Digital Citizenship

Principle #4: Effective online teachers teach and model ethical online interaction, while helping students develop digital literacy that will poise them for success.

Networked, Global Learning Through Twitter

My Digital Citizenship class inspired me to give Twitter a try in order to help my students develop a digital presence and gain experience using this medium for communicating. While I was initially hesitant about using social media, I realized that there were many benefits, which are outlined in a brainstorm completed by my students below:

Here is why we should use Twitter:

It connects us with other professionals in our fields, allowing us to network and share ideas with them
It gives us the opportunity to engage in dialogue with experts and scholars
It allows us to join the conversation around important and hot-button issues with a broad community of people
It gives us the most up-to-date news. For example, I will check the section that says "Trends" to see what the most relevant or popular news stories are. Or, if I want to get updates about Laney College, for example, I will search for "Laney College" on Twitter to see what is new and what people are saying about it. It is often faster than many news organizations.
It helps us develop our digital presence which will be useful in my future endeavors and in our professional lives
JUST BE MINDFUL of what you post. What you post will be public. Anyone who wants to search for you can find your posts. What do you want to reflect to the world about what's important to you and what you value? Keep these questions in mind when you "tweet."

The Results?

Students had a real audience and as result, the motivation for writing skyrocketed.
Many of the authors and speakers in our class were on Twitter. Students were able to take the learning to another level by viewing what the authors were saying with the potential of engaging in dialogue with them.
Many students in my class shared similar interests. We spent some time talking about how they might connect with others on Twitter with similar interests and fields of study. Thus, students were able to strengthen their bonds with each other based on their diverse interests and perspectives.

Overall, I loved using Twitter with my class and my students also recognized its value. I definitely plan to continue using social media to cultivate digital literacy with my students.

For more on how I use Twitter, see the video above. At Digital Learning Day on February 28th, 2019, Gena Estepa and I presented our techniques.

The Crowning Moment: A Reply From The Author!

In Fall 2018, author of Catching up or Leading the Way, Yong Zhao, responded to a student's question and provided her another article for her research. You can also see some other snapshots of how students were using Twitter below: to share Adobe Spark videos and reflections on the reading.

Students shared their Adobe Spark presentations with their friends or families and also with their online communities on Twitter. This allowed them to spread their ideas far and wide.

Empowering Students to Become Experts

Another compelling idea I learned from my Digital Citizenship class was to make instruction relevant by transcending the walls of the classroom. Inspired by my colleague, Alicia Caballero-Christenson, who asks her students to present content from the course to their friends and family (who says there is no human interaction in online classes?!), I went a step farther with this activity.

Students were organized into groups and together created Adobe Spark presentations about their topics. Their task was then to gather with friends and family and lead a discussion about topics, share even broader with their Twitter communities, and then report back to the class. The result? An amazing discussion! Not only were we able to hear perspectives from those in the class, but students also incorporated the ideas and questions posed by their respective communities. For more details about this activity, watch the video to the left or check out this blog post on the @ONE website.

Instructions on how to become an expert

In groups, create a video using Adobe Spark based on your research paper.
Share and discuss your video with friends and family (Extension: share the videos with your Twitter communities).
Reflect upon the experience with your classmates in our class discussion. Summarize the ideas that came up with your friends and families and how it felt for you to facilitate the conversation.

Google Sites

Report abuse