phone and onto school systems, and then delete the content from your phone.

If you’ve got your photos automatically linked to a cloud service, you’ll need to check there too.

If there’s a classroom tablet or school equipment available, that should be used instead of personal devices.

Think about what you’re collecting, and why?

Get into the habit of questioning why you’re collecting information. Do you or your school really need to write down or record every piece of information about your students? Asking the question “Why am I collecting this?” will help minimise the information you hold about your students, which limits the risk of a privacy breach.

If you don’t hold that information, then it can’t be lost or stolen. Only collect what you need for their education, health, and safety. If you’re not sure why you’ve been asked to collect information, ask your school’s privacy officer.

Make sure personal information is secure

Make sure your security around personal identifiable information (PII) is robust. That means, at a minimum, having multi-factor authentication on systems and being very particular about who has access to the information in the first place. Passwords need to be long and unique (a password manager is one way to generate and store those) for all PII, in files like spreadsheets as well as bigger systems.

Brush up on your privacy education

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has lots of information about schools and privacy. Make time to go through the e-learning modules or read the guidance.

For more information about privacy and education, visit the Privacy website:

Privacy website(external link)

You can also visit the Ministry website for more information about privacy, information and data.

Ministry of Education(external link)