Digital Citizenship. If you work or play in today's online world, you are a digital citizen. It doesn't matter what country or continent you live in, online we are all one large community.
I liked this quote from "The importance of teaching digital citizenship" article
"Often we invoke the word "citizenship" in terms of our rights - our rights to privacy and to free speech, for example. But citizenship is also about responsibilities - responsibilities to maintain, to protect, and to enhance the community in which we live."
Digital citizenship skills need to be taught collectively at home and at our schools as soon as children start using the internet. As time goes by, and this current digital generation will be exposed to "digital etiquette", it will become one and the same as etiquette and we will no longer need the "digital". It is vitally important that our children get reinforcement in both area's of their life, at school at at home. Just like the basics of reading and mathematics. If students are not reading at home or getting reinforcement from they're family, they will probably struggle in school. I think the internet is the same, if students are not being checked on or taught to have appropriate behavior at home, then all the hard work put in at the schools will be mostly negated.
I was surprised by the statistic that 13% of students say they've been bullied online and 31% say they've been bullied face to face (PewResearchInternetProject) That statistic makes me wonder if students are more threatened by one over the other. My instincts would say that online bullying is more detrimental and maybe that 13% means more then just 13%. I know at my daughter's school they teach the kids certain steps on how to handle bullying. (to ignore, ask politely, ask assertively, and then talk to a teacher). I don't think I've seen a step by step guide for cyber-bullying? maybe my kids just aren't old enough yet? We've been teaching/talking about face to face bullying for years, how many years have we been talking about cyber-bullying?
I would break the 9 elements of digital citizenship into these groups.
K-5
- Digital Access
- Digital Literacy
- Digital Communication
- Digital Etiquette
- Digital Health & Wellness
- Digital Security
- Digital Rights & Responsibility
- Digital Commerce
- Digital Law
Check out this website at CommonSenseMedia for teaching Digital Citizenship. It seems to be a very comprehensive curriculum layout.
Teaching or reviewing digital citizenship skills to students should be proportional to the size of the lesson. If it is a quick lesson, there should be a quick reminder about what is and isn't appropriate online. These small, frequent reminders are what builds the strong foundation for good digital citizenship skills later in school and life when they will be doing longer projects and spending more time online.
I was surprised/scared slightly by the video piece on digital footprints. I am totally one of the people that just selects "agree" to the terms and conditions. I feel slightly powerless about the whole thing. Its not like you can get away from Google, or email, or credit reports now a days. So how do you keep it out. I guess you just have to accept it. I have enrolled in a "credit check monitoring" program for the last three years. I couldn't tell you if its a waste of money or not, luckily I haven't had to use it or received any alerts, but in today's world I felt it was kind of like car or life insurance….just one of those things you need to have. That reminds me, the next thing I need to start using is a password management system/software....Any recommendation??
"Often we invoke the word "citizenship" in terms of our rights - our rights to privacy and to free speech, for example. But citizenship is also about responsibilities - responsibilities to maintain, to protect, and to enhance the community in which we live." great quote! I like how you broke out the different aspects of digital citizenship into age groups. Great idea and yes, as the students get older, we can then teach the difficult concepts. I do a presentation to the kids just about citizenship and what does it mean to be a citizen, then we talk about our physical communities we live in. What are the rules of that community, etc. Then we move to the digital world. It is a fun activity that we can use something like popplet to accomplish.
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