Students from the Chinook, Harlem, and Turner School Districts will be attending a presentation by Richard Guerry on April 19 in an afternoon assembly at the Harlem High School Gymnasium. Guerry, who is from New Jersey and represents the Institute for Responsible Online and Cellphone Communication (IROC2), will share the live event: “Develop Your Digital Consciousness,” which is based on his book Public and Permanent. A second presentation is available to Blaine County parents and community members from 6:30-8:00 on Tuesday evening at Harlem High School.

Aligned to several Common Core State Standards, the IROC2 program intends to promote responsible use of technology and to share strategies for preventing digital abuse. Guerry hopes to motivate the audience to utilize technology as a tool to thrive online and to open windows of opportunity, not close them.

The presentation will move through four units of content: Understanding the Digital Climate; Defining Digital Cause, Effect, & Consequence; Digital Permanence & Legacy; and Developing Digital Citizenship & Consciousness.

During these units, attendees will obtain information about preventing cyber cruelty, practicing safe communication in gaming, accessing public databases with digital transparency, preventing abuse of current and future applications (apps), and recognizing poor social media and oversharing behaviors.

This multi-award-winning program will eliminate the myths that anonymity, social privacy and disappearing digital content are possible with digital tools and apps. The audience will further gain knowledge to promote responsible use of these digital tools while also obtaining the wisdom to prevent negative, irresponsible, and malicious digital behaviors and trends.

“We want to provide information that will leave audiences with strategies that enable them to continue to develop digital mindfulness, responsibility, citizenship, and success,” Guerry stated.

By the presentation’s conclusion, Guerry believes that the audience will additionally understand the need for empathy and kindness in digital decision making and learn to prevent issues like cyberbullying, poor social media decisions, and many other digital issues that can affect us today and into the future.

The mission of IROC2 is unique in that it does not solely focus on existing trends such as “sexting” and “cyber bullying.” Instead, the Institute communicates a necessary Digital Consciousness™ that serves as the foundation for a uniform and proactive solution to any digital issue.

Guerry’s mantra is “replace perception with knowledge; replace ignorance with information; fix cause, not effect; and prevent, don't react!”

As an ambassador to Digital Enlightenment, IROC2 desires to construct a global digital community—one that is free of the negative and sometimes irreversible consequences resulting from poor digital judgment. The Institute strives to achieve this goal via programs like the one to be presented in Harlem, which will demonstrate how quickly digital actions can become public and permanent.

Harlem Superintendent Dr. Arlene Bigby announced: “We will be providing a meal on Tuesday evening from 5:30-6:30 to encourage more parents to come to the presentation.”

This presentation invites individuals to consider not only what their digital footprint and legacy will be but also how to protect themselves and their families from making life and legacy altering mistakes online or with any digital technology.