Digital Citizenship and the Saskatchewan Curriculum

“As teachers, it’s our responsibility to authentically integrate digital citizenship into the curriculum in a positive way.”

Amanda Brace

What does it mean to be a good citizen? What does it mean to be a good ‘digital’ citizen? Are they any connections between digital citizenship and the curriculum we teach in a classroom? These are some questions I am exploring in my EDTC 300 course, and for this post.

When I think of the idea of ‘being a good citizen’ in the context of a school subject, I often think of Social Studies. I took a course last semester all about Social Studies curriculum, and I especially remember discussions we had about how we can build engaged citizens, as described by the Ministry of Education:

“The development of values and attitudes, knowledge and understanding, and skills and processes that support active and responsible citizenship is fundamental to social studies education.”

Social Studies Grade 7 Curriculum, Ministry of Education

The idea of citizenship (and good citizenship at that) is already woven into the curriculum through Social Studies courses. So, should digital citizenship be any separate from that? Or does the digital aspect of it take away from what our students are physically doing and saying in the community?

Social media is becoming more and more prominent in today’s society, and in a recent lecture we talked about how quickly social media can, for lack of a better term, ruin your life. Any action can be scrutinized and blown out of proportion, or can be used to depict you in a negative or harmful way. More and more companies use social media to make sure that potential employees that will represent their company will also maintain a professional presence online.

I stumbled across a blog by a former University of Regina student, who wrote a post specifically on why digital citizenship is more than what you might think at first. She brings up an excellent point on how to teach our students to be digital citizens with Saskatchewan’s Digital Citizenship Policy Planning Guide. This is to remember that “digital citizenship education is not intended to be a stand-alone unit, course or lesson, rather it is best learned and understood when taught in context through supported online practice and real-life examples and experiences.”

Students are constantly bombarded with the message that they are ‘too plugged in’ all the time, too attached to their electronics and social media. In an article titled “The IRL Fetish“, Nathan Jurgenson explains that we are told that we have lost touch with reality, that no one can eat lunch without posting a picture about it, and that if you don’t tweet about every special moment about your life, is it really special?

“We’ve been told… we should go out into the ‘real’ world, lift our chins, and breathe deep into the wonders of the offline.”

Nathan Jurgenson

Rather than patronize our students who constantly connect with others in new ways we could have never imagined, and constantly redefine what it means to communicate, shouldn’t teachers guide them into responsible online practices and healthy behaviours? If the aim of education is to shape and build individuals who are competent, open to learning, critical thinking, and good citizens, digital citizenship is a crucial part of their development and assimilation into what we call ‘adulting’.

DigitalCitizenship lists nine elements of digital citizenship, each with a definition and connection to the classroom that leads to the goal of “continuously developing norms of appropriate, responsible, and empowered technology use.” They are:

• Digital Access
• Digital Commerce
• Digital Communication and Collaboration
• Digital Etiquette
• Digital Fluency
• Digital Health and Welfare
• Digital Law
• Digital Rights and Responsibility
• Digital Security and Privacy

How, if at all, do these connect with the Saskatchewan Curriculum? Are there ways of incorporating these elements in our daily teaching? After some digging around, researching, and imagining teaching of my own, I’ve come up with some scenarios below.

For digital commerce, you could focus your teaching on Social Studies outcome RW7.1 (Explain the role of barter, trade, and sharing in traditional economies). Indicator (a) describes how students can role play the practices of barter, trade, and sharing used to obtain goods and services. What if this was done using cryptocurrency for example? Or, since most students are familiar with it, hold a role playing session on what e-commerce looks like for online retailers, and the role of supply and demand. This can lead to a discussion of indicator (d), which is to question whether these economies are sustainable. Should Amazon be able to make as much money as it does, and what does healthy and responsible digital behaviour mean for our often badly managed online shopping habits? Critical thinking skills are still being developed here, and digital citizenship is being introduced too!

For digital health and welfare, students are all too familiar with the negative effects of social media. Cyberbullying is a rampant issue for students, and the constant comparisons students draw to those ‘perfect’ individuals severely damages self esteem and self worth. This can tie into the Health Education outcome USC7.6 (Demonstrating interpersonal and assertiveness skills, as well as managing peer pressure). I could not just pick one indicator here, so here are some options I’ve thought of:

• For indicator (d), students can examine what positive and negative peer pressure looks like in a digital format. For example, encouraging friends to try new, healthy activities over social media, rather than belittling them into harmful behaviours.
• For indicator (g), students can examine the term ‘harassment’ in a digital context, such as trash talking in video game chats, online stalking, doxxing, and other harmful online behaviours.
• For indicator (h), students can practice standing up for others and themselves online by practicing managing ad preferences, not responding to others, showing how to block or mute content, or reporting violations of guidelines to relevant authorities.

I can see myself using any of the above situations in my future classroom. These outcomes and indicators were all drawn from the Grade 7 curriculum, and seeing as I am in the Middle Years program I figured I might as well think of situations I can actually use. I am a very tech-oriented person myself, and keep up with most social platforms. I think that part of my digital citizenship teaching will be modelling what those appropriate behaviours look like, and given students the time to practice them. This doesn’t mean I will allow phone usage non-stop in the classroom (an issue I still haven’t made up my mind about), but it does mean I want to prepare my students for life outside of the classroom. Students spend significantly more time outside the classroom walls than in it, and online presence and behaviours are more important than ever now. As someone who wants to be in a profession centered on teaching and shaping others, why should that just stop with English, Math, or Social Studies? I think everything done in the classroom should have some sort of connection to the ‘real world’; whether that is skills, content, or even just patience.