Students today have access to global information at the tip of their fingertips 24/7. With the limitless power of digital media they are able to learn, create, and share in ways never before possible. They are no longer constrained by time or distance when it comes to education, learning, and their social interactions. With this opportunity, young people have potential to be not only good and industrious but become great and innovative global citizens.
What does that mean?
Citizenship today means making sense of local, national and global events, trends and information, and acting safely, responsibly and ethically in online forums. Digital citizenship is a relatively new and emerging field, and one that many of us educational stakeholders are concerned about. It’s a complex topic that impacts learning and behaviour in a big way. As today’s digital natives move seamlessly between online and offline spaces, educators and school leaders need help making sense of students’ expanded civic responsibilities.
All around the globe schools, teachers, students, and their communities are dealing with issues such as, but not limited to, cyberbullying, digital cheating, safety, and security concerns. These issues highlight the real and present need for students to learn and teachers to teach both digital literacy and global citizenship skills.
Being a citizen of our world’s digital community is a big responsibility. In order to be the best digital citizen you can, it is important to understand that when you go “online”, you are connecting yourself to everyone else in the world with Internet access.
I primarily work with 5-11 year olds, so I would say that the responsibility of introducing digital citizenship should fall on myself and teachers of younger students. Throughout our PYP curriculum here at ICHK HLY, we have units focused on community, laws and expectations. We teach young children that they are part of a school community, so as soon as a device connecting them to the digital community is put into their hands, children learn that they are joining another community. It is this digital community that students need to know just as much about as they do with other communities.
This year I plan to introduce a long-overdue detailed school-wide digital citizenship program. I want to try and get away from the just-in-time teaching of these skills and move towards key learning objectives taught in age-appropriate lessons that addresses digital literacy and citizenship topics. Through various PD sessions, I want staff (both teachers and ATs) to not only understand the the NINE elements of Digital Citizenship, but to see the importance of how digital citizenship is everyone’s responsibility. Ultimately, I want them to transition from positive digital citizens to inspirational digital leaders.
flickr photo shared by sylviaduckworth under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
I would like for staff to refer to the terms as often as possible when using tech tools in the classroom. The key thing I want to stress is how important teaching our young students as early as possible is and how easily we can integrate these ideas into everything we do. Elementary teachers spend a great deal of time teaching social skills and responsibilities without really thinking about it. It is time we make digital citizenship part of the traditional “how to be a citizen” skills we instill already.
For staff, I plan to kick things off with this ‘Amazing Mind Reader’ video that shows a “psychic” who gets very private information about people, only by searching their digital footprint.
This video will make people aware of the fact that their entire life can be found online. It will also generate good discussions amongst the group on privacy and digital citizenship.
From there, I plan to illustrate our working document on tech integration and how we see digital citizenship fitting into our units of inquiry and stand alone subjects. With help from the Scope & Sequence tool developed by Common Sense Education, as well as the numerous resources online, I believe students will come to better understand this new digital community that they’re working with.
One resource I plan to show is by Heidi Weber, who shared her tech presentation with fellow members on the Digital Citizenship forum on ISTE a while back. I plan to create something along the same lines, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I like the line on her last slide where she states, “Make digital citizenship as routine as the other life skills you teach automatically!” So much of what students learn in regards to citizenship, digital or otherwise, is by observing the actions of teacher and other adults. Students learn being polite is important, not just a rule on some list, when teachers are always polite. Students learn citing sources is important when teachers always cite their sources, or they learn citing source is not important when the teacher never does it. Our effectiveness in teaching the digital aspects of citizenship is determined in large part by the extent we can integrate modeling good citizenship in our lives and classroom routines.
Have you checked your ‘digital’ passport lately?