Embedding Digital Citizenship

In today’s innovative environment it is important that we understand how to positively interact with people locally, nationally and globally in a safe and confident manner.

In order to empower our students and assist them to form healthy and productive online relationships (Family Online Safety Institute, 2009,September 29) we need to teach them how to navigate the Internet and responsibly participate and interactonline.

Our students need to develop their understanding of privacy, online etiquette, safety, intellectual property, digital footprints and their rights and responsibilities, while learning the skills of collaboration, critical and creative thinking, communicating and sharing.

What is digital citizenship? by Common Sense Media retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toK_BAYnjoU

After watching this short clip on Digital Citizenship, explain what Digital Citizenship means to you. Make a Wordle to identify what you think. Have your class design a Wordle to see what each student believes digital citizenship means. Hang them around the room to refer to throughout the year.

Ribble (2015) has identified and explored a variety of issues that affect digital citizenship learning and provided a framework to assist in understanding the technology issues that are important to educators. He states that these nine elements should be used in schools to identify areas of need in a technology program. The nine elements include digital:

AccessCommerceCommunicationLiteracyEtiquetteLawRights and ResponsibilitiesHealth and Wellness

Security

Watch this clip to understand what each of the elements entails:

A brief introduction to digital citizenship by MTPSTech retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNB5JFLarH8

For more detailed information look at The Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship

Or listen to the MOOC presentation by Mike Ribble

Use these nine elements to assist you to embed digital citizenship into your program. Click on each of the links provided to find descriptions of the area, lessons plans or ideas on how to incorporate these elements. For further ideas, refer to the resources and nine elements sections of the Padlet further down.

Sit together with your team to map out activities that fit into each of the elemental areas. Discuss where you could embed these activities into your lessons.

Technology is all around us and cannot be ignored. Students are beginning school with knowledge of various digital technologies and how to use them. It is no longer our role, as teachers, to teach about the tools available to students but to teach the students how to appropriately use those tools (Suarez, 2018).

Teachers and teacher librarians need to promote and model the responsible use of technology, while inspiring them to create, adapt, review, collaborate and explore (ISTE, 2018). These types of skills and capabilities can be acquired through integration into the curriculum and inquiry learning where students have hands-on authentic experiences, as technology is just a part of the process of this student-centred learning (Davis, 2017).

Watanabe-Crockett (2017) defines five characteristics for teachers in this digital world. They must have the capability to be adaptable and creative, have experience with the safe use of various mediums of technology, model moral and ethical use of technology, have an awareness of local and global environments and cultures and be lifelong learners.

ISTE Standards for Educators

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2018) has compiled a list of standards to inform educators how to develop their skills in order to be able to teach digital citizenship and technology effectively. Explore the ISTE site to find out more. Digital citizenship is the responsibility of both schools and parents working together. There are several challenges that we face when teaching digital citizenship, watch this video from ISTE to see some of the top challenges that may be encountered.

Top 3 challenges of teaching digital citizenship by ISTE retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGXXBJQHe3I&feature=youtu.be

Read through and interact with the infographic on the following page to discover how you can improve your own knowledge of digital citizenship. Click on the links to explore the tools that you can use yourself or with your class.

Each school community has different needs and will require an individual policy or guideline for digital citizenship education. There are already several schools that have policies in place and online that you can look at as well as sites available to assist with the creation and development your own school policy or guidelines. Look at the embedded padlet for some helpful resources.

Use Google Docs to begin collaboratively developing your own school digital citizenship policy.

Digital Citizenship Padlet produced by Rachel

Please feel free to add any comments or new resources to this Padlet to share with others. Scan the QR code below to take you straight to the Padlet.

Common Sense Media (Producer). (2017, Oct 11). What is digital citizenship? [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toK_BAYnjoU

Davis, M. R. (2017). 5 Ed-Tech Experts Weigh In. Education Week, 36(35), 12-13.

Family Online Safety Institute (Producer). (2009, September 29). What is digital citizenship? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0I13tKrxcA

International Society for Technology in Education. (2018). ISTE. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org

ISTE (Producer). (2014, October 23). Top 3 challenges of teaching digital citizenship. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGXXBJQHe3I&feature=youtu.be

MTPSTech (Producer). (2014, September 1). A brief introduction to digital citizenship. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNB5JFLarH8

Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know (Vol. Third edition). Eugene, Oregon: ISTE.

Suarez, J. L. (2018). Schools are responsible for teaching digital citizenship. Retrieved from https://www.schoolclimatesolutions.org/schools-are-responsible-for-teaching-digital-citizenship/

Watanabe-Crockett, L. (2017). Exploring the 5 characteristics of the global digital teacher. July 16. Retrieved from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/global-digital-teacher