Digital Citizenship Education: Over 20 Essential Resources, Part 2 April 26, 2014 By: Michael Gorman As I shared in the last post, in the last year I have been working toward building up our district e-curriculum.
This week I am giving some guest bloggers the opportunity to share their ideas with you. This is a guest post from Salima Hudani. With technology playing a central role in education, teaching Digital Citizenship I believe, is a foundational and non-negotiable message that should be taught explicitly to all students.
You are perhaps aware that more and more classrooms are opening their doors to student discussion online. This happens in the virtual online classroom, but also in the blended classroom. As you might know, the blended classroom is one where students and teacher meet in a traditional school but use the internet to open the classroom walls to the community, region, country, and world.
Just recently two pretty significant events have happened with educators and their poor choices in the digital space. Both of these incidents come from large school districts in the heart of St. Louis, MO, and unfortunately, leave a rather bad taste in the mouths of citizen tax payers who are footing the bill for 'professionals' of high moral and ethical character.
"We're about to give your fourteen-year-old a computer," Michael Allen recently told a group of parents attending a new student orientation, "and here's why it could scare you."
With the increasing use of internet by our kids comes the risks that, if not addressed appropriately, would make this use disastrous. From online predators looming around waiting for their next victim to harassment and cyberbullying, these and several other issues are waiving a red flag for parents, teachers,and education stakeholders to take an immediate action and make digital citizenship an essential component in the curriculum.
Like it or not, today's students are not just citizens. They are "digital" citizens. This means that educators need to spend time with students on ensuring they know how to be responsible online. In NYC schools we have social media guidelines created by students and teachers to guide this work.
Nearly all of the ISTE Standards list digital citizenship as one of the aspects of education technology that all members of a school or district should support. Specifically, the standards tend to focus on the safe, legal and ethical use of technology in schools.
Considering how ubiquitous smartphones have become, especially in high school and middle school, questions about managing smartphones and educating students about digital etiquette are on a lot of parents' minds. This year, in conjunction with October's Connected Educator Month, Common Sense Media is sponsoring Digital Citizenship Week from October 19 through October 25.
Most of us are familiar with Abraham Maslow's classic Hierarchy of Needs. According to his theory, we first need to satisfy lower level needs before we can eventually hope to reach the apex of existence, self-actualization. Of course, this makes a lot of sense.
Andrew Marcinek Director of Technology and EducatorU.org Co-founder, Boston, MA An acceptable use policy is a document that is present in every school district around the country. The purpose of this policy is to provide safe parameters for exploring digital resources and using school-issued devices properly.
The greatest software invented for human safety is the human brain. It's time that we start using those brains. We must mix head knowledge with action. In my classroom, I use two essential approaches in the digital citizenship curriculum that I teach: proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge.
As experienced teachers, we’ve been conditioned to reach for curriculum when we have something new to bring to the classroom. But as digital age educators, we also know that kids do best when they can learn something authentically, by figuring out their own answers to real-world problems that are relevant to their lives. You can’t teach everything this way, of course, but some concepts — especially those that students will use in their day-to-day lives, now and in the future — lend themselves well to the authentic learning approach.
