Common Sense, the national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids and families thrive in a world of digital media and technology, has recognized Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy's (HPA) Village Campus (grades K-8) as a Common Sense Certified School: Digital Citizenship.
HPA's Village Campus has demonstrated its commitment to taking a whole-community approach to preparing its students to use the immense power of digital media to explore, create, connect, and learn, while limiting the perils that exist in the online realm, such as plagiarism, loss of privacy, and cyberbullying.
"We applaud the faculty and staff of HPA's Village Campus for embracing digital citizenship as an important part of their students' education," said Jessica Lindl, Head of Common Sense Education. "HPA's Village Campus deserves high praise for giving its students the foundational skills they need to compete and succeed in the 21st-century workplace and participate ethically in society at large."
The HPA Village Campus has been using Common Sense Education's innovative and research-based digital citizenship resources, which were created in collaboration with Dr. Howard Gardner of the GoodPlay Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The resources teach students, educators, and parents tangible skills related to Internet safety, protecting online reputations and personal privacy, managing online relationships, and respecting creative copyright. The free resources are currently used in more than 90,000 classrooms nationwide.
"We're honored to be recognized as a Common Sense Digital Citizenship Certified School," said Patty Walker, Interim Middle School Principal.
"By preparing our students to use technology safely and responsibly, we are providing them unlimited opportunities to maximize and personalize their learning," said Cathy Grant, Lower School Principal.
For more information about the HPA Village Campus, visit www.hpa.edu. To learn more about the criteria the HPA Village Campus met to become certified as a Common Sense Certified School, visit http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/certification.
