EDTC 6433 Module 3 Reflection

Modeling Digital Citizenship to Young Learners

The question I set out to answer for Module 3 was “How can I model effective use of technology to encourage students to be digital citizens?”.  I chose this question based off of the ISTE Standard 3: Model Digital Age Work and Learning.  I wanted to focus primarily on the “modeling” aspect of this ISTE standard, because it is so important that effective use of technology is modeled to students from an early age.  Since I teach first grade, I model everything I do.  It only makes sense to model effective use of technology right along with my students, even when I am not specifically teaching a lesson related to technology.  If I am modeling the correct ways to use technology, my students are more likely to use it the correct way as well when they get an opportunity to use it. 

When reviewing the Module 3 assigned readings, I came across the article “The Difference between Digital Literacy and Digital Fluency”.  This article expressed that there are three types of people in the digital age: those who are not literate in a specific technology, those who are literate, and those who are fluent.  Literate technology users know what the technology is and do know how to use it, but the product created by that technology isn’t always what was intended.  Fluency technology users, however, have the knowledge that the literate users do, but they are also more in-tune with the appropriate times to use the technology and the produce the intended outcome (Christian, 2011). 

This article helped me form my triggering question.  Even at ages six and seven, my students are fluent in some areas of digital technologies when I am just literate in them.  They are bold and fearless as they venture into the world of technology, knowing that they will learn even from mistakes.  Having this attitude towards technology allows them to become fluent with so many aspects of it.  From trial and error, they learn how to troubleshoot, how to choose appropriate websites/apps for their task, and how to create the intended product.  This mindset is one that many adults could learn from and wonderful for so many aspects relating to technology; however, one area my first graders are lacking is digital citizenship.  While they have the technology skills, they don’t have all of the knowledge behind WHY certain things work or what the dangers are.  They can browse the web to search for a picture with ease, but don’t have a clue that they are using something called the “internet” to do so.  Because of this, I wanted to find more resources about digital citizenship and explore ways to allow students to become fluent with it, just like they are with so many other aspects of digital technology. 

          Initially, I read the article “Promoting Responsible and Ethical Digital Citizens” by Christopher McGilvery.  I enjoyed reading this article because it not only stressed the importance of digital citizenship, but it made the point that teaching digital citizenship starts with teachers modeling and demonstrating components of digital citizenship in their daily lives and within their interactions with students.  It broke digital citizenship into various parts, commenting on why each part is important and providing some examples of how it can be modeled.  Some of the parts discussed were taking care of physical equipment, safe internet searching, copyright laws, preventing cyber bullying, social media self-image, and being thoughtful digital creators (McGilvery, 2012).

          After reading this article, I realized that digital citizenship was very broad, and wanted to focus my attention primarily on safe internet searching.  Another student in my class shared the resource of OSPI’s educational technology page, where digital citizenship was one of the major categories (http://www.k12.wa.us/EdTech/).  On this page, there are various resources for safe internet searching, many from Common Sense Media (https://www.commonsensemedia.org).  I am already familiar with common sense media, as I taught a couple digital citizenship lessons from their curriculum, one specifically in safe internet searching.  I plan on doing more with these lessons and trying to find some time to teach digital citizenship throughout the whole year, not just at the beginning of the year before my students start using technology. 

          Especially at the first grade level, we are in the initial phase of digital citizenship learning: awareness (Ribble, 2008).  I think for all of my previous digital citizenship lessons, I’ve started right at guided practice, where I give students safe opportunities to explore various aspects of technology.  I’m wondering if it might be more effective to go back and explain awareness around the internet, what it is, and why we use it, before jumping into safe ways to use it.  For my students, if they don’t have the understanding of what the internet is, how can they understand that there could be things that are unsafe about it?  I look forward to taking this new approach when explaining and modeling aspects of internet searching and browsing this year in hopes that my students will gain a deeper understanding of this aspect of digital citizenship. 

Ribble, 2008

Another important aspect of digital citizenship at this age level is getting parents involved.  While I can also do my best to model at school, my students' parents are their first teachers, and where many students may pick up their digital habits.  Below is a graphic that I created to help parents begin to model similar safe internet rules at home as well.  

References: 

Christian. (2011, November 22). The Difference Between Digital Literacy and Digital Fluency. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from http://www.socialens.com/blog/2011/02/05/the-difference-between-digital-literacy-and-digital-fluency/

McGilvery, C. (2012). Promoting Responsible and Ethical Digital Citizens. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/responsible-student-technology-use.shtml

Ribble, M. (2008). Passport to Digital Citizenship. Learning and Leading with Technology. Retrieved November 4, 2017, from http://crestomere.wolfcreek.ab.ca/documents/general/Passport%20to%20Dig%20Citizenship1.pdf