Digital Citizenship - April Benton

According to the NC Digital Learning Competencies for teachers, teachers will model and teach digital citizenship by the ethical, respectful, and safe use of digital tools and resources that support the creation of positive digital school culture.  It is my belief one of the best ways to teach digital citizenship is to integrate into the curriculum.  Rather than telling the students a list of rules that they are not allowed to do, have them use online tools and teach the correct way to interact on social media.

Book Snaps are very popular in the English Language Arts class, but this year I presented teachers with content snaps.  Students can snap pictures of completed math problems and snap them.  This leads to a discussion on what is appropriate to take photos of and share on snap chat.  Also, it leads to having conversations about who is the audience of your social media accounts.

In Science, students are often completing research projects.  Having students cite their sources in a correct format must be required in all classes.  Many times teachers look towards the English Language Arts teachers to teach those skills.  By teaching and requiring those skills in all courses, we can model to students that it is the correct way.  This would also be a great time to talk about fake websites and the best place to find information when completing research projects.  I would introduce my students to NCWISEOWL, a free resource for NC students,  at this point, as a place to find useful resources.  This would fall under ISTE standard Mentor students in safe, legal, and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property.

Finally, in Healthful Living, it is an excellent class for students to create anti-bullying videos.  These videos can focus on cyberbullying and can demonstrate the correct way to interact with people online.  Having conversations about digital footprint as so crucial at this time also.  I always share with students how their behavior now can have lasting effects on their future.

According to the article by Gleason and Gillern, our students are actively engaged in social media.  As educators, we have always taught citizenship in society, and now part of that teaching is digital citizenship.  As a digital citizen, we need to help them become involved as a political citizen.  Many of our teachers may not have their own social media account and are unaware of how to best help students function in this new digital society.  As a teacher who uses Twitter as a professional network, I would introduce all of my teachers to twitter.  Have them create accounts and learn from educators.  Later we can discuss how we can use twitter to share with others.  Hopefully, this would open their eyes and more doors for them as educators and digital citizens.