Original post by Abraham Kang on October 14, 2019
This video presentation discusses Digital Citizenship and its importance in today’s day and age. For this assignment, I wanted to discuss an ongoing issue with how people portray themselves online.
Thanks for watching!
Abraham’s video gives a good overview of the different aspects of digital citizenship, a subject that I am particularly interested in. He discusses the importance of being self aware of our online behaviours, our digital footprint. I’m interested in diving further into the subject in terms of its importance in education. In a day and age where children are almost born with a device in hand, who’s responsibility is it to teach them how to be and become good digital citizens? Should it be taught as a subject in school? Is it the parent’s responsibility? What if the parents need help or assistance because they aren’t technology proficient? Where can they turn to?
HI Veronique,
Those are interesting questions. Indeed with the growing use of mobile devices within the student population, one wonders if and who should teach students about digital citizenship. I like your suggestion of introducing digital citizenship at school as a subject but I’m not sure if it’s possible. It will be hard to change the school schedule to fit in another subject. Instead, it could be covered as a topic or module in their computer studies class or IT lesson. Moreover, teachers should establish a list of netiquettes with their students concerning their behavior in online discussion forums and things to be wary of when doing research online for schoolwork. Leaving it to the parents to teach digital citizenship might not be the best solution. Of course, there are some parents who already had that talk with their kids. However, this specific group of parents usually have a certain level of familiarity with IT or the internet that most parents don’t possess.
Hi Pascaline,
Thanks for your insight on the subject. I agree that adding digital citizenship as a subject would not be a realistic solution. But I also believe that it should be taught in school. Perhaps it should be part of the competencies (in Ontario they are called learning skills and work habits) that are to be taught and evaluated. As a result, it would be taught as part of every class instead of just the one computer class. Students would have a more experiential learning experience of digital citizenship, allowing them to transfer their knowledge to new contexts (i.e. at home, while on their mobile devices).