Digital Citizenship Explained

(Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sylviaduckworth/17190424026)

With the adoption of Google Apps for Education (now called G Suite for Education), there is more emphasis on helping our students become good digital citizens. This goes beyond simple internet and technology safety lessons on things like cyberbullying and protecting personal information online. In fact, according to the website DigitalCitizenship.net, there are actually nine themes of digital citizenship:

• Digital Access (full electronic participation in society)
• Digital Commerce (electronic buying and selling of goods)
• Digital Communication (electronic exchange of information)
• Digital Literacy (process of teaching and learning about technology and the use of technology)
• Digital Etiquette (electronic standards of conduct or procedure)
• Digital Law (electronic responsibility for actions and deeds)
• Digital Rights and Responsibilities (those freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world)
• Digital Health and Wellness (physical and psychological well being in a digital technology world)
• Digital Security (Self-Protection) (electronic precautions to guarantee safety)

Check out the actual webpage for more detailed explanations of each theme.

This year, I will be trying to provide you with easy to use resources for helping our students be the best possible digital citizens they can be. Digital citizenship instruction needs to be reinforced all year long, each time students use technology to do their work. It needs to be modeled as well as explained or taught directly. Kids also need lots of opportunity to actually practice their digital citizenship skills, so don't be afraid to let them go online and use all the tools they have available to them! Let them research and create and compose and communicate and collaborate! Will they make mistakes? Sure. But with our help, they can learn from their mistakes and continue on their road to being good digital citizens -- #FailForward!!!

I ask you to work with me and each other by sharing any good resources you might have for teaching and reinforcing good digital citizenship -- a video, a website, a lesson, an activity, the name of a book, a journal article. It can be created by you or it can be something you got from someone else or something you found online (hint: Twitter is a GREAT place to find stuff like this, as is Pinterest). Share these resources in the comments section on this post! I can't wait to see what you have to offer!