B7- Digital Citizenship ( Good)

Digital literacy and showing teachers digital competencies in Math, Science & healthful living in the classroom could be used with collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, character and communication.  Our students will have to face the challenges and threats that come with living with technology. The ideas and standards complement the concept of digital citizenship, which has also been highlighted by the standards for students created by International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and provide reasons for educators from across disciplines to engage their students in activities that promote civic engagement and digital citizenship (International Society for Technology in Education, 2016). There are multiple ways for educators to help students develop their abilities to effectively engage in digital communication through in-class activities and activities that bridge students’ in-school learning and out-of-school experiences. Innovative, secondary school teachers responsible for teaching digital citizenship (e.g., social studies, history, civics, and language arts educators) should consider integrating social media as a way to develop learning networks that connects students’ offline and online civic engagement activities with formal citizenship curricula. In this vision of a social media-enabled digital citizenship approach, the socio-technical affordances of Twitter (e.g., ability to participate in “real-time” political action organized around hashtags) lower barriers to participation while allowing students to develop important new literacies (Gleason, 2016; Greenhow & Gleason, 2012).

Example:  Classroom social media pages

Students can collaborate together on projects, as well as read other students' posts and reflect on them. Classroom social media can help students to think more deeply. Teachers foster this collaboration in the classroom all the time—by using these sites, they can encourage it outside of the classroom, too.

How can we better support teachers' digital citizenship and their teaching through teacher professional development? 

Getting the entire school board to support a culture of digital citizenship ensures the reinforcement of appropriate digital engagement. 

Greenhow, C., & Gleason, B. (2012). Twitteracy: Tweeting as a new literacy practice. The Educational Forum, 76(4), 464- 478.

Gleason, B. (2016a). New literacies practices of teenage Twitter users. Learning, Media, and Technology, 41(1), 31-54.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2016). National educational technology standards for students.
Arlington, VA: International Society for Technology in Education.