Digital citizenship is everything about you that people can see online. Teachers' digital resume is very important for their future career. Creating and maintaining a digital resume is how you leave a legacy online. Garth Holman teaches a 7th grade social studies class and is very good at incorporating TPACK in his classroom and stresses the importance of digital citizenship to his students. You can check out his student made text book for the class here.
Garth said the first most important thing is to build is a trusting relationship with your students when trying to foster digital citizenship. How will you inspire your students to become an involved digital citizen and what digital foot prints will they leave and follow?
In the terms and conditions of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it stipulates that by agreeing to use their program you forfeit ownership to what you post. This is one of the first things Garth teaches his class. Just like this, students might not realize that they have already started to leave digital foot prints throughout their life, even before they were even born. The below video shows the never ending, ever growing cycle of the digital dossier.
When something is posted on the Internet, it never really leaves. The Way Back Machine is a website that archives information on the web. It is important for students to know that everything on the web lasts forever, and will always be there if you know how to find it. Everything you leave behind is traceable and findable. Because of this it is vitally important to stress to our students that they need to think before they post. I found this video really stresses the importance of being cautious of what you share, especially when it concerns personal information. I feel that there should be less emphasis on sharing your personal life online and more emphasis on sharing your professional life online. By being professional online you are putting your best foot forward for the world to see, and sometimes we can over share from our personal lives, but if we share professionally we always have in the back of our heads who our audience will be. Some people can get swept up in the false sense of security in of supposed anonymity that posting online provides, and this can lead to issues when potential employers or colleges trace your digital foot prints. So it is important to stress to your students that they should always be thinking of who their audience will be.
You know you have an impact on your students when they take the material out into the world and apply it to real life. To encourage this Garth has his students make blogs about the course so that others can interact with them about what they are learning. Even though nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online, and 1 in 4 have been bullied more than once, Garth hasn't run into any issues with his students, and his students are able to maintain a professional atmosphere on their blogs. Anything positive you can leave on social media is a positive digital footprint. For students to leave legacy teachers should encourage students to leave behind positive beneficial work. Your digital foot print is your legacy. Although it can be hard sometimes to leave positive digital foot prints when the statistics are so high when it comes to online harassment. Below are the findings from one online harassment report by Pew Research Center.
The article Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship talks about how not everyone has access to current technology, how the digital economy is growing because of buying and selling online, the ability to instantly communicate with anyone, how digitally literate the current generation is, and a lot about using technology and the internet in a safe and respectful way. The digial divide and cyber bullying, in my opinion, will be the main issues that hold us back from growing as a society that is increasingly useing technology. For more on digital ettiquett, appropriate behaviour online, and use of technology in schools, check out the article Addressing Appropriate Technology Behavior.
So how will you encourage your students or children to be responsible digital citizens, leave a legacy of positive digital foot prints, and remind them that other people outside of their intended auidence will be able to see what they post? I hope the materials I referenced will help you decide and formulate a plan to stress the importance of being a digital citizen to your kids.
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