LESSON 8: NETIQUETTE

In this lesson, we focused on Netiquette, which means “Internet etiquette” and is a code of good behaviour on the Internet. It is essential to know this in order to use Internet as some behaviours can be extremely harmful and dangerous.

The main objectives of this lesson were: to know what civic participation is, to know how the information and communication technologies ease civic participation, to know the electronic services that Public Administrations offer to citizens, to know the technology can be used to participate in democratic actions, to be aware of the technologies and digital media potential as tools for civic participation and to understand how the technology can be used to interact with other services.

For this activity we had to know the basic rules for proper communication in virtual environments, to earn to use the main rules of use in communication contexts in virtual environments and we had to know how to reflect this in a comic. We also had to know how to use tools for the creation of comics. We had to acquire and apply good habits in the use of communication rules.

There are Virginia Shea 10 general rules:

Rule 1: Never forget that the person reading the message is indeed human with feelings that can be hurt.

Rule 2: Adhere to the same standards of online behaviour that you follow in real life.

Rule 3: Writing everything in capital letters is considered as shouting and also makes reading difficult.

Rule 4: Respect other people's time and bandwidth.

Rule 5: Show the good side of your personality while you stay online.

Rule 6: Share your knowledge with the community.

Rule 7: Help keep debates in a healthy and educational environment.

Rule 8: Respect the privacy of third parties.

Rule 9: Do not abuse the advantages that you may have.

Rule 10: Excuse the mistakes of others.

Rules 21st Century adaptation:

Rule 1: Avoid posting inflammatory or offensive comments online.

Rule 2: Respect others' privacy by not sharing personal information, photos, or videos that another person may not want published online.

Rule 3: Never spam others by sending large amounts of unsolicited emails.

Rule 4: Don't troll people in web forums or website comments by repeatedly nagging or annoying them.

Rule 5: Stick to the topic when posting in online forums or when commenting on photos or videos, such as YouTube or Facebook comments.

Rule 6: Don’t swear or use offensive language.

Rule 7: Avoid replying to negative comments with more negative comments. Instead, break the cycle with a positive post.

Rule 8: If someone asks a question and you know the answer, offer to help.

Rule 9: Thank others who help you online.

For creating comic, you can create them in different ways and the most important ones are as a tool for teaching or as a tool for assessment. To create your own comic for teaching a concept or a topic you should focus on one main concept, open with a hook that may catch the attention of the students, create the timeline of the story by working backward from the end to the start (this is a great point not to confuse the listener from the central theme) and to make your main character likable and relatable for your students, as they may feel they are not perfect but have strengths and weaknesses like everyone else.

For this practical task, we had to create an educational comic talking about Netiquette using Pixton. I choose the next rule: "Avoid replying to negative comments with more negative comments. Instead, break the cycle with a positive post". In the small story uploaded below I wanted to explain how we can deal with negative comments on the internet and how important it is to do it in a positive way, not lowering ourselves to the level of people making those negative comments. Here's the link to my comic on Pixton: https://share.pixton.com/qskqqgf

This individual activity has been useful to identify the proper ways of behaving within virtual environments which will benefit us from differentiating between what manners are the correct ones from the bad ones. I have also found this activity useful since I used a new platform (Pixton) which will be very beneficial for me as a future educator.