Digital Citizenship - Importance and Implementation

Digital Citizenship, like offline citizenship, is an essential aspect of a functional society. Mike Ribble first identified nine elements that students must learn to be good digital citizens. The nine elements are digital access, commerce, communication & collaboration, etiquette, fluency, health and welfare, law, rights and responsibilities, and security and privacy. A lack of knowledge around these elements can lead to people experiencing issues such as miscommunications, inequitable access to the internet and online resources, cyberbullying, inability to take appropriate breaks from social media and screens, being fooled by disreputable or false online sources or articles, falling victim to phishing scams or hackers, and even being charged with crimes associated with inappropriate internet use. 

via Let's Talk Science

The severity of some of these potential side effects of poor digital citizenship demonstrate the urgency for educating students about safe and appropriate use of the internet.

We read The IRL Fetish by Nathan Jurgenson for class this week and I enjoyed Jurgenson's message that the digital world is our reality, not a separate aspect of life that we should congratulate ourselves for not taking part in. Digital use and internet time will continue to be part of real life in the future for ourselves and our students, and it is essential to help students prepare themselves to be good citizens both in person and online. As a future educator, I recognize my responsibility to help shape positive and healthy knowledge and usage habits for the internet and digital world. 

There are many ways to include digital citizenship in education using the Saskatchewan curriculum beyond simply incorporating technology into classrooms, even when that technology is achieving the Modification or Redefinition levels of the SAMR Model. One way is by using the Grade 8 Social Studies curriculum outcome RW8.2 "Assess the implications of personal consumer choices" and indicator e) "Propose a definition of responsible consumerism, and publish a list of strategic actions leading to responsible consumerism". This outcome and indicator provide the perfect opportunity to talk to students about Digital Commerce and to include online purchases in the strategic actions they develop for responsible consumerism. This activity can open up discussions surrounding how to determine if a website is safe when entering credit card or other payment information and recognizing that although digital purchases are easy, they still contribute to excess consumerism and have real impacts on your money and budget.

Continuing in the Grade 8 curriculum, another possible way to teach digital citizenship is using Health outcome USC8.5 "Assess how body image satisfaction/dissatisfaction and over-reliance on appearance as a source of identity and self-esteem affects the quality of life of self and family" to discuss Digital Health & Welfare by learning about how social media images can be edited and filtered to "improve" complexion or manipulate aspects of their body to look more "flawless", rather than real. Students can watch videos on editing processes and their unrealistic nature and discuss or create projects around how this exposure to edited photos and videos can negatively affect self esteem. This activity could be used when working towards indicator h) "Understand the pressures/influences that promote unrealistic images of desirable body shape and weight" and/or j) "Analyze techniques used by... the mass media to influence judgement and values about the way we look." 

Lastly, another Grade 8 course that could include aspects of Digital Citizenship is Practical and Applied Arts (PAA). When I was in middle school, I took a coding unit in a PAA class. It was very simple coding, done on our school division "intranet", and unfortunately not knowledge that I have managed to retain, but I still appreciate that I was offered the opportunity to develop some experience with this useful skill. Continuing to help students develop useful digital skills should be prioritized, and the process of learning to code also reveals an opportunity to discuss elements of digital citizenship. For instance, this unit or class could bring up topics such as Digital Law and Digital Security and Privacy. This connection can be achieved through research projects around the dangers of malware or ransomware, or by exposing students to positive coding possibilities such as computer programming or even white hat hacking. These activities give students the chance to contemplate the importance of digital security and the ethics around hacking and coding.

Ultimately, these are only a few small examples of how lessons on digital citizenship can be integrated in my future classroom. The Saskatchewan curriculum in each grade has outcomes and indicators that can, and should, include these topics. I look forward to learning more about digital citizenship myself, and to passing on helpful information to my future students.

Thanks for reading my thoughts on digital citizenship! Please leave me a comment below with your thoughts and ideas for how to implement digital citizenship in the classroom! 

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