Originally posted by Victoria Ramsey on February 3, 2019
In deciding on what focus to take for Assignment 1, I thought it would be fascinating and also extremely relevant to explore the subject of digital citizenship (DC). Given that the MET program is a technology-based program, I have come across little discussion on the topic of DC specifically. As technology becomes increasingly infused in our daily lives, and more widely used in education, it is crucial to understand what it means to be a digital citizen, and on who this responsibility of teaching it falls. The notion of DC is a cultural phenomenon that is still relatively in its early stages, as the digital age has seen its most rapid advancement in the last two decades; it is also a unique one in that technological innovation and phenomena such as social media are still constantly evolving, and with it, bringing new implications. This analysis takes a brief look at what exactly DC is, its importance, and its relevance in education.
As a side note, the challenges of digital citizenship education are only briefly touched on, but it is an important subtopic on its own that requires more extensive discussion. Please feel free to share your own experiences with this subject in the discussion here. Personally, I have yet to hear of a school that has a consistent, shared philosophy on DC that is matched with school rules and expectations. In my current school (and ones I previously worked at), rules regarding technology use are set by classroom teachers, and the only school-wide expectations that exist are extremely general and up for interpretation by each teacher – is this enough?
Digital citizenship is a very important topic to discuss and practice with students AND educators.
When teaching a computer or information technology class I often ask students to Google themselves to see what comes up and usually there are always a handful of students that find things that were less than complimentary towards their character.
A school I worked at a few years ago hosted a guest speaker to talk to staff about digital citizenship but I feel it should be integrated into the regular training of new educators. On social media I came across more than a few educator accounts that post comments and pictures that would be deemed inappropriate but could be easily discovered by parents and students.
The most recent resource I have found to help educators and students with this topic was “Be Internet Awesome” by Google, worth taking a look! https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us/educators
That’s super interesting about the kid admitting his guilt to a police officer. For most kids nowadays there is no need for them to be accountable for their actions because there is no consequence for poor behaviour. If you don’t work hard, and you don’t get a grade you like, you can just whine to mom or dad and they’ll bother your teacher to get it fixed. It all comes down to a lack of capacity for empathy in my mind. A lot of kids aren’t going to understand that the internet is written in ink until they’re personally confronted with that fact. It seems to me that they can’t even relate to a future version of themselves. Just the here and now. That’s all that’s of concern.
While I think that having a set of rules and expectations for everyone to follow is important, I think that the enforcement part is the more difficult issue to tackle. In Victoria’s presentation she talks about what digital citizenship is and why it is important. Many classes at my elementary school start the year off with a digital citizenship unit to prepare our students for the use of technology and what appropriate use means. However, despite knowing all the rules and their importance, many students knowingly still don’t abide by those rules. I think that because there is a lack of consequence to breaking the rules when doing things digitally, whether at school or at home, the students don’t take it seriously. We had a police officer present about digital citizenship/online safety to the grade 7s at my school and one of the students nonchalantly shared that, at home, he was pretending to be someone else and hacking into people’s accounts! The police officer let him know why that was wrong and the consequences of doing that when you’re older, but in the mind of that grade 7, he probably still thinks that it’s not so bad. So yes, education of digital citizenship is important, but for that education to really make an impact, the enforcement of those rules needs to be backed up. The challenge/question is, what are fitting consequences?
The above was meant as a reply to Juliano, not the original post. Oups!
I agree! They’re only craving that instant satisfaction like getting “likes”, “subscribers”, “comments”, here and now, without any thought about how it could affect their future. I’ve mentioned to my classes how employers look at social media accounts before hiring candidates and how irresponsible tweets have gotten celebrities and corporations into lots of trouble but many just brush it off as “adult problems” that won’t affect them now.