Month: November 2024

For my future in teaching I hope to teach grades 7 or 8 and don’t really have a preference on subjects at the moment. I do think that for students in that age it important to be upfront with them about the pros and cons of the digital world. I think its important to treat digital literacy like we do teaching kids how to read, it is an important tool that will help them navigate the world for the rest of their lives.

I think you could tie in this type of digital education into the health curriculum because we know that the online world has such a pronounced impact on people but especially young impressionable kids. We learn in health about taking care of our physical body but also out mental and emotional well being. Well our emotional and mental well being these days is often very connected to our interactions with our online world. Through including digital education on how to protect yourself and others on the internet I think you can help young students realize that their behaviour online can have the same affects as if they were doing it in real person.

Online we are constantly bombarded with biases, and one of the most common ones is called confirmation bias. In the Mcluhan article about fake news it describes confirmation bias as the tendency to interpret or recall information in a way that confirms your preexisting beliefs. Today I think that is one of the biggest holes a lot of people fall into especially with how our feeds on social media can be curated and filtered to become an echo chamber of opinions we agree on.  A  lot of people do not even realize this is something that happens with their social media so I believe educating everyone on that would be a step forward.

The NTCE framework states one of its goals for its participants to be to “examine the rights, responsibilities, and ethical implications of the use and creation of information” and this is something we have been speaking about in class all semester long.  The things you post out there, the pictures you upload, the data that you input into a website is going to be attached to you one way or another. Maybe you were a young kid who posted outrageous jokes not thinking much of it until a future employer of yours brings it up in a meeting, or maybe you are a young person who sent a sensitive photo to someone you trusted and then learned you really couldn’t trust them that much. These situations are far too common for kids in todays digital world and our duty as teachers is to give them the education and knowledge to avoid or work through these hurdles.

If you are someone who is constantly spreading misinformation (fake news) online then this can follow you and your digital footprint for a long time. Likewise, if you are someone who is believing everything you see online, this is of course a problem that could lead to many misunderstandings. Fake news and misinformation are two other big issues that plague the internet today and what better way to combat it then to educate and inform the youth on how to be critical thinkers and always ask the why/for who questions when seeing a piece of media.

Linda Jacobson’s article on how educators can counter fake news describes how recent studies have shown that young students ability to evaluate information on the internet is “bleak” while most people may think young people are masters at navigating the digital world this is not the case when evaluating what is real and what is not. It is the duty of teachers and other educators to help them see through outright lies and tell the difference between ads, opinions, articles and reported factual news. Media literacy should begin long before students are fully immersed in their phones and social media.

Resources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/learning/lesson-plans/evaluating-sources-in-a-post-truth-world-ideas-for-teaching-and-learning-about-fake-news.html?_r=0

http://www.slj.com/2017/01/industry-news/the-smell-test-educators-can-counter-fake-news-with-information-literacy-heres-how/

https://ncte.org/statement/nctes-definition-literacy-digital-age/

For this weeks class discussions we spent a lot of time talking about our feelings on whether cyber-vigilantism is wrong or right, and what is “too far” when doing this? I think humans as people always have a need to have checks and balances in our lives. In real life we have developed codes of laws, policies and social rules that govern our lives and give us structure. So it is natural that in the digital world, which lacks a cohesive set of rules and standard practices, that people want to make sure that others get “what’s coming to them” or “what they deserve.” That is why I think you get so many people that jump on others viral mistakes, many people want to have the roles of judge, jury and executioner and what better place to do that then an echo chamber where you don’t even have to show your real face!

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I do not think constantly harassing someone you have never met before because of what they posted or said is helpful in getting any type of justice but I also have strong emotions against people being blatantly ignorant online. People who are willing to say outrageous stuff like racism so publicly do so because they have gotten away with it their whole lives. I don’t stretch to say we have all met people like that who feel so smug because “they are just words” and they know in most peoples eyes the “morally right” thing to do is to be the bigger person. Of course this is from my own experiences, but I can not lie and say there isn’t some sense of satisfaction in seeing complete idiots get consequences for things they have been getting away with up until now.  Do I think that this type of “justice” is accomplishing anything but a temporary band aid on a ever lasting problem? No, not really and that is because I think until we have a few generations who have grown up learning to be responsible digital citizens, the internet will keep being sort of a modern wild west, where the sense of responsibility for our own actions is not quite there for many people.

On the topic of digital citizenship, I have always been a strong believer in teaching students from a young age about being responsible online. I think by showing them that the digital world parallels our real world in many ways they can begin to understand that their footprint in the online world only grows and grows. It is important to curate that footprint and make sure you are being a responsible online citizen because as we know now your old past may still come back to bite you in the butt. When I was younger and first got access to the internet it was really free reign and no limits on what I could do and watch. Looking back now and I definitely made a ton of silly mistakes that I don’t think I would have if I had been shown basic online safety. Things like making accounts where I shouldn’t have, lying about my age on everything, uploading pictures to many websites, and never thinking twice about posting something because since it was online it doesn’t matter. For me it has thankfully never caused me issues but with all the risks out there of predators, identity thieves, viruses, misinformation and scammers it is more important now than ever to put digital citizenship at the forefront when learning about the internet and computers.

I think that as teachers the best way to approach digital citizenship is to keep on learning and educating ourselves about the technology around us. Doing our best to be informed so we know what students are facing in their daily lives so we can be supportive and answer questions when necessary. Social media, phones, computers, AI,  all these things that students use to communicate and interact are 24/7 and a bigger part of their lives than their teachers. But it is our job to help them navigate the real world as well as the digital world, helping them understand the risks online are just as real as they are in the rea world. We are taught in our daily lives growing up to be “good citizens” based on good morals and that tends to be forgotten by some people because you feel a lot more disconnected and anonymous online.

In the Ribble artile, it talks about the guiding principle of being Savvy and creating well informed and educated Digital citizens. The constant growth of technology forces us all to always be learning and sharing what we learn with our students.  Now as we become more used to it and the digital world becomes more ingrained into every facet of our lives, there is an expectation that kids are naturals at learning technology since they were born in the digital age. The more we get into the future, the more real this becomes as companies and app developers make them easier and easier to use for the public. 

The article also talks about the Safety category and the importance of teaching our students to protect themselves from scams, predators, and untrustworthy people. Online they have to understand how to interact with the internet in a safe way because unfiltered and uninformed access to the internet can be dangerous for young kids. Students need to learn how they can try to keep themselves safe from things like doxxing, stalkers or identity theft.

I would try to incorporate the 9 elements into other subjects and topics that are being taught. Trying to integrate learning about digital citizenship in everything we do in the classroom whether it is using the computer at school to do research or taking pictures and talking about how sharing them online is not such a harmless and risk free thing as some may think. I think a lot of kids now a days do understand that being online and having that digital footprint is very real but I think some just need that education and reality check about the what being online really means.

Jason Ohler writes about how our inherent human need to communicate, survive and thrive in a community has lead to us needing to expand how we see citizenship. The online world has made the world embrace different cultures, communities, languages and many other things but with that also comes the need to teach our youth this new type of citizenship. Teaching and reminding our students to use empathy, personal accountability and common sense whether they are online or in the real world.

I included this video because i think it does a good job of explaining how digital citizenship encompasses our lives in kid friendly language!