As an educator, it is important to think about when and where digital citizenship can be taught to students in school – because we all know they need to learn the good and the bad from somewhere reliable. I currently teach grade 3/4 so I was focusing on these grades to relate the 9 elements to the Saskatchewan Curriculum.
ELA 3/4
The ELA curriculum is very open-ended, so there are lots of opportunities to embed digital literacy into the outcomes. First off, CR3.1 and CR4.1 both state that students need to comprehend and respond to a variety of texts that are grade-level specific and these outcomes include “multimedia texts”. Multimedia texts could be a variety of different types of texts, but we can easily associate that with technology as well. This could bring up conversation about Digital Access – does everyone have the ability to access these types of texts outside of school or are they readily available for students to access on their own time? This could be a tough conversation to have with students. It can also bring up the topic of Digital Etiquette – how to act and react to things that are online. Teacher’s can guide students to understand how to use and find reliable informational texts online to aid them in their reading and writing in ELA.
Health 3/4
In the Health curriculum, Digital Citizenship can easily be related to USC3.4 and USC 4.4. These outcomes focus on how to keep yourself and others safe – which touches on quite a few of the 9 elements. For example, it can relate to Digital Communication and Collaboration, Digital Etiquette, Digital Fluency, Digital Health and Welfare, Digital Law, Digital Rights and Responsibility, and Digital Security and Privacy. These outcomes can be taught to touch on how being online is a space that we need to know how to use safely from a young age to keep ourselves out of danger and stressful situations. Because students have access to EVERYTHING online these days, it’s important that we educate them on how to use it SAFELY and not to hide them from it completely. Because the internet is how we do so many things these days, it’s important that they know how to use it for what they need. Education is key to having safe and healthy students.