I was struck when reading the blog post by TeachThought Staff (2019) about the room for growth most digital citizenship programs have. The infographic below shows the aspirational way to go from a Digital Citizen to a Digital Leader. What it brings up in me is the challenge to live out the Digital Leader life in both my personal and professional spheres. The students I teach, being aged 12 and under, still have developing brains and are still working out how their actions affect those in the physical world, let alone a digital world. I am still teaching students that sometimes if you hide an item, it is still there in mathematical thinking, therefore the idea of something being permanent in the digital world is a far off concept.
Therefore, I need to lead by example and try to instil the importance of this to my colleagues and friends. This does not mean that I cannot showcase digital leadership to students. Like the Information Fluency Framework (NSW Department of Education, 2021), there is a continuum of learning and development and concepts such as the promotion of important causes can be taught in meaningful ways. The challenge is to do this with relevance. The learning journey of every individual is different and therefore the teaching methods need to be adaptive.
A resource which was shared in Module 5.2 made me explore further into the blog of Anne Mirtschin (2021). Anne has been walking the world of meaningful digital citizenship long before a global pandemic caused many teachers to teach in a hybrid manner or solely online. The creativity reported in a 2021 blog post showed the influence which Anne has had in her school, something which I would love to emulate in my own sphere of influence.
References
Mirtschin, A. (2021, November 12). 2021Virtual year 12 graduation dinners. On an e-Journey with Generation Y. https://murcha.wordpress.com/2021/11/12/2021virtual-year-12-graduation-dinners/
NSW Department of Education. (2021). Information Fluency Framework. https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/media/documents/Information_fluency_framework.pdf
TeachThought Staff. (2019, November 26). Moving students from digital citizenship to digital leadership. TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/moving-students-from-digital-citizenship-to-digital-leadership/