Digital Citizenship or Just Citizenship?
It has been pretty crazy as school has started so I haven’t blogged much lately. A couple projects that I have been working on, entrepreneurial track and authentic learning, I hope to update in the near future. However, today I am focusing on digital citizenship.
Digital citizenship is hard to define and while most definitions have a common theme they express their beliefs in different ways. Here are links to three different sites that define digital citizenship a little differently.
http://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/the-definition-of-digital-citzenship/
“The quality of habits, actions, and consumption patterns that impact the ecology of digital content and communities.”
http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/
“Digital citizenship is the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use.”
https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship
“Being a good digital citizen is more than knowing your way around the web. It’s about connecting and collaborating in ways you didn’t even know were possible.”
With this knowledge, I would like to put forth my own definition of digital citizenship.
Empowering students to take responsibility to take care of themselves, take care of each other and to take care of the environment in which they live.
I would define citizenship as the ability to interact respectfully and productively in today’s modern world. Therefore, I do not draw a distinction between citizenship and digital citizenship. I actually believe that segmented digital citizenship can send the wrong message. We want our students to be good people and exhibit respectful and productive behavior at all times, not simply when they are online. This goes along with my philosophy that we should have technology integrationist in our school’s but modern learning or innovation coaches. The focus should never be on the technology rather the learning. Citizenship like communication, creativity, critical thinking etc. is different in today’s world. If we do not know how to be respectful and productive online then I would argue we are not fulfilling anywhere near our potential. Empowering students to take care of themselves, others and their environment would lead to a better world.
As we continue to dive deeper into the concept of digital citizenship the next month, here are some resources to start looking at:
http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/
Mike Ribble’s website about digital citizenship highlighting his nine elements of digital citizenship.
https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship
Common Sense Media is a great resource for teaching digital citizenship and media evaluation. This is the link specifically to digital citizenship section which includes a scope and sequence, student games, professional development and more.
https://www.iste.org/explore/categorylist?code=Digital+citizenship
ISTE has many resources surrounding digital citizenship. This link is to a dynamic feed of their articles on the subject.
https://pdsdigitalcitizenship.org/
Providence Day School has put together a comprehensive view of what digital citizenship means to them. I think this is a great resource for other schools to emulate.
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2016/03/31/learning-about-digital-citizenship-with-carl-hooker/
https://hookedoninnovation.com/2014/04/24/digital-parenting-101-an-itunesu-course-for-parents/
Carl Hooker of Eanes ISD put a Digital Parenting 101 iTunes U course. These are links not only to that course but reflections from Wes Fryer on Carl’s sessions at Casady School in Oklahoma.
