Oh wow. What a great question. “How do I plan to approach digital citizenship in my future classroom?”… Here is the thing. I want to understand my own digital citizenship first. I truly struggle in this area, I grew up with technology, so I don’t have a great understanding of digital citizenship.. more of an understanding of the apps themselves.

I watched ‘The Social Dilema’ that Dr. H recommended us to watch. It really opened my eyes to how much control technology has over us and our daily decisions. The movie depicted an incredible point of view, something I have never thought of. The way that facebook and other apps WATCH our every move. For example the documentary talks about how it will watch you scroll, and if you pause on something it will continue to show items similar, aka creating your own algorithm. I would honestly show this movie in a class. Especially to students grade 7 and up. They would really take understanding from this and take realization to what their phones/technology are really doing to them.

Another thing that I would do in my classroom to support digital citizenship is by having the students and myself explore social medias of myself and famous people. This is where we could discuss what is good, bad, needs work etc. I think showing that we are all real people and how we portray ourselves online is incredibly important. Students are going to use social media no matter what, I believe it is better to give them real life examples rather than scaring them. 

I would also bring other presenters into my classroom, as I don’t 100% know what I am talking about, but I imagine someone else could support me in supporting my students. For example: Our learning facilitator in our school gave a presentation to our students one time about digital citizenship. The presentation involved him showing a map. This map showed where his phone has been used in the past 10 years. I just think that that is so incredilby interesting that we can be constantly tracked/followed without even knowing it.

I would also want to show my students that I am a safe person for them to come talk to about anything that they may be experiencing online. I think if the presense of technology and social media is in the classroom, the more students may be prone to talking about it with me. I could do this by talking about how we all have rights to freedom online, but we have to make sure that we are aware of what we are saying and if the information we are finding is actually factual before we speak it or share it. I would also talk about digital wellness… I know how i feel when I am scrolling the internet and doing the good old comparision game. I would show the students what face tune and other apps can do to people. Plus let the students know that we are all on our own journeys. I mean, easier said then done. But showing them these things may support them in picking up fake stuff they see online. 

I would teach the 9 elements by allowing the students to manipulate and interact with materials, videos and sites themselves to learn what they can about the 9 elements. Whether that is us creating blogs or social media pages. But another thing I want to note about the 9 elements of digital citizenship is that we only have the students for 6-7 hours a day. During this time they are not often allowed social media or technology. BUT when they get home they are often entering their digital worlds. So as the teacher I would work with the parents in getting information to them to support at home digital citizenship as well. This can be as simple as resources being sent home, parents nights about digital citizen ship or conversations during parent/student/teacher interviews. I think we have to work with parents in supporting the children in the digital world.

NOTE: ‘Be Internet Awesome’ is such a good resource to have in classrooms. I used it when I taught grade 4-6 tech class. It is basically games to help kids understand digital citizenship. Its the ‘Play Interland’ that has all the games. But the whole sight is filled with resources. I even used it with my grade 10’s at the time to see what they thought of it and they enjoyed it as well. It is actually super fun and informative 🙂 Enjoy.