During this first week of EDLD 5316, my biggest take-away was the scope of what Digital Citizenship entails. Before this course, I had taught my students about digital citizenship. Still, there are so many more concepts and elements to digital citizenship than being kind and ensuring safety. Ribbel (2015) categorizes digital citizenship into nine different elements. Understanding the nine elements Ribbel discusses is essential to creating respectful, global, and contributing digital citizens in your classroom and beyond.
Digital Citizenship teaches our learners how to be respectful to themselves and others, educate themselves and connect with others, and protect themselves and others. Ribble (2015) organizes Digital Citizenship into three principles, Respect, Educate, and Protect. He further breaks down the principles into nine different elements: The nine different elements are Digital Access, Digital Commerce, Digital Communication, Digital Literacy, Digital Etiquette, Digital Law, Digital Rights and Responsibilities, Digital Health and Wellness, and Digital Security. These are all duties of a digital citizen or an iCitizen. These skills are essential for our students to learn and experience. These skills help our students become functioning members of the online community and the global community. We need to make sure we are modeling these elements in our everyday lessons.
For more information about Ribble’s Nine Elements of DIgital CItizenship, visit his website, https://www.digitalcitizenship.net/nine-elements.html.
This school year(2020-2021) has shown us that it will be unlike any other year. I am going to be an Eagle Online teacher for my district. I will be one of three 6th grade online teachers for the students in my district. We have the chance to change education and focus and create new experiences for our students. During the first three weeks of school, we cannot teach any new content. Students will be focusing on Social-Emotional Learning and learning technologies they will be utilizing throughout the school year. At first, I had no idea what we were going to do during these fourteen school days. This first week in EDLD 5316 has helped me find a focus and look at Digital Literacy and Digital Communication. I have the opportunity to help create digital citizens during this uncertain time.
Currant’s(2012) study presented data and analyzed a collaborative social media project that initially focused on cyberbullying. The project started to evolve to iCitizenship in the 21st Century. Their definition of iCitizenship or Digital Citizenship is “an individual who is aware, empathetic, socially responsible, and someone who believes in social justice and models being socially responsible both face-to-face and online” (Curran, 2102). The social justice piece and being social responsible in face-to-face and online are two pieces I enjoy about their definition. Our students need to use the power of social media to create changes. These changes should not just focus on inside the classroom or on Social Media, but both environments. This made me feel better about pushing for social justice in my classroom because during these times. It can seem like a “radical idea” to some.
These principles and skills need to be practiced and modeled for individuals to help them become functioning and impactful digital citizens. An educator’s job is to create a classroom environment where everyone feels safe, respected, and important. This role is not going to change, but we need to make sure we are preparing our students for the world they live in and creating positive digital citizens.
References
Curran, M. (2012, June). iCitizen: Are you a socially responsible digital citizen. Paper presented at the International Society for Technology Education Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX. Retrieved from http://www.gonevirtual.org/uploads/6/0/8/6/6086473/icitizen_iste12_paper.pdf
Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know (3rd ed.). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education