Youth Contributor

A Digital Leader: Giovanna Niccolai

During the 2019-2020 school year, I met high school junior Giovanna Niccolai in a cybersecurity class I was working with. She helped prepare a Youth Project, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of TikTok, for the Shape The Sky website. Giovanna clearly stood out as someone who was interested in Shape The Sky’s mission. During the 2020-2021 school year, she became the first intern for Shape The Sky. Giovanna’s internship project was to develop nine lesson plans for high school aged students related to technology, social media and social-emotional learning. She developed a list of potential topics that were for curriculum development. She shared this list via a survey with high school students, parents of high school students and teachers of high school students. She then took the top nine topics that everyone believed were important and developed social-emotional curriculum lesson plans. Over her internship she attended an in-person training as well as many virtual trainings with Ryan and presented youth views on social media and technology. Giovanna was interviewed in a webinar with Ryan about growing up as a digital youth. This interview can be viewed on the Video Training page of the website. Giovanna also participated in the Big Sisters Club at her high school where she developed a presentation for 7th and 8th grade girls on how to handle social media responsibly. She then presented this to the girls in an assembly. Giovanna has shown a desire to make the digital world a better place for youth. Awesome work Giovaana. ~Ryan

Bio: Giovanna graduated from Montour High School. She was a varsity cheerleader and enjoyed participating in clubs such as Student Council, Future Business Leaders of America, Big Sisters Club Cure Finders and the morning announcement program, The Bus Loop. Giovanna is attending University of Pittsburgh to study Information Science.