Teaching Digital Citizenship In and Out of the Classroom
In my experience as a student, digital citizenship was a topic that was talked about vary rarely in my classrooms. Often the conversation would be started by an incident of cyber bullying or somebody sending pictures of someone to their friends. However, this did not happen often, and most of the time when it did, it was not caught by the teachers. So, this meant that conversations about what a good digital citizen is, maybe only happened once or twice a year in a brief hour long lesson. In my opinion this is not enough. In this post I will be discussing how I would like to approach the topic of digital citizenship in my classroom, and the types of discussions I would include.
The Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship
This week we were asked to read the Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship by Mike Ribble. I think the elements included in this article could create a great framework of what to teach in any given year. These elements can also act as a check-in for

teachers to address what is most important to teach in the classroom in context of grade level or area. For example, the first element is Digital Access, as a teacher it is important for us to understand our students, and meet them where they are at. In looking at the access they have at home, we are better able to understand what kinds of digital knowledge they might or might have. For some students, we can move quickly into Digital Etiquette (element 4), where for others we might need to spend more time on Digital Fluency (element 5) as we cannot teach a student who does not understand technology how to use it responsibly without teaching how to use it first. I feel each student should learn each element of Digital Citizenship as outlined in the article, but the learning might not always look the same or happen in the same time frame.
Digital Use In and Out of the Classroom
In our current society, technology is a staple of everyday life. As discussed in The IRL Fetish by Nathan Jurgenson, almost every piece of our day is consumed by a digital presence. This presence makes it increasingly difficult to unplug and focus on actual real life. In knowing this I think it is important to have open and consistent conversations with students about when is a good time for digital use and when is not. I do not believe that students need to have “Two Lives”, an outside of school digital presence and fully unplugged school life (Character Education for the Digital Age), as this is not realistic for their lives outside of school. I believe the purpose of schooling is to educate students, so why would we

remove a vital part of modern society from their education? I think it is much more productive to teach students when the appropriate time for digital use is. It is important for us as teachers to help our students to “not only use technology but also question it” (Character Education for the Digital Age). I would urge my students to question if technology use is helping or hindering their academic performance, social interactions, and mental health often throughout the day.
Being A Good Digital Citizen
I think the final piece of educating students surrounding digital citizenship is helping students to understand the concepts of Digital Rights and Responsibilities, Digital Law, and Digital Security and Privacy (Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship). I see these elements as important for understanding cyber safety along with Digital Citizenship. In order to be a good Digital Citizen, students need to understand how to keep themselves safe, as well as others in the online space. This means thinking critically about information they are consuming before spreading it to others, ensuring that they are only interacting with people they know online, keeping their platforms positive and free of posts that could harm others, and being aware of the legal consequences of not following some of these guidelines. All of these pieces come together as considerations for students when assessing their own digital presence and citizenship.
2 thoughts on “Teaching Digital Citizenship In and Out of the Classroom”
Hey Bridget,
I relate to a lot of the points you brought up here. Digital citizenship was not something commonly brought up within my classrooms. I definitely feel like it needs to be talked about more students need to be more educated on it. I also really liked your point and your title of the “outside of the classroom” Obviously tech is seen often within classrooms but in many cases it is going to be seen and used more outside. That is why it is extremely important to not stop the education on this topic when the school day ends. I wonder how we could get parents to teach their children about this properly when they were never educated about it?
Hi Noah, thank you for your comment! I agree that digital citizenship is such an important topic to address with our students. Teaching outside of the classroom can be difficult we rely heavily on parents as well. Maybe some interactive activities could be created for parents to complete along with their child? This way it feels less like homework but still gets families involved.