Digital Citizenship, in many ways, is extremely similar to the citizenship we experience in our everyday lives. Citizenship revolves around this idea of "acceptance" into a society. This acceptance comes in many forms: social groups, educational institutions, and in the work place. Sometimes digital citizenship is harder to manage than our everyday experiences because they are open to more people in a shorter time frame. Crisis management in the social arena is something that everyone has had to deal with in the new world on some level or another.Digital Citizenship is different from other forms of the term because it could hinder someones reputation more quickly and for a longer period of time. The saying today is, "once it is on the Internet, it is there forever." While this is debatable, it is true in many ways. While we once were able to recover from a social incident before technology, that is now becoming more difficult.
Citizenship is something to usually be very proud of. It comes from a sense of nationality and pride in your community. Often it is very difficult to gain citizenship unless born in that country. We can think of gaining this status into a foreign country as very similar to gaining good citizenship. Often creating a decent digital footprint calls for a lot of effort. It is something that we must take great pride in, because it follows us for, potentially, a significant amount of time.
It is very important for teachers to recognize the ever increasing role that digital citizenship plays in our students' daily lives. Students frequently struggle with school, not because of the content itself, but because of outside influences–gossip, if you will. Teachers most now put extra emphasis on what it means to care for our online perceptions of self. To take pride in what others see of us is very important for our futures.
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Digital Citizenship. (2017, October 11). Retrieved from https://www.heathwood.org/academics/digital-citizenship
I recently had a conference with a parent about social issues between some of my students, outside of the classroom. Because I work for a small, private school, that only has one class per grade, the parent wanted me to aid in finding a solution to the problem. The issues did not occur in my actual classroom, but would be carried into it this upcoming school year, so I knew something had to be done. I have planned a curriculum to discuss internet safety and digital citizenship as a whole - pin-pointing social problems on the internet. I would like to include your quote, "To take pride in what others see of us is very important for our futures." I think it would be an eye opening statement to them!
ReplyDeleteScott, while I definitely agree that social issues are becoming more prevalent within the schools, I feel that this is not the only role that teachers must play in digital citizenship. We need to take preventative steps to stop these actions from ever even occurring online. To me, I found that digital citizenship was best represented by the golden rule - treat others how you wish to be treated. By teaching students at a younger age that this treatment extends to online encounters as well, we may be able to avoid a great deal of these digital/social issues. Students must realize that, just because they cannot see the other person at that moment, most comments posted online are tied back to real people with feelings.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, I feel that our role as teachers extends to the digital safety of one's self as well. Teaching proper digital practices such as stronger passwords and limiting what we choose to share online will be beneficial in teaching our students digital citizenship as well.