FTC Critical Thinking for Tweens - Focus Group Discussion Guide - Educators

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I.

Introduction and Warm-Up (5 minutes)
Moderator will introduce himself to the participants and:
• Explain basics of conversation: be honest, speak your opinions, no right or
wrong answers, we don’t need consensus but we require respect for
others, some of my colleagues will be listening in.
• Ask for participants’ verbal approval to record interviews.
• Explain that the purpose of the discussion is to talk about how to increase
critical thinking skills about privacy, scams and online safety for tweens.
o Remind teachers to focus on their 8- to 10- or 11- to 12-year-old
students.
o For reference: The goal of this project is to help a generation of
children learn and practice critical thinking skills they can use every
day to protect themselves online, spot and avoid scams, and
become good digital citizens.
• Have respondents introduce themselves and say one surprising thing
they’ve discovered/become interested in recently online.

II.

Educational Technology (20 minutes)
● Describe your comfort level with using technology for classroom
instruction. Which tools have the best efficacy/results? Which tools
provide useful data?
● What subjects/topics do you use technology with?
● What is your school’s access to technology? What challenges, if any, do
you face?
● How are your students’ technology skills?
● What are some educational sites or games that you’ve used that you think
your students like and that really work? [LIST]
○ Why are these ideal for this age range?
○ What do they do for kids?
○ What makes them unique?
○ Do they have anything in common in terms of:
■ Approach
■ World
■ Characters
■ Game play
■ Device/platform
■ Evaluation

III.

Content Topic Areas (30 minutes)
Set the stage for the conversation with this quick review of topic areas.
1. Privacy and personal safety (e.g., protecting personal information,
location-based services, etc.)
2. Spot and avoid scams and find fakes (e.g., freebies, fake surveys,
phishing scams)
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3. Digital citizenship (e.g., protecting personal information,
using good judgment and treating others with respect to make the online
world a more welcoming place for everyone)
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What are some of your concerns or fears about your students being online
or spending a lot of time on their devices?
Do you think they have the same concerns?
o How are their concerns similar or different?
What skills do you feel would help them be safer online/on their devices,
and would reassure you?
o What would you want to teach them?
o What kind of skills or information is not helpful?
What’s a good term to use to describe all of this stuff:
o Digital Safety? Online Safety? Online Privacy? Digital Citizenship?
Are these ideas of [use term determined above] different for different
devices for your students? For different sites or apps?
Are they different with different people? In different places?
Are they different when your students think about them for themselves
versus how they affect other people?
o What about how their actions affect other people?
How do you keep students safe online? Do you feel you are provided with
accessible curriculum, information, or tools for addressing this?
What are you sure your students know about [term]? MAKE LIST
What are you sure your students are not so sure about? MAKE LIST
What are students’ big questions or concerns on the subjects? MAKE
LIST
What do you think that your students think these things are or mean?
o Determining trusted sources
o Native advertising
o Smart devices
o Sharing embarrassing content
o The long life of online content
o Misinformation
o Behavioral marketing
Where do your students go to find answers about this topic?
o Do you feel like they’re getting the right answers?
What other resources might you suggest they try to use to get answers?
o Do you think they’d actually use those sources?
What’s missing from these sources?
o What would you add to make them better?
o What would you take away?
What are some of the core issues you would want to see included in an
educational program on online privacy and safety/digital citizenship?
o What is missing from the current offerings?
o What can be improved?

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IV.

Curriculum Options/Design (30 minutes)
• What is the best way we can we deliver this content to you, that will help
you engage your students, and provide you with a program that is easy for
you to use?
• Where would this content fit best in the curriculum and standards you are
already teaching?
• What are some ways we could give kids creative authorship of this type of
content or within these activities?
o How do you do that in your current teaching environment, if at all?
• If you were considering optimizing an interactive educational/entertaining
tool for your students, what elements would it need to…?
o Include
o Exclude
o Emphasize
o Explain
• What types of in-class, game-based activities would be useful?
• How do you think tweens would respond to this?
• What makes a program like this easy to use in the classroom?
• How would you use this kind of resource in your classroom?
• What would the program need to contain for you to be able to evaluate
your students?
• What is the ideal balance between paper/pencil and online instruction,
assessment, etc.?
• What types of discussion guides or lesson plan formats and interactive
online quizzes should be considered?

V. Wrap-Up and Additional Questions (5 minutes)
• Questions from colleagues
• Thanks

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