The creation of this task is something I’ve thought about for some time.  As a school Principal who is quite technologically savvy, I have very much enjoyed being a part of the education of so many students in my schools.  I’ve made it a priority to work with staff and students to ensure they are becoming good people and good digital citizens.  It was evident that I needed to look at developing a digital citizenship course that would help to set up my students for digital success.

As I started to look at what topics and content should be covered, I started by reflecting on what issues and digital conversations I’ve engaged in with my own staff and students in the years I’ve been a school administrator.  It was evident that a digital citizenship program is required for our students to be successful and not get themselves into precarious digital situations that could lead to harm, hurt, or legal consequences as they move through elementary school and into their secondary learning experiences.  This has been especially true in the last two years of mostly online, virtual learning environments that our students have been forced to be a part of given the ongoing pandemic impacting the world.

I found two significant hurdles when starting on my digital citizenship journey.  The first was finding academic journals to balance information found in my school board’s intranet and online news sources like newspapers and government agencies.  The second challenge was dealing with the large amounts of information I could so easily find on the internet.  Searching a variety of terms relating to digital citizenship, digital law, online safety, and being a good digital citizen, resulted in so many sites and so much information.  My journey continued as I worked through the vast amount of data to determine which information was best, how to organize the information I found, and how to make it most useful for both the educator and the student – after all, if the information isn’t easy to access, educators are less likely to see the value in the content being presented, no matter how important it is.

I found it quite easy to determine connections to federal, provincial, and school board policies and laws.  It was evident the importance of this subject area as no educator wishes to see their students get into legal trouble – especially when a lack of education is the primary reason for the student getting into said difficulties.

Upon completion of the teacher and student slideshows, I spent time reviewing the content and making sure the final assessment task would suitably test my students’ knowledge while it reinforced the importance of some of the content presented in the digital citizenship program.  Overall, I am happy with the result and am hopeful that this will be a tool my educators and students can dive into to help ensure they are, themselves, prepared for the digital world they are already apart of.

Image from: https://pixabay.com/photos/woman-program-programming-glasses-3597095