Digital Citizenship in Schools

In the district I work, the children are permitted to bring their own devices.  Recently, at a staff meeting our principal and vice principal asked that we be sure to talk with our students about appropriate use in school.  With younger children, our main worry is that they will see material that we would rather they not view.  I find that this will inevitably happen at some point, but we need to teach them how to react when it does occur.  However, the staff was not provided with any guidance on how to deal with this issue (with parents and/or students).  As Ribble states in Digital Citizenship in Schools, new technologies have created a steep learning curve for all users.  The majorities of parents are not informed and are learning new technologies from their children.  Teachers are in a better place to inform children appropriate etiquette.  I think it is important for adults and children to consider how their use of technology will affect others (as Ribble suggests).  A digital etiquette scenario is presented in the book.  I would consider having the students act out skits that displayed appropriate and inappropriate etiquette; they could even write their own.  In a previous post Cassie shared a website that discussed digital etiquette; I have shared that site with my colleagues… thanks Cassie! 

I was curious about the etiquette element, so I skipped right to that section then I decided to learn more about the other eight elements.  I apologize I’m not bringing anything new to the discussion, as everyone has read this book already.  Nonetheless, as most of you have stated, your schools have an AUP in place.  Like you, we have one in place as well, but I am sure the parents and students just sign the line and return it to the school.  In all honesty, I am not familiar with the document myself.  I would guess that the policy will be revised this year and that parents and teachers will be more aware of the confines of the plan.   Our school went “green” a couple of years ago, we no longer send home paper notices, everything is available online.  I am going to look into how they made this decision.  I assume that a paper survey was conducted.  If not, how did the district determine that all parents would have access to technology?  Was it an assumption made because of the socioeconomic status of most residents?  With the idea to attempt a flipped classroom for a few lessons in math, I recently surveyed the accessibility of my students to technologies at home.  One hundred percent of the children will be able to access a computer at home to view videos.  However, I know this is not the case in all classrooms.  What can we do for those few students?  I wonder if we could write grants and buy used iPads or mini-laptops that the students could “borrow” for the year.  I think this would be a good option in our district because there are few students that do not have accessibility.

As I read about digital commerce, I definitely thought that this is a topic to be discussed at home.  However, as stated, “One of the goals of education is to create educated members of a society, thus this is an important skill.”  This is a great topic to explore as a math assignment.  Several children could be assigned to one product.  They could then determine the “best buy” and convince their classmates to buy that particular brand.  Many of the elements mentioned could be taught in a fun and engaging manner.

The major lesson to be taught about digital communications is that nothing ever goes away… text messaging, emails, etc… are all saved somewhere!  We have already discussed this issue, so I won’t perseverate, but we need to be proactive in teaching student about the consequences of their “digital footprint”!  It is essential that we devote more time to teaching and learning technology and ways to use it meritoriously.  Most of us do not have enough devices for all of our students or even half of them.  However, we must find solutions to make effective use of what technologies are available to our students.