The Connected Curriculum: Challenge #1

Integrate Digital Chitizenship Daily into Your Classroom

Teaching Digital Citizenship is the critical first step in becoming technologically informed in the 21^st Century.  Just like a class in drivers education grooms kids to get behind the wheel of a car, digital citizenship prepares them to travel the internet confidentially and safely.  This is significant because the media environment our students are growing up in is completely different from anything any of us have ever faced before.  The rules of this internet road are being literally written as we speak.  And while participation in this global community (connection, collaboration, learning, community, and information access) offers incredible opportunity it is also filled with possible peril (identity theft, sexting, cyber bullying, plagiarism, and predators). We all need to cultivate an ethical core that can direct us in this ethical territory.

In his article, Teaching Screenagers Character Education for the Digital Age, Jason Ohler (2011) looks at what our role as educators is now in this world of technology.  Should we continue to insist that our students live life from a “two lives” perspective with a traditional, digitally unplugged life at school and then an opposite digitally infused life outside of school?  Ohler answers with a resounding “no!” and states that our job as educators is to help students live one, integrated life by not only allowing them to use their technology at school but to discuss it within the greater context of community and society. In the new, global world of our children the role of their citizenship has changed.  To teach our children how to navigate this successfully we must “fold their digital tools into the general flow of school”. As we have seen again and again during the course of the past few years, digital tools and the citizenship that comes with them is not going away.  Just as in the past, our children need help with navigating their way successfully in life. The era of these digital tools may be new but the concept of teaching our students to behave responsibly and have a healthy and productive future is not. Ohler argues that we cannot do this if we banish technology from their school lives and I support his position one hundred percent.

An excellent video resource, Be CyberSmart! Cyber Ethics and Bullying, also reiterates this philosophy and states, “Most people learn traditional standards of behavior and respect for others by the time they are teenagers—but many don’t realize that those rules are just as valid in today’s cyberspace”.

I believe one of the reasons teaching digital citizenship is so significant is that it helps students contemplate ethical dilemmas that occur online, every day in a protected, offline environment.   This also helps students think about their online identities.  How easy it is to embellish, makeup, or lie about their identity because they are not interacting face-to-face and how hard it is to erase those digital footprints once they are made. The above mentioned video, Be CyberSmart! Cyber Ethics and Bullying emphasized that it is all about being the real person that you are on line that you are off line and learning to recognize HOW you communicate with others has an effect.

As a middle school technology instructor I teach a digital citizenship curriculum from Common Sense Media.  It is a free, internet based curriculum that matches lessons and curriculum to grade level with appropriate activities.  This curriculum focuses on a framework of the five main areas regarding digital citizenship; identity, privacy, ownership, trustworthiness, and participation that Ohler (2011) refers to in his article. I have been extremely pleased with this curriculum and the students actually look forward to the lessons. Unfortunately, it is only a 2 day unit out of each semester but with my new found knowledge and understanding I have been adamant about increasing the time I spend on it. Because of this I am now currently making plans to integrate it weekly as a Friday activity with new curriculum that my district purchased.  I have also found a great resource off Twitter (see my retweet) called a Digital Citizenship Survival Kit.  It’s a modest little prop that I am going to start using to get my point across better to my middle school students.  The kit is comprised of a padlock, new toothbrush, permanent marker and toothpaste all put neatly into a zip lock bag.  Ohler is all about using creativity to increase our student’s engagement and this tool kit is exactly the little “kick” my delivery of the topic needed.  The padlock is to remind students to set strong passwords and to make sure all of their digital devices have passcode locks.  You use the toothbrush to remind students never to share their password just like they would never share their toothbrush (except with parents).  The permanent marker is to remind them that everything that you put online is permanent….even if you hit the delete button after posting. Chances are someone has retweeted, favored, or taken a screenshot of the material you posted.  Last but not least is the toothpaste.  Imagine the information that you are putting online is like the toothpaste coming out of the tube.  Once it is out, it is almost out of the question that you will get it back in!  The survival kit is a very ingenuous yet very effective prop in getting students to think about their online conduct. 

Learning digital citizenship prepares today’s youth to fully participate in a digital world that is here to stay.  Rather than keeping students from an environment that offers so many opportunities to learn, let’s prepare them instead.  Because the “best internet filter in the world is the one right between their ears.”Keynote - Jason Ohler at the Nebraska Educational Technology Association's Conference (2010)

So until tomorrow.......

Collaborate and connect your curriculum!