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About This Book

Digital Citizenship: Building Safe, Kind, and Balanced Lives Online is an interactive intelligent textbook written for Grade 5 students (ages 10–12), their teachers, and the families and school leaders who support them. It was created for ISD 197 — the West St. Paul–Mendota Heights–Eagan Area Schools — in Minnesota, on land near Bdote, the historically and culturally significant confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers.

Welcome from Maka

Hi! I am Maka the river otter. I am the book's learning mascot. I am a curious and kind river otter inspired by the otters that live at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers — the same waters that flow past ISD 197 schools. River otters are curious without being reckless, social and kind to their group, and playful but observant. Those are the same habits this textbook teaches.

Maka's role is to introduce ideas, offer learning tips, think through challenging problems together, offer encouragement, warn students about common misunderstandings, and celebrate achievements. But most importantly Maka reminds students to pause, think, and act.

The mascot's name comes from the Dakota word makȟá, meaning "earth," "soil," or "ground" — a respectful nod to the language and place where this book was made.

A note for the grown-ups reading this page: in science, mapping, and data work, the phrase ground truth refers to information that has been verified against reality — the facts you can actually stand on. That double meaning is intentional. In a world of misinformation, clickbait, and shifting digital trends, Digital Citizenship tries to give Grade 5 students ground they can trust and the habits to recognize it when they see it. So when you see Maka, think ground truth.

Purpose

The late-elementary years are when many students cross a digital threshold: a school laptop, a family tablet, a shared game account, and — for many of them — their first phone. Every tap, post, and search shapes both how they feel today and the digital footprint they will carry into middle school and beyond. This textbook gives students the habits, vocabulary, and judgment they need to be safe, kind, and balanced when they use technology.

The book's central habit is simple enough for students to remember and important enough to last a lifetime: pause, think, act.

Who This Book Is For

This textbook is written for three distinct audiences, each addressed in its own voice:

  • Students (Grade 5). The 17 chapters in Chapters are written directly to students in warm, plain language with short sentences, named scenarios, and a friendly mascot named Maka the River Otter who appears at key moments to model the pause, think, act habit.
  • Teachers. Classroom teachers, library-media specialists, and technology coaches will find practical, classroom-ready material in the teacher-facing sections — pacing notes, discussion prompts, and ideas for accommodations.
  • District administrators. Curriculum coordinators and technology directors evaluating this book for adoption will find the formal course description, ISTE standards alignment, learning graph, taxonomy distribution, and quality metrics under Course Description and Learning Graph.

How the Book Is Organized

The textbook has 17 chapters grouped into six modules:

  1. Foundations of Digital Citizenship
  2. Media Balance & Well-Being
  3. Privacy & Security
  4. Digital Footprint & Identity
  5. Relationships, Communication & Cyberbullying
  6. News & Media Literacy and Critical Thinking

Every chapter pairs short, story-driven reading with at least one interactive MicroSim — a small browser-based simulation that lets students try the chapter's idea out for themselves. Selected chapters also include a mini graphic novel companion story (see the Stories section) that gives a single narrative moment room to breathe.

The book ends with a capstone Digital Citizenship Toolkit that combines everything students have learned into one shareable resource.

Standards Alignment

This curriculum is anchored in the ISTE Student Standards, specifically Standard 1.2 Digital Citizen, and explicitly addresses the four ISTE indicators:

  • 1.2.2a Digital Identity
  • 1.2.2b Safe & Ethical Behavior
  • 1.2.2c Intellectual Property Rights
  • 1.2.2d Personal Data Privacy & Security

The module structure also aligns with the Common Sense Education topic framework (Media Balance & Well-Being, Privacy & Security, Digital Footprint & Identity, Relationships & Communication, Cyberbullying/Digital Drama, News & Media Literacy), so teachers already using that framework can adopt this textbook without re-planning their year.

Learning outcomes are organized using the revised 2001 Bloom's Taxonomy (Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create) and are documented in the Course Description and the Learning Graph.

ISTE Disclaimer

This textbook is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or reviewed by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). References to the ISTE Student Standards and to ISTE Standard 1.2 Digital Citizen (including indicators 1.2.2a, 1.2.2b, 1.2.2c, and 1.2.2d) describe how the authors have voluntarily aligned this book's learning outcomes with the publicly available ISTE Standards framework. "ISTE" and "ISTE Standards" are trademarks of the International Society for Technology in Education and are used here for descriptive, educational, and standards-alignment purposes only. For the official ISTE Standards and any official ISTE-endorsed curriculum, please visit iste.org.

How This Book Was Built

This textbook is an intelligent textbook, which means it was authored with the help of AI tools (Claude Code and a library of custom skills) working alongside a human author and editor. Every chapter was reviewed for reading level, accuracy, tone, and age-appropriateness before it was published. The full source — including the learning graph, prompts, and generation skills — is open and available on GitHub so other districts can fork it, customize it, and improve it.

The book is built with MkDocs Material and deployed to GitHub Pages. Interactive simulations are written in p5.js, vis-network, and related open-source libraries.

License

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You are free to share and adapt the material for non-commercial purposes as long as you give appropriate credit and share your adaptations under the same license.

Author and Acknowledgements

This textbook was created by Dan McCreary, with thanks to the leadership, educators, and curriculum staff at ISD 197 whose input shaped the decision to create this book. Thanks also to the broader open-source community whose tools — MkDocs Material, p5.js, vis-network, and many others — made an interactive textbook of this kind possible for a single author to build.

For questions, feedback, or to share how you are using this book in your classroom, please see the Contact page.

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