2023 Nebraska Digital Citzenship Symposium

The Nebraska Digital Citizenship Symposium, hosted by the Nebraska Educational Service Units (ESUs), was held in person for the first time since 2019 on October 16. Students and their teachers joined at five ESUs across the state. The five sites connected virtually through Zoom.  You can also see the participating school districts by viewing 2023 Nebraska Digital Citizenship Symposium Participants.

Twenty-two school districts with approximately one hundred sixty participants heard from national speaker and digital citizenship advocate Marialice Curran. Her message focused on being a digital impactor by being alert, balanced, engaged, informed and inclusive. Essentially the theme for the day was promoting the use of technology for good. More information on this topic can be found at her Digital Citizen Institute’s (DCI) website: DCI – Digital Citizenship Institute (digcitinstitute.com).

The teams also were privileged to hear from Heather Callihan, a technology integrationist at Northwest Public Schools.  Heather presented information on how she has social media and content creation teams of students who work together to tell their district’s story.

After hearing from Marialice and Heather, the school teams had time to build on the inspiration by creating a school vision, plan, and/or call to action. Each team worked on this plan and then shared their ideas with the other teams. But the vision didn’t stop that day, as the teams will be working on this throughout the school year, documenting their progress, and coming back together on Zoom in April to celebrate with their fellow Nebraska teams, AND with others across the globe during the second annual Global Student Showcase.

The collaboration and learning will also continue in a unique and fun way, as a plush toy named Mundo will travel to all of the participating schools this year! The goal is to have Mundo learn about the different Nebraska communities it visits! Marialice’s team created an AI assistant for education and named it Mundo. She encourages the teams to use the AI assistance to learn more about Nebraska communities, and then share with others across the state, and eventually the world.