Teaching Digital Citizenship

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It belongs in our curriculum...

@joe_edtech

October is "Connected Educator Month," and we just came out of "Digital Citizenship Week." It is a good time to remind ourselves about our responsibility to teach digital citizenship, especially when we are in a 1:1 environment.

Once in a great while, and usually quite by accident, the Illinois General Assembly passes a really useful and meaningful piece of legislation.  In 2007, they passed Public Act 095-0869. That catchy title means that every public school in the state of Illinois must teach some component of Digital Citizenship to its students every year from 3rd grade all the way through their senior year of high school.  

If you've never looked at the law, the most salient part says, "[B]eginning with the 2009-2010 school year, a school district must incorporate into the school curriculum a component on Internet safety to be taught at least once each school year to students in grade 3 or above. The school board shall determine the scope and duration of this unit of instruction. The age appropriate unit of instruction may be incorporated into the current courses of study regularly taught in the district's schools, as determined by the school board."

In order to meet the letter of the law, school districts can include any individual unit of study - which would likely include a disconnected assembly or lecture from a media specialist. However, we are entering a 1:1 world where nearly every classroom is a computer lab and most of our students have access to the Internet 24/7, and the statistical data from disconnected programs like that (DARE for instance) are not good.

Word Cloud of Nancy Willard's CyberSavvy Approach

In order to meet the spirit of the law, and in the spirit of good teaching, shouldn't we weave elements of Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship instruction into every classroom as a part of our standard operating procedure?  

So, what is the first step in teaching Digital Citizenship? Actually, good teachers have been teaching about good classroom citizenship for years. Our students know how to behave towards each other and their instructors in the classroom, they know the kind of language that is acceptable and the kind of language that is not, and they know the expectations for studying, completing, and turning in assignments. Perhaps the first step in teaching Digital Citizenship is establishing the same expectations for students' online lives.  In other words, if our students email us, do they know the format and language that is acceptable to use in their school email accounts?  When our students post to our Wikis or Edmodo pages, do they know the kind of behaviors that are expected of them?  Do they know how to evaluate websites and scrutinize authors online to determine their appropriateness for class?  If not, isn't that the first place we should start?

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Incidentally, I always recommend that teachers start by looking at Nancy Willard's Embrace Civility in a Digital Age and Common Sense Media's site for Educators for positive, research based approaches to teaching Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship.  There are several more great resources out there, but these two are my favorites.

If you have others that you use and love, please leave them in the comment box below.