What is digital citizenship?
I have learned in the past week that digital citizenship is challenging to define specifically because it, like regular citizenship, is multi-faceted.
Ribble (2015) explains that digital citizenship is a solution created by people who wanted to find a way to address teach appropriate behaviors in digital society and how to learn what is appropriate and what isn’t (p.11). He then dedicates his entire text as an attempt to address how to do exactly that.
I would describe digital citizenship as the complex response to teaching students to practice actions that accurately promote and exude “The Golden Rule” virtually.
I would explain to colleagues that the concept digital citizenship is complicated and simple. It’s simple in that it can all be summed up with “The Golden Rule”. It’s complicated in that it’s multifaceted. I think “The Golden Rule” of treating others the way you want to be treated addresses so much.
How do I teach digital citizenship?
There is so much to teach and so many different ways to teach it. The Heick (2020) definition appears to be most specific in addressing the variety of aspects: habits, actions and consumption patterns (intrapersonal, and interpersonal). Some great ideas for how to address the issues that arise within the digital arena are using role play, creating PBL projects, and modeling how to be an upstanding digital citizen.
There are 5 resources that can help share my definition with educators are Pinterest, my website/ blog, the Common Sense Nearpod Lessons, Common Sense’s website and detailed curriculum, and Google’s Be Internet Awesome campaign and resources.
The nine elements are Digital Access, Digital Commerce, Digital Communication, Digital Literacy, Digital Etiquette, Digital Law, Digital Rights and Responsibilities, Digital Health and Wellness, and Digital Security. There are three categories that hold each of the nine elements. The categories are student life outside the school environment, school environment and student behavior, and student learning and academic performance.
The elements of digital citizenship that most catch my eye are digital communication (respecting others feelings) and digital health and wellness. Currently, our school has had middle school students struggle to appropriately respect others’ feelings while online. We are having situation after situation of students not understanding the need to respect feelings of other classmates. Our students are having a hard time with understanding harassment and repercussions in the unforgiving digital environment.
I think students would benefit from reading a book where this happens to a character and being given time to reflect on how to respect others online. Or possibly students could spend time reflecting on as a class and participating in role play with similar situations so they can hear classmates say it is wrong or makes them uncomfortable.
Students must also recognize the need for boundaries for technology in their lives. After adopting Chromebooks this year in middle school, I have noticed students getting exhausted by the constant technology usage. We must learn to teach students the balance between technology usage and the value of in-person experiences. I can model this in the classroom with students and have conversations with students as this occurs.
The more I learn about digital citizenship, the more apparent it becomes just how important it is to explicitly teach it. Just like how we can specifically work to prevent bullying in-person, we must take action about what occurs online and intentionally address and teach students how to respond to and prevent it. Frequently schools and teachers are quick to push the responsibility of handling, monitoring and educating students about social media onto their parents. However, as the separation between citizenship and digital citizenship is slowly removed, the community as a whole must work together to educate and prepare our students for the changed, technology-saturated world we live in.
References
Curran, M. (2012, June). iCitizen: Are you a socially responsible digital citizen. Paper presented at the International Society for Technology Education Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX. Retrieved from (PDF: icitizen_paper_M_Curran.pdf )
Heick, T. (2020, September 8). The Definition Of Digital Citizenship: The Future Of Learning. TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/the-definition-of-digital-citzenship/.
Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know. (3rd ed.). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology.
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