Digital citizenship is an important aspect of school for students (especially as they get older) to take into consideration. How we represent ourselves online can have a major impact on our lives and our futures. This is a bit of a grey area, because there has been so many advances and changes in technology and social media.
In the classroom its important to inform and model to our students what being a positive digital citizen looks like. In the article “Nine Elements” there are 9 areas for teaching our students on how to lead and assist in positive online experiences, recognize actions have consequences, and paricipate in a manner for common good. These 9 elements are areas that we already follow and live by in our non digital lives. Some of these include, access, commerce, communication and colaboration, etiquette, fluency, health and wellfare, etc. Students are creating a digital footprint at a younger age and its important to teach them digital citizenship and how to be a safe, educated, functioning members of our society whether that means in person or online.
Some of the students we are working with have very little digital footprint at this point, or they may not have had the greatest experiences thus far in the digital world. I think (along with parents) we need to teach safety and the ins and outs of how to stay safe in the digital world. Our students need to know what the purpose of the digital world is. The digital world today can serve and a positive tool for leraning and success, however, it can also be a place where people can go to be dishonest, steal, harm, etc. So our students need to be aware of the pro’s and the cons of the digital world.
Another important component to digital citizenship is teaching students to look at themselves and have an understanding of when the digital world is becoming too overwhelming. Our students need to be able to reflect that at some point they may need to unplug from technology for real interactions. The amount of digitial platforms out there in todays world, individuasl such as students can easily get lost down rabbit holes and have technology consume their lives.
I do believe with how fast the digital world is changing and how it is used to grab at our students and pull them in, they need to have some digital citizenship knowledge and awareness.
Nine elements. Digital Citizenship. (n.d.). https://www.digitalcitizenship.net/nine-elements.html
I agree that digital citizenship is something that parents and teachers can work together on. If kids get the same kind of message from everyone they are probably going to be more willing to listen. I think it’s so important for them to learn at an early age about how their digital footprint will follow them forever. Kids and adults both need to get better at putting down their phone and interacting with people.