Cybersmart topic area
CyberFIT language
Target age group
Lower Secondary
Middle Secondary
Lesson duration
Lesson Overview
The lesson focus is to:
Consider language associated with the internet, digital technologies and cybersafety. The lesson resources aim to assist students to understand the changing and evolving nature of language in a digital society.
Lesson outcomes
The lesson will allow students to:

Examine, describe and classify terminology and vocabulary associated with internet use

Relate the use of words and phrases associated with technology to historical timeframes
Australian Curriculum
This lesson plan module supports a number of general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum. These include:

Critical and creative thinking

Information and communication technology capability

Literacy
Activity 1
Teacher introduces to students the idea of how language is changing and evolving with new technologies .
Page
4, 6
Subject focus
Technology language
Duration Resources required
Worksheet 1 - Call out Sheet: Tech talk cybersmart@acma.gov.au

CyberFIT language
Activity 2
Students complete one of the worksheet activities
Activity 3
Students complete a second worksheet activity
Page
4,
7-12
Page
4,
7-12
Subject focus
Cybersafety, technology and language
Subject focus
Cybersafety, technology and language
Duration Resources required
Worksheets 2-6

Word splash

Word splash groups

Word search puzzle

CyberFIT words

Extension activity - new ‘tech’ words using the Oxford
Dictionaries Online website
Duration Resources required
Worksheets 2-6

Word splash

Word splash groups

Word search puzzle

CyberFIT words

Extension activity - new ‘tech’ words using the Oxford
Dictionaries Online website
Subject focus
Technology related language
Duration Resources required https://books.google.com/ngrams
Worksheet 7 – Language and
Technology
Activity 4 Page
Students use the Ngram website to investigate the occurrence and emergence of technology related words in publications
4, 13
Activity 5 Page
Students summarise the importance of understanding new and evolving terminology related to internet technology
4,
15-16
Subject focus
Technology related language
Duration Resources required
Worksheet 8 - Think, Pair, Share
2

CyberFIT language
External links included in lesson https://books.google.com/ngrams - Ngram viewer http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/what-s-new - Oxford Dictionaries Online
Technology and Terminology referred to in this lesson
Online, language, terminology, words, internet, ‘tech’ words, positive online behaviour
3

CyberFIT language
Background
The internet and new technologies allow people to communicate with each other in many different ways. At the same time they have contributed to the introduction of new words and phrases in our language to describe new devices and the way we use them. Over time, some words have developed new meanings. For example, the meaning of the word ‘mouse’ in the 21 st century has expanded to include a hand-operated pointing device for computers. New words have also evolved, such as ‘internet’ and ‘selfie’ – which was named as the Oxford Dictionary’s
Word of the Year in 2013.
The vocabulary activities in this unit are designed to engage students in understanding language associated with the digital environment and cybersafety issues.
Activity 1 introduces the CyberFIT language topic . Students are asked to brainstorm ‘tech’ words they are familiar with and to think of words that may not have been in use when their parents or carers were young. Responses are to be recorded on Worksheet 1 .
Activities 2 and 3 are comprised of five discrete tasks. Teachers are given the option to choose a task best suited to the capabilities of their students:
Worksheet 2 - Word Splash is a simple word splash stimulus based on a PMI task. Students are prompted to consider each word in terms of whether it contains positive, negative or interesting elements. A suggested discussion starter might involve asking students why they put certain words in the ‘minus’ column.
Worksheet 3- Word Splash Groups provides a stimulus for students to categorise words into four domains of their online communications and behaviour that focus on: health and well-being; collaboration and communication; organisation and planning; entertainment and enjoyment.
Worksheet 4 – Word Find requires students to complete a word search puzzle. An extension activity asks students to select three words and use these in sentences that promote positive online behaviour.
Worksheet 5
– CyberFIT Words consists of an A to Z list of language associated with the internet and cybersafety. Students are required to extend this list based on their own knowledge and experience.
Worksheet 6 - Tech Words is an extension activity that provides an opportunity for students to expand on their understanding of how technology contributes to emerging words in our language.
The activity stimulus is the Oxford Dictionaries Online web page. Students are required to research new ‘tech’ related words that have been added to the dictionary.
Activity 4 uses the Ngram Viewer website to look at word usage during the past five centuries by calculating how often a word has appeared in books over time. The results are presented in graphical form. Worksheet 7 requires students to input technology related words into the website to discover how long a word has been in use and its frequency of use. Multiple words can be entered to compare their respective levels of popularity and year ranges can be specified.
Activity 5 is based on the Think-Pair-Share cooperative learning technique. A question is posed to students who must first consider their response individually, then pair with a partner and discuss their thinking and finally share their ideas with the class. Students can write their responses using Worksheets 8a and 8b .
4 cybersmart@acma.gov.au

CyberFIT language
Worksheet 8a contains questions: “What have you learned today about what impact technology can have on language and the meanings of words?; Do you think th e term ‘cyberbully’ will be more, or less popular in five years time?.
Worksheet 8b is blank to allow for a teacher initiated question.
Optional - Teachers may also choose to create display walls with cybersafety language and terminology and revisit the lesson plan to promote CyberFIT behaviour throughout the year.
This work is based on materials that constitute copyright of the Commonwealth of Australia and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence. See http://cybersmart.acma.gov.au/About Cybersmart/Legal.aspx
for more information.
5

CyberFIT language
Tech
Talk
6
Write down words that are technology related. For example, ‘internet’.
Consider any words that may have not been around when your parents or carers were at school.

