At the beginning of ETL523 my understanding of digital citizenship centred mostly around being safe and being respectful. As I progressed through my studies, I discovered that this was also the key message from several educational bodies but as I discussed in Forum 4.3 (Curtis, 2022, May 5), I believe this to be an antiquated approach. If we want students to grasp all that digital citizenship entails, then we need to be teaching them so much more than just respectful and safe behaviour. We need them to understand the importance of things like attribution and plagiarism, digital footprints and online reputation as well as how to collaborate and create in a digital world.
I believe that the teaching of all aspects of digital citizenship is vital/essential (Curtis, 2022, March 10; Curtis, 2022, May 2a) and in her response to my Forum 4.1 post, Friend (2022) concurs. She goes on to say that if we want to teach digital citizenship well, it needs to be embedded into the curriculum and have a whole school approach. I certainly agree but for this to happen it needs to be seen as a priority and significant investment needs to be made; not just by the teachers, but the entire education system (Curtis, 2022, March 6).
So how do we provide the opportunities students need to develop their digital awareness? I argue (Curtis, 2022, May 8a) that merely teaching the skills without opportunities to practice them is fruitless. We need to be providing real world, hands-on experiences (Curtis, 2022, March 10) so students can see the value in the skills we are trying to impart. Digital learning environments (DLEs) are a great way to do this (Curtis, 2022, May 8a).
So, what does this mean for me as a teacher librarian (TL), my fellow educators and students? Firstly, we need to do what I did in initial blog and forum post for ETL523 (Curtis, 2022, March 3; Curtis, 2022, March 10); evaluate my own digital presence and interaction with DLEs in both a professional and personal capacity. We need to know where we stand before we move forward. We then need to engage in DLEs so that we can use them effectively for teaching and learning. It is obviously far more complicated than that as policies and guidelines for DLE use need to be developed, hopefully through engagement of all stakeholders, and there would certainly be speed bumps along the way. If educators do not embrace DLEs I fear we risk becoming irrelevant (Curtis, 2022, March 11). Furthermore, without DLEs I feel that educators cannot effectively teach digital citizenship, digital literacy or assist students in developing transliteracy.
Reflecting more deeply on the role of the TL in relation to teaching digital citizenship, digital literacy and so on, I recognise that I have a long way to go before I can consider myself a digital leader (Curtis, 2022, May 8b). However, I have made progress as a result of undertaking this subject. I have:
Finally, during this subject, I have reflected on the ubiquitousness of technology and connectedness in our lives (Curtis, 2022, May 2; Curtis 2022, May 2b) and have come to the conclusion that if we do not teach students how to critically, ethically, emotionally and legally navigate the digital world we are failing to adequately prepare them for their futures.
References
Friend, E. (2022, March 13). Discussion: Not worthwhile; essential. [Unpublished manuscript]. School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.