Privacy Settings and Data Sharing gives Grade 8 Computer Science students practical ways to evaluate digital privacy choices, manage account visibility, and make informed decisions about sharing personal information. As part of a Digital Citizenship lesson, this worksheet examines how privacy settings, app permissions, and user consent affect the information people reveal online.

What Students Explore

Students investigate the relationship between privacy controls and responsible online behavior. They consider who can view social media posts, who can contact an account, and why private settings do not guarantee complete secrecy. The lesson also explores how applications request access to device features and personal information, helping students distinguish reasonable permissions from requests that may be unnecessary for an app's main purpose.

Key concepts include informed consent, personal information, data collection, data sharing, account visibility, app permissions, and digital privacy. Students apply these ideas to realistic situations, such as deciding whether a drawing application needs location access or evaluating a platform that shares profile information with partner services.

Activities Included in the Worksheet

• Dialogue summary: Read a conversation and summarize its main ideas about digital privacy.
• Matching pairs: Connect related privacy terms and concepts.
• Cloze passage: Complete a passage using vocabulary related to privacy settings, permissions, consent, and data sharing.
• Labeled diagram: Apply knowledge of privacy controls and information-sharing processes through a visual activity.
• Reading comprehension: Examine a passage about account visibility, app permissions, consent, and the limitations of private settings.
• Multiple-choice questions: Evaluate privacy scenarios and select appropriate responses to permission and data-sharing requests.
• True-or-false questions: Check understanding of privacy controls, optional access, informed consent, and information exposure.
• Short-answer questions: Explain privacy-protection strategies and justify decisions about granting permissions.
• Extended response: Develop a privacy review plan for a new social platform, considering permissions, visibility defaults, partner data sharing, and ongoing account protection.

What the Teacher Receives

The resource includes the Privacy Settings and Data Sharing student worksheet and a separate PDF Teacher Guide. The guide contains learning objectives, teaching tips, discussion questions, and common mistakes to help teachers prepare the lesson, facilitate discussion, and address misconceptions about online privacy.

No specific curriculum framework is designated; the resource is listed under general standards rather than a named standards alignment.

Classroom Uses

Use this Grade 8 digital citizenship worksheet during a Computer Science lesson on responsible technology use, as guided reading and independent practice, or as a follow-up activity after discussing online safety. The scenario-based questions encourage students to explain their reasoning rather than simply identify privacy terms. The extended response can also support a class discussion about whether an app's requested access matches its purpose and what users should check before consenting to data sharing.

By connecting account settings to realistic decisions, this privacy education resource helps students practise evaluating information requests, limiting unnecessary exposure, and making more thoughtful choices about their digital presence.