When I was in middle school, the concept of digital citizenship was just ramping up. We were beginning to be allowed to bring our devices to listen to music with and being directed on appropriate times to do so. I remember most of our digital citizenship instruction was on when we should and shouldn’t be using our devices, which falls under only really one of Ribble’s Nine Elements. I also remember learning about cyberbullying, although the concept seemed abstract and at the time if I were to give an example, it would likely just surround leaving mean comments on others’ posts. There was a bit of instruction on catfishing, but this seemed to me to only really pertain to adults and dating sites because at that time, I had very limited knowledge of online communities/chat rooms (and I still have limited experience in this avenue, but have a better conceptual understanding).
A tactic I remember being used by teachers was “be careful what you put online because your future employers are going to google you and you want to make sure they don’t see anything that could make them not want to hire you”. At this time, it was preached that we wouldn’t want to be posting pictures of ourselves drinking, or wearing inappropriate clothing. During my time in a work experience program when I was in grade 11, I had the school secretary of the elementary school I was doing my placement at tell me that her daughter (who I went to high school with) showed her a picture of me from Halloween where I was wearing something I wouldn’t wear to work experience, but was nowhere near the typical Mean Girls-style costume. The secretary told me that I shouldn’t post pictures where I’m not dressed appropriately in case a parent were to come across it. This woman thought it was okay to slut shame a 16 year old girl who wore shorts as part of her Halloween costume! While I understand where the secretary was coming from, I believe this is fortunately not something we need to be concerned about online anymore. It is my hope that when employers, parents, coworkers, etc. see us living our lives online that they do not extrapolate what they see in our free time and apply it to what we will be like in our professional lives. Does that mean you should post a picture of yourself engaging in illegal activity? No, but a photo of you at your friend’s wedding where you happen to have a can in hand? Probably not the end of the world.
I have the sense that the “loosening up” of our digital image is in part due to the fact that we now live our lives simultaneously on and offline. Being a good digital citizen has less to do with how “appropriate” our posts are in the eyes of future employers, and more to do with the ways in which we conduct ourselves both on and offline. Concepts of digital commerce, collaboration, fluency, and security would have done so much more to impact me today if taught when I was in school rather than the age old “you never know who’s seeing your posts” rhetoric. We were taught that we needed a works cited page, but all we had to do was copy and paste the URL. Why not teach us where to find the information needed in most citation styles, such as author, publication date, institution, etc? Why not teach us about the difference between http and https? Why did I learn that at 24 years of age and not 14? I think because digital citizenship was so new that teachers really had no idea what they were doing, but luckily we can change that for future generations.
What I believe to be the most helpful approach to teaching and learning digital citizenship is to apply the Nine Elements to digital and physical settings. In essence, digital citizenship and physical citizenship share the same values, so I believe it is important when talking about the ways in which we conduct ourselves in society, have actions and consequences, and be good people that we bring in elements of the digital and physical realities. For me, and I’d like to think for many other educators, the goal is to prepare and cultivate positive, well-regulated humans to send out into the world, whether that world be physical or digital.