Digital Citizenship

Journal entry #1:

In the same manner that we include citizenship in our curriculum, it is important to teach and discuss with students digital citizenship from an early age.

Our students are using smartphones and tablets at the age of two or even younger. My own niece has become an expert using youtube children channels from her Mother’s phone.It is the new pacifier and it works for children of all ages. Some parents make an extra effort and install educational apps, audiobooks for their children so their entertainment is also educational, but not all take that extra step to make their children’s interactions meaningful. This is why for our young ones the use of technology is more intuitive than for older generations who grew up as technology was developing. And just like citizenship character principles should be first taught at home, digital citizenship should follow suit but that is not always true. We cannot assume that students are learning digital citizenship from their parents Curan (2012). Parents may not even know what digital citizenship entails since they did not grow up with this reality, or can not keep up with the fast changing.

Digital citizenship is so much more than teaching about the dangers of the internet, cyberbullying and piracy. The nine elements of digital citizenship developed by Ribble (2015) include many more aspects that many might not even be aware of including: access, commerce,communication, literacy, etiquette, law, rights and responsibilities, health and wealthness, and security. A digital citizen should use technology is a possible and responsible way Ribble (2015). These 9 elements are grouped together in principles to help us act like good citizens in the digital age: Respect self and others, educate self and connect with others,and protect self and others.

We live in a “real world” and in a digital world. The nine elements and the way they are grouped together help us educators understand how technology is having an impact in our world. They can be used to identify issues and areas of need in school and home, and more importantly these elements are flexible enough to address other aspects of the digital citizenship that may arise in the future.

During this past year of Pandemic interruption we were able to experience some of these nine elements as we taught virtually to students around the world from PreK all the way to College. We learned different models of online teaching including synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid.No handbook just making the rules as we rolled through the waves.

We also learned the importance of digital citizenship that plays heavily in education like digital access, digital communication and digital literacy.

Digital access was front and center as many families faced real challenges to help their children have access to the virtual classroom. Some Districts fared better than others. Some were able to provide one to one computers and hotspots to all students and others gave parents that responsibility. We understood the importance of equal opportunities in digital education because we lived through it.

Digital communication was another big element that we learned to appreciate during this past year. For the first time ever, I had 100 per cent parent participation in my choice of digital platform.Not all my parents had email, so we had them all join a platform that allowed me to communicate with parents and students through computer, tablet or phone. My community of parents have been historically detached because of language, culture and convenience (they had to work two jobs), but were involved and active participants. Parents got to see how day to day in school works and will hopefully become more invested in their children’s education because they understand it better. Hopefully.

And finally digital literacy as the third element of the category that directly affects learning and academic performance. One thing is that our students are intuitive in the use of technology and another that they know how to use different apps, educational systems to be able to complete assignments. It was obvious that they still needed modeling and guidance to be able to use technology to learn. The major part of the first nine weeks was modeling how to be in the digital educational environment. It was very hard at first but at the end students and teachers were more tech savvy and more confident to try new technologies and apps.

The Pandemic forced us to go deeper into digital education, and we cannot go back into the physical classroom and not acknowledge the importance of digital education and the need to teach digital citizenship to our students.