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
Digital Technologies — Hangarau Matihiko
Level 4–5: Understand how digital systems and AI tools work; evaluate the social, cultural, and ethical implications of technology; design and apply computational thinking skills to real problems.
Social Sciences — Tikanga ā-Iwi
Level 3–4: Analyse how technology shapes relationships, power, and identity within communities; evaluate the impacts of digital innovation on society, including effects on Indigenous data sovereignty and cultural representation.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
In te ao Māori, data and knowledge are not neutral — they carry whakapapa and obligations. Māori Data Sovereignty (Mana Motuhake i ngā Raraunga) holds that Māori have the right to govern, own, and interpret data about themselves and their communities. When digital systems are designed without this understanding, they risk perpetuating colonial patterns of extraction: taking knowledge from communities without accountability or benefit-sharing. The concept of kaitiakitanga extends naturally to the digital realm — guardianship of what is collected, stored, and shared about us is as important as guardianship of land, water, and living knowledge systems.
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 handout is designed to be used alongside the broader unit resources available at Te Kete Ako handouts library. Related resources from the same unit are linked in the unit planner. All resources are provided — no additional preparation is required to use this handout in your classroom.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will engage with this resource to explore digital kaitiakitanga — applying tikanga Māori principles of guardianship, manaakitanga, and whanaungatanga to their digital lives, spaces, and technologies.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Students can explain how kaitiakitanga applies to digital environments and online communities.
- ✅ Students can connect tikanga Māori values to ethical decision-making in digital contexts.
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 digital tikanga principles to 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: Digital kaitiakitanga frames technology through Te Ao Māori — our digital spaces are extensions of our marae, our data is part of our whakapapa, and our online behaviour reflects our mana. Tikanga Māori provides a powerful ethical compass for navigating the digital world.
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.
Curriculum alignment
- Digital Technologies — Knowledge: Understand how digital systems affect people and communities; apply ethical frameworks including tikanga Māori to design and use of technology.
- Identity, Culture, and Organisation: Understand how cultural values — including kaitiakitanga and tikanga — shape participation in digital society.