CyberFIT language
7
Think about each of the words in the word splash picture. Consider if the word has positive and/or negative elements.
Place each word into the three categories below. Which words appear in more than one column?
Why?
Positive Minus Interesting

CyberFIT language
8
Place the words from the word splash picture into one of the four groups below.
Do any words appear in more than one group?
Health and Well-Being Communication and Collaboration
Organisation and Planning Entertainment and Enjoyment

CyberFIT language
9
APPS CHANGE
AWARENESS CHEAT
BALANCE CHOICES
BEHAVIOUR CITIZEN
BLOCK
BUDGET
COLLABORATE
COMMUNITY
CONTENT
COSTS
CREATE
CYBERFIT
DEVICES
DIGITAL
EXCLUDE
EXPLORE
FOOTPRINT
GLOBAL
HARASS
HURT
POST
SHOP
TIME
TWEET
WWW
BULLY CONSENT
BYSTANDER CONTACTS
DOWNLOAD
ENTERTAIN
MUSIC
NOTES
Extension activity: Select 3 words from the list and use each in a sentence that promotes positive online behaviour.
For example: I will keep CyberFIT by making sure my posts do not hurt my digital reputation.

CyberFIT language
What other CyberFIT words can you think of?
A
Apps
Awareness
B
Bystander
Balance
C
Choices
Cyberbully
D
Digital
Download
E
E-security
Email
F
Footprint
Friend
G
Gaming
Goals
H
Help
Hardware
I
Internet
Information
J
Jpeg
Judge
K
Know
Keyword
L
Laptop
Login
M
Message
Mobile
10

CyberFIT language
What other CyberFIT words can you think of?
N
Navigate
Netiquette
O
Online
Offensive
P
Password
Privacy
Q
Question
Quality
R
Reputation
Respect
S
Settings
Status
T
Technology
Tag
U
Unplug
Upload
V
Visit
Viral
W
Website
Webcam
X
Xbox
Xerography
Y
YouTube
Yahoo
Z
Zone
Zoom
11

CyberFIT language
Tech talk – What’s new?
Oxford Dictionaries Online regularly updates its website with new words and their meanings. A number of technology related words were recently added to the dictionary, such as ‘refollow’ and
‘live-stream’. In this task you are asked to research new words that have been entered into the dictionary.
2.
3.
4.
To do:
1. Enter the Oxford Dictionaries Online website http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/what-s-new
Read the quarterly updates.
Identify at least five new ‘tech’ words that have been added to the dictionary.
Record the meanings of these new words.
12
Refollow
(Nov 2013 Update)
“start following (a person, group, or organisation) on a social media website or application for a second or further time: my Twitter page got hacked —can you refollow me?”

CyberFIT language
Have you ever thought about the influence technology and social media have on the words and phrases that we use? Many words today did not even exist twenty years ago and some word meanings have changed over time.
An example is the word ‘tweet’ that has been in use for centuries. As children, your parents or carers would have unders tood ‘tweet’ to mean the sound a bird makes. Today ‘tweet’ also refers to a message posted on the social networking service,
Twitter. The word cyberbully is a word that probably didn’t exist twenty years ago, but is now frequently used.
This activity shows how our language is constantly evolving and adapting and how advances in digital technology can also shape language.
Instructions
1. Type https://books.google.com/ngrams into your web browser. This displays a search page for the Ngram Viewer. When a word is entered into this tool, it displays a graph showing how frequently the word has appeared in books over a selected timeframe.
2. In the search field type the words tweet,Twitter,cyberbully,Facebook. In the date fields type the year range 1970 and 2008. Click the ‘Search lots of books’ field.
3. A graph is generated using the search words you have entered, similar to the one in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 is a screen shot of a graph showing how frequently the words ‘Facebook’,
‘Twitter’, ‘tweet’ and ‘cyberbully’ have appeared in books between the years 1970 and
2008. Note: the Ngram viewer stops at the year 2008.
13
4. The graph shows that the word ‘cyberbully’ started to appear in books in the 1990’s,
‘Facebook’ has sharply increased in popularity from early 2000, but the word ‘tweet’ has remained steady over the years.
5. Consider the reasons for the difference in frequency of use for each of these words.

CyberFIT language
6.
NOW ... you try some word combinations and timeframes from https://books.google.com/ngrams .
Word Describe frequency patterns
Suggest reasons for changes
14

CyberFIT language
• T
• H
• I
• N
• K
• P
• A
• I
• R
• S
• H
• A
• R
• E
Question 1: What have you learned today about what impact technology can have on language and the meaning of words?
Question2:
Do you think the word ‘cyberbully’ will be more, or less popular in five years time?
15

Question:
• T
• H
• I
• N
• K
CyberFIT language
• P
• A
• I
• R
• S
• H
• A
• R
• E
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