When I think about digital citizenship in my classroom, there are quite a few things that come to mind. Firstly, it made me think about how I have taught online safety and digital citizenship in the past. Then it brings me to the question of where we draw the line regarding who is supposed to be teaching kids these things. Lastly, it makes me think about how I have to be keeping up with the online activities so that I can work to be aware of what is going on online.
I would consider myself fairly up to date on the technology and social media that is used by youth today, and I will never skip an opportunity to remind the kids “I’m not that old…” but there are still some times where I have to do my research to know what I need to be teaching and how to communicate. I
taught PAA survey for Grades 7 and 8 for many years and the one unit I always made sure to do was information processing in which I covered digital citizenship as part of the unit. I have found one thing that I need to do is keep up to date and update the lessons each year. Without it, I wouldn’t have the information needed based on the apps, social media sites and information that kids need to know for their own safety for the current world.
Whenever the topic of Digital Citizenship comes up, I always have the debate with friends and coworkers over who should be shouldering the job of teaching this to kids. I personally believe that there is some that should come from school, but I think that there is a lot that should be done at home. But I would be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments!!
When I was reading about the Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship, I considered how I would need to consider each when I am teaching so I decided to leave a bit of a thought on each below.
- Digital Access: I work in a community where digital access is not always equal and many of my students do not have digital access at home, so being cognisant of that when planning and talking to my students is highly important.
- Digital Commerce: Many of my students will buy things online, so when I learned about some of the safeguarding that we can be teaching them, it was something that I immediately wanted to add to my lessons because I didn’t even know some of those things.
- Digital Communication and Collaboration: I think my students are doing this all the time, so it is important to be educating them how to do it safely so they don’t end up in sticky situations.
- Digital Etiquette: I think that there is many adults who need a lesson on this and often students are able to know about it more than adults. But teaching about expectations within the classroom is always important.
- Digital Fluency: This is something that I have had to really teach to my students because they often believe everything that they see and make poor decisions due to ignorance and just not knowing.
- Digital Health and Welfare: This is also something that I need to consider with the students. I teach the importance of taking a break, but sometimes I think that I need to remember to practice this myself.
- Digital Law: This is also something that I teach, but after listening, I think there there are a lot of things I will be adding to my lesson!
- Digital Rights and Responsibilities: I think that this is something students often don’t understand because they feel that internet access and being able to have access whenever they want is their right. So teaching what this actually means is important for the kids.
- Digital Security and Privacy: I feel like teachers do a good job of teaching this, but I am interested to see how this changes as we are seeing new laws being created and rules changing.
Overall I think digital citizenship is important to have students learn, but I wish that it was more of a shared effort sometimes. Often it feels like the school is the only one teaching this, which can make it difficult when we only have so much reach.