Microburst Lessons

Digital Citizenship Microbursts

A whole-school approach to digital citizenship in an elementary environment.

Why is digital citizenship important in today’s world?  Today our students are learning to be clear and concise communicators not just on paper but also online.  Our students are creating and managing accounts and passwords in school and in their personal lives.  They need to understand why that is important so they will take the extra couple of minutes to create a safe password.  Our students need to be able to learn a new tool with available tools.  As we all know, in today’s world tools are changing so rapidly.  Teaching students how to just use a single tool will limit students to just that tool - they need to understand how to find tools and learn how to explore the tools for use  Our students need to be critical thinkers to locate good information in the saturated information world we now live in.  Just as importantly, our students need to be able to critically analyze all forms of multimedia to make sure that they have the best information available when making a decision.  

Below are microburst lessons that can be easily added to many lessons.  These microburst lessons are regarding digital citizenship standards that are taught in the Technology classroom but can easily be reinforced in all classrooms.  By referring to them in the context of science, math, social studies, and ELA projects and lessons we can help students understand that good digital citizenship is in all parts of our lives.  Using the same language when referring to digital citizenship can also allow students to connect the concepts in multiple ways.  Teachers will review the microburst tickets when they get them and see where this could fit best.  It isn’t a lesson, it can be as simple as a comment to reinforce knowledge they have learned in Tech class.  It can be a discussion about kindness, empathy, and positive comments.  It can be modeled as you explain how and why you picked one website over the other or what controls you choose when setting up a tool.  These little things will make big impacts and create a culture of good digital citizenship throughout our school community.

Students would have to demonstrate their understanding by contributing to a discussion when asked, creating citations when using information from resources, or demonstrating empathetic and positive feedback in collaborative settings.  Teachers could add a digital citizenship row to their rubric very easily. I would hope that in year 2 or 3, it would naturally become part of many rubrics as a school becomes a digital citizenship-centered school.  

Coming soon:  A spreadsheet broken down by grade level and topic/goal.  I hope to get others to add to it as well so we can make a library of shout-outs to help classroom teachers easily support and moel positive digital citizenship.

In Progress:  ISTE 24 - Microburst Presentation

For example: below is one of the handouts I gave to each grade level. These are things I do in class and am asking for classroom teachers to reinforce by modeling and discussing these topics in their classrooms.