Students at Los Altos, Mountain View and Alta Vista will participate in a digital citizenship activity on an extended tutorial schedule tomorrow, with the goal of promoting conscious use of technology and creating a healthy digital culture on campus.

The activity, which will take place in a 50-minute block after third period, includes a brief, teacher-led presentation, followed by a video in which students from Los Altos, MVHS and Alta Vista share their perspectives and experiences around digital culture, which will be used as a discussion starter. Students will discuss their reactions and individual experiences in small groups, then share out with their classes. At the end, students will take a survey to reflect on the activity.

Students will take the California Healthy Kids Survey during an extra 35-minute period in second period classes, and will then transition into the digital culture activity in their third period classrooms. Each class period will be shortened to 35 minutes.

Developed by the MVLA School District Ed-Tech Committee, the activity is part of an effort to help the community become more conscious of its technology usage. The effort also includes an activity next semester to build on the tutorial’s discussion and a whole-school focus next school year on digital organization.

“It’s part of the process of us as a school community defining for ourselves what we think a healthy and productive culture around the use of devices looks like,” Assistant Principal Galen Rosenberg said.

The activity will build off the digital citizenship presentation from last year’s Communication Week and aims to generate thoughtful discussion between students and staff on their technology usage.

“The activity is intended to foster a genuine, open and honest dialogue, with teachers participating as co-equals [with students],” Rosenberg said in an email to staff.

The Ed-Tech Committee has planned next semester’s activity to build on this initial discussion. The activity has yet to be finalized and will change based on the feedback from of Tuesday’s events.

“The second semester activity will be about where we’re at post-first discussion,” Rosenberg said. “It’ll be an ongoing conversation. I think we should be having conversations about [the choices we make about technology usage], what we think feels right and what we want to enforce or discourage about people’s choices.”