Surrey Schools explores online safety, privacy and citizenship through Digital Literacy Series
A trio of workshops is equipping Grade 4 to 9 students and teachers for classroom conversations around online safety and privacy, artificial intelligence and what it means to be a responsible digital citizen.
The Digital Literacy Series provides intermediate and early secondary classes with engaging lessons on AI, social platforms and media literacy, among other topics, to guide students in their online activity safely. Since last fall, two workshops have taken place, with a third scheduled for next month, covering the following themes:
- Digital Footprint & Identity (November 2025)
- Privacy & Safety (January 2026)
- Information & Media Literacy (coming April 2026)
“We wanted to make a series to talk about big topics to do with digital literacy and provide an opportunity for rich discussion between students and teachers,” said David A’Bear, District Principal with Student Support.
“We had a lot of conversations around creating online and offline opportunities to develop common language and a universal understanding across the district, in a way that teachers could learn with students and assess the growth in this area.”
Delivered as interactive livestreams projected into classrooms, the workshops tackle everything from the importance of protecting your passwords and respecting online privacy to understanding algorithms and preventing doomscrolling, encouraging conscientiousness as a foundational element to students’ approach to the online world.
More than 6,000 students tuned in for the first livestream in their classrooms and an additional 3,500 for the second broadcast. Each workshop is divided by grade bands (4/5, 6/7 and 8/9) for different ages, with all recordings available to elementary schools, secondary schools and learning centres through Surrey Schools ONE.
“It’s a unique way to connect with kids and beam it into their classroom,” said A’Bear, adding the workshops come with offline lessons to facilitate classroom discussions afterwards. “Our helping teachers have put a lot of work into bringing this to kids.”
A’Bear noted the order of themes is deliberate, building up to more complex discussions around AI and challenging students to reflect on why they may choose to engage with it in a learning environment, as opposed to finding solutions through other methods.
“Having those larger conversation about being conscious about our choices sets students up for when we get to media literacy and start looking at discerning information, fake news, misinformation that’s out there,” he said. “We set this up intentionally so that students start thinking about how to use these technological tools in intentional ways for their learning.
“We’re trying to teach, when do I use AI, am I going to use it all the time or for a certain skill to get me in the next level of my learning.”
The live sessions are facilitated with assistance from Grade 11 and 12 students, allowing for greater student voice while providing leadership opportunities for senior secondary students.
The district already has three more workshops in mind for the next school year, diving deeper with themes of Healthy Digital Habits (November 2026), Cyberbullying & Online Harms (January 2027) and Relationships & Communication (April 2027).
Stay tuned for more on the district’s Digital Literacy Series! To watch any of the previous workshop recordings, visit surreyschoolsone.ca/dl
