This image is perfect for describing a child (or adult, let's be honest) learner. Many people do not understand what it means to be a digital citizen. ISTE (International Standards for Technology in Education) says this about digital citizenship, "Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior. Students (a) advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology; (b) exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity; (c) demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning; and (d) exhibit leadership for digital citizenship."
The student in the image above is clearly not following ISTE's definition. To be honest, I haven't really been following ISTE's definition; mainly because I was clueless as to what digital citizenship was. Digital citizenship is, in layman's terms, simply a way of navigating the internet in a safe, polite, and productive way. It's not writing a paper using as many websites as possible without knowing if that site is legitimate. It's not signing up for a facebook account to bully some kids in your school, or some kids that are bullying your kids. It's not randomly giving out your bank account or credit card information without checking to see if the site is secure.
Awesome, now we know what isn't digital citizenship. So... what is?
For teachers, it's knowing how to use the internet in a productive way, a way that will allow you to create excellent relationships with your students. It's a way for you to teach. You can use the internet to make class wiki's. Class wiki's are excellent teaching tools. If a student misses class you can send him or her to a website, which will allow them to go through the lesson or lessons they missed. This is not to say that teachers need to stop teaching, but it's a good alternative to kids getting the wrong notes from another student that wasn't really paying attention. (In fact, I used this wiki to get the image above, and also to peruse some websites that defined digital citizenship.)
For students, being a good digital citizen means not engaging in cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is defined by StopCyberbullying.org as "when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones." This is an improper ways to tell someone your opinion. An example of proper "netiquette" is reading other students, or adults, blogs and Facebook timelines and leaving positive comments. It's using your knowledge of the English language (or perhaps Spanish, French, Indian, etc) to effectively let a person know that you agree or disagree with their thoughts and beliefs. You can disagree, but you don't need to bully. For students, being a good digital citizen means researching your assignments, not plagiarizing by stealing from websites without siting them. It means starting at Wikipedia and using it as a jumping off point, rather than the end-all-be-all of a research paper.
Essentially digital citizenship means behaving properly online, knowing how to use the internet for the wealth of knowledge it can be, and contributing to the online community in positive ways. In my opinion, humble though it may be, if you can't "go online" without being a good digital citizen, you shouldn't go online.
Hey Samantha,
ReplyDeleteGreat Post! It is obvious that you have been blogging for a long time, you post reads very smooth.
I liked that you wrote about what Digital Citizenship is NOT. I think when people first think of the subject it might seem a bit bigger than what it actually is; which is being polite and respectful.
I know personally my parents drilled respect, responsibility, and politeness into my head as a child(for use in the real world); however, since they did not grow up surrounded by computers, they did not know that Digital Citizenship was something they needed to teach their children (they didn't even know what it is for that matter). I JUST heard this term last week in class, so I can only imagine the number of adults who do not know what it is. Perhaps there should be a public service announcement for it!