Digital Citizenship

How and when do you teach Digital Citizenship? 
"We should drop the word digital in contexts like this one because we’re really just teaching citizenship—these are the skills and knowledge that students need to navigate the world today." - Anne Collier

 When I think about my students, past present and future, Digital Citizenship is definitely an issue.
We must adequately teach these skills and guide students to experience situations where they can apply knowledge.
Students in my classes surprisingly still do not quite understand internet safety, even after the past decade of issues such as cyberbullying, social media, and all around internet safety. A lot of my students do not have technology at home, so at school, it is like candy. We try to take digital citizenship very seriously and rarely use the iPads or laptops until after weeks of appropriate teaching and personal contracts are signed.

 So, I especially liked the article How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students by Mary Beth Hertz. It was helpful hints to teach young students to begin to understand how to be safe online. 
A lesson plan for helping students as young as kindergarten begin to understand how to be safe online. The author gives examples, websites, and videos that are a very good review of helping young students understand that just like on the streets, there are strangers on the internet. It is the beginning of how to teach students to act responsibly online. 
I also read an article about the 9 Ps of Digital Citizenship. It is called "What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship" and it was written by Vicki Davis. This article went into much more detail about internet safety and gave me a few ideas that I had never thought of. The 9 P's are: 

 Passwords, Private Information, Personal Information, Permission, Protection, Professionalism, Personal Brand, Photographs, Property

 The author makes this point: "During the year, I touch on each of the points above with lessons and class discussions, but just talking is not enough. Students need to experience it to become effective digital citizens." I love that! I think students do need to really understand what we are talking about when we talk about plagiarism, personal information, and especially pictures and photographs. Allowing them to experience sharing and connecting online with others in a variety of environments is key. 

Comments

  1. haverkampJune 2, 2018 at 4:01 PM

    Jaime,

    I totally agree that we need to do more than just talk with students about being safe online. Exposing students to a variety of environments gives them the best experience. I also read and enjoyed Mary Hertz's article about safety for young elementary students. I as well have a majority of students who do not have access to internet at home. This does make our job of teaching online safety even more important!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Collaborative Technology

Image
"Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction." - C.S. Lewis Integrating collaborative technology into a second-grade classroom can be exciting. Since the purpose of education is to prepare students to be successful in their future, we have to think of the digital age they live in. Walking into my classroom, you would experience students in conversation, collaboration and hands-on learning. Students are practicing communication, goal setting and life skills that allow them to thrive in the classroom and beyond. Technology is definitely woven throughout the day, as a tool to empower and challenge students. Yet, to create a collaborative learning space that considers this was a bit challenging. First and foremost, you have to give them explicit instruction. Teaching kids to collaborate with one another using patience, eye contact, and appropriate tone to be successful is one way I prepar...
Read more

LMS

When first learning about an LMS, my first thought as a primary teacher was Seesaw! We connect, communicate and assess with it. My students love, use and understand it. However, I know for a fact around here that Seesaw stops at 5th grade. One of my former students mentioned they wish they still had it. Jenny Quarles would say that an LMS has the "potential of supporting students over their whole K-20 career with personalized learning experiences such as an LMS is powerful." I have always wondered what they use at the next level. As for an official LMS, we use Moodle at my building. It provides us PD opportunities, weekly schedules, photos and important dates. We can pretty much find what we need on Moodle. Our principal also post quotes or advice or positive affirmations, which really do help moral! If there's ever a question about the week, you can hear many teachers saying "did you check Moodle?" However, we are not allowed to use Google Classroom at the e...
Read more
Image
Technology in Second Grade... I am teaching second grade in a Title and ELL building. We have a lot of poverty, language, and behavior issues. Usually, in the day-to-day, technology is the last thing on students minds. I want to change that. I want to show students how technology can help them. It can help with their creativity, their production, and their knowledge. Since a lot of these students do not have much technology at home, it is my job at school to prepare them for a future with technology.  Appropriate use of technology will prepare each student for their future. Every job I can think of uses technology in some way.   Most students today have been using mobile devices like tablets and smartphones to play and learn since they could crawl.   It seems only seems logical to align today's classrooms with the way that students are familiar with learning. We use iPads, apps, Apple TV, laptops and typing keyboards to work on skills that are useful to the prese...
Read more