I live in Saudi Arabia and this experience occurred while collecting my son from daycare yesterday.

I knocked on the door and stood back to wait. The door opened a sliver and I was greeted rudely. “Yes?”
“I’m here to pick up Olivero,” I said.
The door closed to a crack and I could hear muttering in Arabic.  The door then opened a sliver again. “What?” The voice from behind the door said.

I was shocked and taken aback by the rudeness. Firstly, stop communicating with me through an as-good-as-closed door and secondly, I’m a person; politeness, please. These are the people I leave my son with, to support his growth into a responsible, polite conscientious human being. Have I made a good choice coming here?

“Olivero!” I called through the door, louder this time.
“One minute,” came the muffled response and the door was once again closed.
A moment later, the door opened and my son walked through, delighted to see me.

Reflecting on the experience while driving home, I kept coming back to this question.

What are typically social, cultural and global differences that may be exacerbated through the use of technology for communication and collaboration?

Communicating through a closed door is the same as communicating through technology. You can’t necessarily see the person with whom you are communicating, sometimes you cannot hear them and most importantly, sometimes your shared language is not necessarily spoken at the same level. Communication is a full-body experience, you hear the word choices, pauses and connect that with what you; see, including gestures, smile, eyes, stance; and feel what is said or not, what is emphasised with gestures, pauses or smiles. This lack of full-body experience can exacerbate poor word choice, or pauses in unnecessary places and mutterings.

Yet, reflecting on my experience, I know the lady I was communicating with is still learning English. It is her second language, as such, her word choices are limited – “What?” – and she may often seek help – muttering from behind the door -.

It’s not fair for me to condemn her. Her only fault is she doesn’t speak my language the way I expect.

Digital citizenship – The behaviours and actions that promote responsibility, integrity, global awareness, and ethical and safe consumption and creation of content on the internet.

Students of the 21st century were born into a digital world. I am old enough to recall what life was like before the internet arrived in my home, old enough to recall the chimes of a dial-up connection, yet young enough that I had my own personal computer from age 9 and struggle to fully ‘disconnect’. Digital citizenry taught me how to behave online, what information to share, how to be critical and evaluative of information and how to connect with those outside my ‘physical network’. Thus, I believe digital citizenship plays an integral part in the wholistic development of students in the 21st century. It stands firm in its equal importance alongside wellbeing, academics, culture and physical endeavours.

The school I currently work at has been teaching online for 12 months. As such, at the beginning of the new academic year (September), all students were enrolled in a digital literacy subject. This subject was aimed to address fluency in an online learning environment, teach coding and instruct students around online safety. However, I concur with Richard Culatta in his speech around Rethinking digital citizenship, these concepts being taught at my school, whilst important, do not address digital citizenship, nor does it teach students how to respectfully engage with their community to make the world a better place.

Digital citizenry needs to be explicitly taught and modelled across all subjects and beyond the classroom. If this were the case we would have more people, both young and old, actively engaged in community beneficial activities and local activism.

This local activism could appear by way of using PLCs (Personal Learning Community) to lobby local council for a community garden, or to use social networking sites to build a community of like-minded individuals to help clean up local bushland. These activities are not discriminatory of age, gender or social status and have the potential to benefit all members of the community.

Could we all not benefit for local activism brought about by young digitally engaged community members.

References:

ISTE. (2018, October 11). Rethinking digital citizenship. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/iwKTYHBG5kk