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Digital safety involves protecting oneself, and one’s personal information to mitigate the risks that are inherently associated with using digital technologies. This study employed a multi-method design to explore 26 in-service and pre-service elementary teacher experiences from attending a professional development on digital safety and facilitating a digital safety immersion summer camp. Data was collected through pre- and post-test assessments, surveys, and interviews. Findings from knowledge assessments indicate no significant difference in pre- and post-test assessment. However, elementary teachers displayed high motivation, valuing the critical need for ongoing digital safety education and opportunities for collaboration and self-reflection from the survey and interviews. Teacher challenges included teaching students from different backgrounds with varied expectations and engaging the learners. This study provides recommendations for teacher professional development and has implications for designing teacher professional development on digital safety and for administrators to offer support on digital safety topics amidst the challenges the teachers discussed. 

Digital Safety refers to the knowledge and skills needed for the intentional protection of users in the digital environment. With children having access to digital devices at a young age, it has become essential for them to be educated on how to be safe in the digital world. Through a week-long summer camp on digital safety, elementary-age learners were introduced to four topics (digital identity and digital footprint, cyberbullying, netiquette, and digital security and privacy). This study found that the digital safety immersion camp was beneficial to elementary school learners based on the achievement, attitude, and behavior data that were collected. Posttest scores were statistically significant from the pre-test. Cyberbullying topic had the highest pre- and post-knowledge, whereas netiquette and online behavior, and digital security and privacy had comparatively lesser scores. Students demonstrated positive attitudes in the post-camp survey and they also included several lessons learned from the camp in the Pixton comic strip, which they created as the final project from the camp. The findings from this study contribute to the current literature on preparing elementary school students’ knowledge and skills related to digital safety and have implications for students, teachers, administrators, and parents. 

Based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between a southeastern public university and a state virtual public school in the United States, ten high school teachers from a virtual school who teach Computer Science (CS) online participated in a summer workshop to collaborate through a participatory action research project regarding design, facilitation, and evaluation strategies to be included in effective professional development. The questions were posed through an online collaborative Jamboard during the summer workshop. The teacher posts were qualitatively analyzed to identify common themes. Recommendations for professional development on design included CS content, how to teach CS, and CS tools and activities. For facilitation, they recommended resources for supplemental instruction and feedback tools for providing feedback in various modalities and a tool repository. For assessment, they recommended content knowledge assessments, including lab assignments, single and pair programming, and coding assessments. Overall recommendations for a professional development course to teach CS online were also offered.