Welcome to Common Sense Media!

In 2010, Common Sense Media acquired the CyberSmart! Curriculum because we saw what many of you saw: really solid lessons for classrooms on teaching tough topics like online safety, cyberbullying, information literacy, and more. The team that built the CyberSmart! Curriculum shared our approach to teaching these topics in a balanced way that addresses both opportunities and challenges for kids.

We also saw a huge opportunity to improve these lessons with more engaging classroom activities and videos, and to integrate them into the framework for teaching digital literacy and digital citizenship that Common Sense developed with the GoodPlay Project at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. This framework dives more deeply into how digital technologies are impacting kids' ethical development and Common Sense Media's lessons arm them with the knowledge and skills they need to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in their digital lives.

The curriculum team at Common Sense has spent the last two years adapting many lessons from the CyberSmart! Curriculum to fit in with the lessons in our K-12 Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum. This has included adding video, more robust classroom and independent activities, references to new technologies, lesson-level assessments, and alignment to the ISTE NETS standards as well as the Common Core State Standards for English and Language Arts. We have not, however, updated any of the lessons at www.cybersmartcurriculum.org, which means many of those lessons are now out of date and need to be retired.

Check out a sample of these changes by comparing these lessons:

• > CyberSmart!'s Cyberbullying: Crossing the Line
• > Common Sense Media's Cyberbullying: Crossing the Line

The materials at www.cybersmartcurriculum.org will be available for access and download through October 31, 2012. After that date they will no longer be available in any form. Additionally, the "student links" section of www.cybersmartcurriculum.org will also close permanently as of October 31, 2012. If you are set on using the CyberSmart! Curriculum materials for the 2012-2013 school year, please download any materials you will need to do so before the end of October. You may make these resources available to your colleagues or school community via password-protected web servers as necessary.

We feel confident that the curriculum now available here at Common Sense Media is the best Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum available to schools worldwide. We hope you agree and we look forward to working with you to turn your students into great digital citizens.

Please contact us with any questions or feedback. We're excited to get to know you!