Digital Citizenship

What is digital citizenship? Why is digital citizenship important to learn? How could digital citizenship be modelled in K-12 schools? (What would you teach?)

Digital citizenship. First, to understand what it is, I believe it needs to be broken down into its base components. What is citizenship? A citizen is a person belonging to a country who obeys the laws within that country. This status sometimes means that certain rights are held, such as the right to vote, or the right to free speech (Center for the Study of Citizenship). Within the social spectrum, there are other expectations associated with citizenship, such as treating your fellow citizens with respect and dignity, not doing direct or indirect harm to others, and taking responsibility for one’s own actions. Digital citizenship is therefore the existence of all these elements as they are channeled through the internet.

As such, why is it important to learn how to be a good citizen in this digital age? Cyber bullying has become a huge risk to children everywhere. In the past, bullying could be contained to the schoolyard, the classroom, and public spaces. Now, bullying can chase children into their own homes through social media platforms, attack them psychologically, and do terrible damage to their self-esteem, self-worth, and desire to continue existing in this world (UNICEF). It takes many years for children to learn responsibility, and some never do, as can be witnessed in the adults around us who cannot own their mistakes and instead ceaselessly spread their blame onto those around them. It is important that students learn to be good digital citizens so that they can keep both themselves and their fellows safe on the internet.

Palmer (2014) breaks down the modelling of digital citizenship into five approaches in an easy to navigate and clearly communicated blog entry. As both teacher and a writer, I thought her ideas to be both effective and succinct, which is why I chose to use her model in my own blog post. Below I outline her top five ways of modelling digital citizenship, and my own thoughts or personal connection to each of her bullets:

1. Digital rights and responsibilities – This reminded me very clearly of how one of the teachers in my practicum modelled exactly this. He allowed students to use their phones for class appropriately, but if they began to watch youtube videos, distract other students, or otherwise use it as a barrier between them and their engagement in the classroom material, then he would have them place the phone on his desk in view of everyone. In these actions, he modelled that access to the digital world is a privilege and that it needs to be used appropriately in the classroom or this privilege will be (temporarily) taken away. For me, this bullet ties into Principle 4, “Learning involves generational roles and responsibilities.”

2. Digital communication – I think it’s important to model to students the act of thinking before speaking, or typing, in this case. There are many times that I have personally thought of posting something on the internet, and I have had to stop and ask myself “Are you still going to want to post this tomorrow after a good nights sleep, or are you going to regret it tomorrow if you post it today?” This ties into Principle 3, “Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions.”

3. Digital literacy – I think that Palmer (2014) has an excellent approach to this one. She recommends modelling using technology for learning new skills, problem solving, or generating ideas and gathering information. I myself use youtube and online archives of free sewing resources to teach myself better craft and skills in sewing. There are two instances in my practicum where I observed a teacher think up possible answers to a specific question asked by a student instead of using that moment as an opportunity to model how effectively the answer could have been sought through online resources. Both of these times when I was observing, I had the strong urge to pull out my phone and ask the internet, but etiquette as an observing teacher, and the rudeness of pulling out a phone when I am a representative of a university program, stayed my hand so to speak.

4. Digital etiquette – Type with the same respect with which you would speak to a person standing in the room with you. I think this could be modelled easily through email communication to students. However, I think this would be difficult to model in personal chats due to the natural separation that occurs through professionalism. In school, I would never give my students my phone number and therefore I could never model proper text speak through communication with them. I would rather not be asked questions about coursework at every hour of the day, after all. As such, I think the best way to model such a proper mode of communication would be to go through examples of texts and the various manners in which they could be interpreted due to the fact that they lacked tone or proper punctuation or grammar.

5. Digital security – This one seems simple but is actually very hard to accomplish. So many apps that we download these days gain access to our personal or usage information. Teaching students how to parse through the legalese when I struggle to do so myself would be a difficult prospect. However, there are some things that are easier to teach to students, such as not using real names when creating a profile on the internet, not including address and phone number, or reminding students to log off their email accounts before they walk away from a public computer.

References:

Center for the Study of Citizenship. (n.d.) Definitions of Citizenship. Retrieved January 2, 2021, from http://www.clas.wayne.edu/Citizenship/Definition-of-Citizenship

Palmer, R. (2014, December 3). Top Five Ways Teachers Can Model Digital Citizenship. .https://blog.edgenuity.com/top-five-ways-teachers-can-model-digital-citizenship/

UNICEF. (n.d.). Cyberbullying: What is it and how to stop it. Retrieved January 2, 2021, from https://www.unicef.org/end-violence/how-to-stop-cyberbullying