Reflecting on My Last Month

For the last month I have been investigating Digital Citizenship and what it means for our learners today. Using Mike Ribble’s nine elements of digital citizenship was new to me although most of the concepts themselves were not. He has quite a few resources at http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Home_Page.php for others to check out. Another resource I am really fond of is https://pdsdigitalcitizenship.org/ which was developed by Matt Scully for Providence Day School. It is tailored more for the independent school world and I am sure we will use this in addition to other resources from Google, ISTE and Common Sense Media to form our own digital citizen curriculum. The biggest thing I was I could have changed about this last month would be to create something similar to the Providence Day School digital citizen website instead of focusing so much on writing essays such as this one.

I have found this journey to be very informative. One of the most useful pieces I found was BYU’s copyright 101 http://copyright101.byu.edu/tutorial/ tutorial. It guides you through some of the copyright struggles educators encounter in an engaging and informative manner. I think many educators are not as informed as we should be about copyright and this last month has reminded me of that. I would encourage others to spend time exploring copyright and diving into ways we can help our students combat bullying of all kind but specifically cyberbullying. Unfortunately it is so easy to sit behind a screen and anonymously flame another. We need to build empathy within our students and encourage them to stand up for each other.

I have done several valuable things some of my favorite have been the case studies which would have been more interesting had we discussed them in groups as opposed to investigating individually. I have also created several things in this course including two videos. These are my favorite portions because they are the most applicable things that could be shared with others. I used two different strategies in creating the videos based on what the end goal was which allowed me to have some ownership over the project.

This last month has truly made me appreciate the choice, ownership and voice I have had in previous legs of my journey. Often times this month I felt like I was checking a box instead of moving towards creating something of value. I think if I had the ability to rework this journey it would involve laddering up, as I said before, to a project similar to what Matt Scully created. This would be more valuable than having independent case studies and papers that have no authentic use. While I learned some information in this course, what I would tell my friends is that I confirmed that learning authentically has much more value than simply going through the process of answering questions. Simple tweaks to this journey could result in some truly great results. This month was a lot of work with some great people and mentors but I don’t feel as fulfilled without a meaningful, authentic product in the end.

Additional Resources

Cyberwise
http://www.cyberwise.org/digital-citizenship-resources

Global Citizen Foundation
https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/18-incredible-digital-citizenship-web-resources

Edmodo Blog about Digital Citizenship Week
https://blog.edmodo.com/2017/10/05/top-digital-citizenship-resources-for-your-school-or-classroom/