Digital CItizenship in Schools-Making A Plan

While reading Ribble's book, one aspect that stood out to me was how he describes the development of a plan for digital citizenship.  Like any kind of community effort, digital citizenship requires "buy-in" from all parties: administration, staff, students and parents.  Respresentatives from all these groups were on the digital leadership team.  Without this investment and participation, it is hard for one group to effectively implement a system.  I have experienced this dilemma in my classroom. Students are allowed to use their phones with staff permission, but are generally asked to put them away during a lesson unless they are specifically asked to use them and not to take phone calls while in class.  In the last two weeks, we have been struggling with the phone issue with one of our students.  She frequently leaves class saying she has to take a phone call and misses significant class time.  The person on the other end of the phone line is more frequently than not the girl's mother.  The calls are not emergency issues and frequently degenerate into the mother and her daughter arguing.  Despite discussions with Mom that she should not be calling during class time unless it is an emergency, she continues to do so.  We have had similar (although not as egregious) incidents with other students' parents.  I think for next year we should try to organize a parent night at the beginning of the year and possibly a refresher midyear as our population turns over.  The purpose of the parent night would be to clearly communicate with parents our expectations for their interactions with their children during the school day.  This would give us the opportunity to collaborate with parents and provide them with activities to demonstrate the importance of appropriate technology use.  Parents with extenuating circumstances could use the time to work with staff to critically think about and create solutions that would provide the minimum disruption to their child's school life.

Before this happens, I think the staff at my school needs to do our own digital audit and participate in some activities similar to Ribble's activities for the school environment and behavior (professional development activity 9-11).  As indicated by the NETS-4 standard, we as educators have a responsibility to promote and model the appropriate use of technology in the classroom.  We could use the activities suggested by Ribble to come to our own consensus of what was appropriate.  We have been struggling for common ground with students during the transition this year from a strict no device policy last year to a much more collaborative and less restrictive one this year.  Beginning with a clear cohesive staff paradigm of appropriate technology use will prepare us for having the discussion with our students in the fall.  This would be my third part of the program for technology "buy-in" and education of the rights, responsibilities and etiquette of digital citizens. Working with possibly our homeroom groups, we would spend time having discussions with students about what "appropriate use" means and looks like.  Students could be divided into small groups to create ideas for classroom working agreements about their personal electronic devices.  By asking our learners to critically think about and collaboratively develop social norms and present them to their peers we are asking them to use their 21st century learner skills to create a constructive learning environment.  This needs to be done at the beginning of the year to reduce confusion and frustration between all parties.