Creating and developing a web guide was a rich learning experience. Digital citizenship pertains to everyone using Web 2.0, however, in the educational setting, it is the responsibility of the educator to support students, our future. There are a number of focuses that the web guide could have incorporated, but I decided to focus on educator’s awareness of digital citizenship. I feel strongly that educators need to understand what digital citizenship is before they can model and teach students about digital citizenship. I resolved to create a web guide that supports educators who teach in the elementary panel. I aspired to make it valuable and relevant to my current teaching role as a Technology Enabled Learning Teacher.
Reviewing research from the course readings, previous courses and Ontario Ministry of Education and governance documentation provided the content for the top ten best practices. I also referred to the policies and procedures adhered to by the school board where I am employed.
It was interesting to recognize how the best practices fit within the 21st-century learning frames-work, the 6 C’s also referred to as the global competencies. Citizenship is one of the 6 C’s. Create, communicate and collaborate are competencies for digital citizenship and served as an organisational structure for the recommended best practices. Critical thinking and character are two of the 6 C’s that I did not include in the ten best practices, but they too are competencies included within digital citizenship. Critical thinking requires users to discern whether information online is correct and can be substantiated. Character is to display good character when engaging online. In the future, I may extend the web guide to include all of the 6 C’s in the orgnisational structure of the ten best practices. Only create, communicate and collaborate were included in the web guide.
There were a few challenging aspects to the assessment. The first was writing only 1500 words to synthesize the ten best practices for educator digital citizenship. Writing the narrative portion for the video was also difficult to keep concise. My initial recording was almost ten minutes long, too long to hold the viewer’s interest. Finally, the finishing touches or the details while creating the artifacts required an iterative design process. Creating, viewing, seeking feedback, improving and then improving. Adding a QR code to link to references and the Creative Commons images to my artifacts were two details that were added through the iterative process.
Creating the artifact was a great way to critically reflect upon how I practise digital citizenship. Most images included in the video were from the stock media within the WeVideo program. Any images that were used that were not included in the stock media were sourced and cited. I created a poster and licenced it under Creative Commons licencing. Going through the learning process of actually licencing my work provided me with a stronger understanding of Creative Commons licencing.
I look forward to sharing and embedding the best practices in my workplace as I mentor and support educators.