Educational institutions take time to teach students how to develop healthy physical relationships, problem solve, recognise abuse and bullying in the playground and give them the skills they need to develop healthy bodies and minds but how often is developing a healthy digital lifestyle discussed? What about positive digital relationships? What about evaluating their own digital footprint to critically evaluate how they impact others online?
This concept or idea that young people are automatically technology experts because they are born into is one that I hear often but one that I believe to be untrue. They approach technology without fear and are generally adept at becoming efficient at using technology at a shallow level but this does not make them experts. Similarly, young people are not going to become ‘good’ digital citizens without explicit and repeated opportunities to practice these skills.
I wonder how many schools across Australia teach ‘online safety’ and consider their digital leraning requirements met? Perhaps some schools go as far to talk about plagiarism and the importance of recognising others work (copyright). I feel confident in saying that there would be more schools not effectively teaching digital citizenry than those that are.
If we want students to grow into adults that both practice and advocates for behaviour that we would expect to see in the physical world – safe, responsible, ethical and legal use of information and technology then we need to invest significantly, both time and resources to ensure that students are getting the opportunities they need to develop these skills. Some of that time and resources might be well spent on upskilling the teachers.
This was written in response to: Greenhow, C. (2010). A new concept of citizenship for the digital age . Learning & Leading with Technology, 37(6), 24-25 and module 1.1 from ETL523.