Thing #11 - Digital Citizenship

The question posed was what would you tell students during orientation about digital citizenship. I think it really needs to start before the students arrive. The ISTE documents, NETS-S for students and the NETS-T for teachers are a good starting place for discussion with teachers and administration. We've had schoolwide semester goals for new behavior modification guidelines. Why not pick a few things to accomplish school wide from these? I would consider copying these for each teacher, maybe highlighting some things that they already do so it isn't so daunting. Need to think more but they are good places to start the conversation.

From Cool Cat Teacher's post I would say we need to concentrate on the modeling. Not just showing the website, database, etc, but talking through our search, our decision making process, much like primary teachers talk through, model, the reading of a book and the internal questions a reader poses and answers. I know that too often, due to time restraints, I dash to the site and don't always show them the journey, or the journeys, I took on the way to deciding to use that site.

Validating a source is a hard concept for elementary kids. They think everything they find is real, fact, there for altruistic reasons... I once suggested to a group of third graders that if they are not being honest, (some had already admitted to lying about their age to use My Space and others), others could be dishonest too. The cute 13 year old boy/girl they are chatting with could really be a 52 year old man. Seeing the realization and then horror that slowly crept over their faces was a powerful experience for me. I can only hope it was for them too.

The Digiteen Wiki was also interesting. I thought I could use the Rights and Responsibilities section with the students. Telling them that it was written by students would gain a little interest and then we could discuss statements from it.

A lot of what was discussed as digital citizenship really mirrors much of what happens in SBISD elementary schools during the first weeks. Classes discuss and work on community building, behavior expectations, respect, teamwork and consequences for not adhering to the community's guidelines.

I had a lot of other thoughts as I read through all of the writings. I especially like the notion of explaining that digital footprints don't wash away like footprints in the sand. There is a book, Feathers by Heather Forest that could go along with this idea that once you say or write something, it's out there and you can't take it back.

I think I was supposed to come up with 5 things to talk to the kids about during the beginning of the year. On Educational Origami, the tenets were respect yourself, protect yourself, respect others, protect others, don't steal, honor intellectual property - seems like a good place to start.

So much to think about, so little time...