Schools not teaching digital citizenship has been a concern of mine for some time. As a second grade teacher I feel less pressure in the need to teach digital citizenship, but when seeing and hearing about digital misuse in older and younger students I have felt an increasing sense of alarm at the ubiquitous use of technology in education paired with a lack of support for students (and families) in how to use it responsibly.

The first and only time I have been supported as a classroom teacher in teaching Digital Citizenship was 5 years ago by the tech coach at a previous school. She came into our second grade classes and lead lessons taken from Common Sense Education (Common Sense Education, n.d.) on digital citizenship for our second grade students. An especially valuable part of the lessons were the take-home papers to help parents understand how to guide their children in their online experiences. After this support was given in the form of 3-4 weekly lessons it was meant to be the classroom teacher’s responsibility to continue teaching about digital citizenship. We may have done a few of the lessons the following year but the concept of digital citizenship was not a focus despite the availability and use of technology being a major emphasis at this school.

One question I documented when starting the MEdTL was whose responsibility it is to teach digital citizenship. In both my past and current school there are technology teachers but aside from the instance noted above, digital citizenship has not been taught by the technology teachers. I understand that this concept would best be integrated with the curriculum but I still do not see and hear people talking about it from a proactive point of view. Rather, we are all bemoaning how irresponsible students are in their use of technology and looking for punitive measures to take to stop them from doing bad things (internet filtering, banning devices, etc.). The more restrictive the environment becomes at school or home, the more inventive students become in circumventing the controls and restrictions. I believe that in a school community that teaches and practices digital citizenship from the very earliest ages, this creativity and motivation could be harnessed and directed towards authentic learning tasks.

When listing the responsibilities for the teacher librarian in my first blog post for ETL401 I included teaching digital citizenship as a final possible role for the teacher librarian after commenting,

I have been growing increasingly concerned that our students need to be learning about digital citizenship, but it has not been clear in my schools who is supposed to lead this teaching. (Robertson-Jones, 2018)

From the fact that this subject is an elective for the MEdTL program obviously it is the TL who is leading digital citizenship education. However from my studies so far I see the enormous number of roles the TL is expected to fulfill and I wonder why our technology teachers are not expected to be the leaders in digital citizenship education. Regardless, I am very excited to be learning more about this topic because someone needs to be providing leadership to young people in digital citizenship. I see a desperate need for this in my current school so I look forward to being able to contribute some expertise to developing the digital citizenship of our students.

In my frustration with the lack of leadership around digital citizenship I have spent less time considering what digital citizenship is. My initial take is that digital citizenship is the skills and competencies a person applies to create a truthful, positive impact through their interactions with the online/digital world. This would include:

• effectively navigating and assessing digital content,
• knowing how to stay safe in virtual interactions with others (including protecting private information),
• an awareness of what kind of digital footprint one is leaving as a result of online interactions, and
• communicating effectively and contributing positively across different digital spaces.

When I hold myself up to this definition, I wonder if good digital citizenship necessarily includes a responsibility to contribute to online communities. I prefer to be an observer in the online world, and thus rarely post comments or reviews or share things such as curated lists of links or resources. I balk at the sheer volume of voices telling me what I must know or do in order to be a good educator when I start browsing Twitter, Diigo, or Feedly. My current choice is to minimize my exposure to virtual professional learning communities, instead focusing on the local expertise I find in my colleagues. I can see that as a librarian I would need to be more connected but wonder about how I would avoid feelings of inadequacy and information overload.

References

Common Sense Education. (n.d.). K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum Scope and Sequence. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/scope-and-sequence

Robertson-Jones, M. (13 July 2018). Assessment 1: 8 Roles of the teacher librarian. In Marla’s Reflective Journal. Retrieved from  

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/marla/2018/07/13/assessment-1-8-roles-of-the-teacher-librarian/#comments