What Makes a Good Activity
Lectures about online behavior tend to be forgotten quickly. Activities that ask students to decide, discuss and reflect usually stick better, because the learner has to apply an idea instead of just hearing it. The exercises below are meant to be adapted. Each one takes a single lesson or less, needs little or no technology, and avoids asking students to reveal real personal details.
A few ground rules help every activity:
- Use made-up scenarios and fictional names, not real classmates or real accounts.
- Make it clear that nobody has to share their own experiences.
- Keep the focus on choices and reasoning, not on blame.
- Tell students at the start whom to talk to if a discussion brings up something upsetting.
Activity 1: Rewrite the Message
Give students a short, badly worded message, such as a curt reply in a group project chat. Ask pairs to describe how the recipient might feel, then rewrite the message so it still makes the same point but sounds respectful. Compare versions as a class.
The lesson is that tone is easy to misread in text and that a few words change a lot. It connects naturally to online etiquette in everyday conversations.
Activity 2: The Pause Drill
Hand out five or six invented scenarios in which someone feels like posting immediately: an irritating comment, an embarrassing photo of a friend, a rumor. For each, students write what they would do after a ten-second pause and after waiting an hour.
Discuss how much of the difference comes from calming down and how permanent a post can be. This works well alongside a conversation about a digital footprint, the trail of content that stays attached to your name.
Activity 3: Privacy Audit of a Fictional Profile
Create a fake social profile on paper or a slide with a name, a school logo in the background, a birthday post, a tagged location and a public friends list. Small groups circle everything a stranger could learn and then suggest changes.
Students usually discover that details add up. A single post is harmless, but several together can reveal a routine, a place or an address. This also gives you a natural opening to discuss privacy settings, location sharing and the habits behind oversharing online. Keep the exercise on the fictional profile; do not ask students to check their own accounts in class.
Activity 4: Source Detective
Provide three short, invented news-style items: one clearly reliable with named sources, one vague with no author, and one that is exaggerated for clicks. Students rank them by trustworthiness and list the clues they used.
Then introduce simple questions: who wrote this, what evidence is offered, and does anyone else report it? These questions are the core of source checking, and the exercise is a gentle entry to media literacy. For older students, add a satire piece to discuss why people sometimes mistake jokes for real reports.
Activity 5: Credit or No Credit?
Show five examples of using someone else’s material: a quoted sentence with attribution, a copied paragraph with no attribution, a photo with a credit line, a remixed meme, a summary in the student’s own words. Students vote whether each one gives appropriate credit, then explain why.
The goal is not to make students legal experts but to practice noticing when a source should be named. Where a question is complicated, say plainly that the answer can depend on the circumstances and the rules where you live, and that your school’s policy is the place to check.
Activity 6: Bystander Choices
Write short scenarios in which a classmate, fictional, is being mocked in a group chat. Students list the options a bystander has: ignore it, reply publicly, message the targeted person privately, tell a trusted adult, use the platform’s reporting tools.
Ask which options are low-risk and which feel hard, and why. The point is to normalize supporting a friend and to show that quiet actions count. Make sure students know that if someone is in danger or being seriously threatened, an adult or the local emergency services should be involved immediately.
Activity 7: Design a Class Agreement
Ask the class to draft five short promises for how they will behave in your class chat or learning platform. Suggestions might be “we assume good intent,” “we ask before sharing a photo of someone,” and “we tell a teacher when something feels wrong.” Post the final version where everyone can see it.
Students are usually more willing to follow rules they helped write. If your school already has an acceptable use policy, compare the two and discuss any differences.
Activity 8: Strong Password Relay
Divide the class into teams. Each team creates a sample passphrase from a made-up sentence and explains why it would be hard to guess but easy to remember. Remind students never to use a real password in a class exercise. This is a friendly way to practice the ideas behind password basics and two-step verification without exposing anything real.
Making It Stick
A few practical tips apply to all of these activities:
- Repeat in short bursts. Ten minutes every few weeks usually does more than one long session.
- Match the age group. Younger students do better with stories, drawings and simple yes-or-no choices; older students can handle gray areas and debate.
- Reflect at the end. Ask students to write one thing they will do differently.
- Revisit when something happens. If a real incident occurs, use general principles from these exercises without naming anyone involved.
None of these activities guarantees good behavior, and students will still make mistakes. The aim is to give them language, practice and a sense that asking for help is normal.