Most do not get to experience a different type of higher learning. I learned the true definition and importance of digital citizenship in five weeks and what in-depth the meaning is. It is not what one would initially think of, but it has responsibilities that should provide a safe and secure digital environment. When you look at digital citizenship, you believe that it will give the user a mantra to understand the mission—the mission when using the internet with any technology device.
Digital Empathy is Me!
The understanding of digital is one that is connected to the internet. A process of using technology that stores, generate, and or process data.
Empathy is define as the natural ability to understand and share the feelings of another’s feelings. Putting oneself in someone else’s emotional feelings or senses, i.e., shoes.
Me being define as the one that matters to be fully immersive and the need to cultivate the actions to make good choices.
Digital Citizenship Presentation
What can we do?
For this to be impactful, We have to make digital citizenship a priority in building a plan that explains our students’ importance and futures. Riddle said it best, we have to ensure the student’s future and society as a whole. Educating students and adults about all the lessons we have studied and research on digital citizenships.
Encourage all technology users to be leaders and take a healthy look and accept the nine digital citizenship elements from every perspective. It is not a one time stop by but a consistent revisit and reapplying to the users’ lives.
All must be and stay engages. All stakeholders must be in the dialogues on digital citizenship, the issues, and the benefits. We must empower the leaders in digital citizenship by building a strong curriculum, real staff development, and sensible policies. Have a clear line of how to handle uncomfortable situations and make real-world learning from them. Plan to have digital citizenship lessons across all curriculum areas. Educators have to be educated and have support when given digital citizenship lessons. Have significant assignments that are meaningful and activities that make sense to the students.
Reflective Essay for Digital Citizenship
Digital citizenship is what makes this all worth it. Creating meaningful lessons for students to truly grasp the civic duties of digital citizenship is essential. The way we communicate should be structured to have effective results. The definition of digital citizenship for students can be defined as the responsible use of technology by anyone who uses a computer, the internet, and digital devices to engage with society on any level. Since we know that the way we learn, study, teach, and share and gather information is the age of digital age. Looking at what citizenship means we have, Marshall (1950) pointed out that we have three citizenship elements. One is civil, defined as the personal freedom of speech, thought, religion, assembly, faith, the right to justice, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts. The second is political the right to participate in the political process. The third we have social, which Marshall defines as the right to live life according to society’s standards.
With all the information and reading that was a study in the course, digital citizenship needs to be genuinely immersed in our student’s curriculum. Students have a pattern of misuse and abuse related to technology, that anyone teaching and digital learning citizenship should understand the nine elements. It should be continuously taught. The nine elements introduced to my teaching toolbox came in the book Digital Citizenship in Schools, authored by Mike Ribble. There has to be balanced when the re-eduction of digital citizenship. We can take a look at Olher (2010) and his contribution to digital citizenship. Ohler (2010) had eight tenets of citizenship. Within the eight, all stated that citizenship requires the individual to have a virtuous behavior and balance personal empowerment, including the community’s well-being.
Citizenship requires education, participation, and the fact that it is ever-evolving and thus requires the debate to stay open and ongoing. Citizenship must be understood that it is inclusive, and it is the result of media evolution, and that is tried by the community. Since the class used Riddle’s book to study the nine elements in a digital age. Riddle’s nine elements are to help with fostering a safe and secure digital environment. The nine ingredients to make digital citizenship are: 1) Digital access- Full electronic participation in society without limits because of where you reside or attend school. 2) Digital commerce- the electronic buying and selling of goods, and consumers should be aware that it must be legal. 3)Digital communication-the electronic exchange of information, and users need to be wise in what and how they communicate. 4) Digital literacy- the process of teaching and learning about technology and the use of technology and understanding that it is forever changing. 5) Digital etiquette-the electronic standards of conduct or procedure. Being responsible for digital behavior makes every user a role model for each student. Empathy and etiquette are to E’s in digital citizenship, and they work hand in hand. The adults should model good behaviors, and the students will assume that is how to behave. Also, empathic ways should be at the forefront of actions at all times. 6) Digital law-citizens have an electronic responsibility to behave ethically and be aware of activities and their deeds. 7) Digital rights and responsibilities-all of users are requirements and freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world. 8) Digital health and wellness-being aware of physical and psychological well-being in a digital technology world. Issues can occur when ergonomic and other problems are not addressed. Last but not least of the importance we have 9) Digital Security-citizens must take full action to protect their information online. The electronic precautions to guarantee safety. Riddle (2015) then grouped the nine elements he states are not simple and don’t stand alone because they are related to each other in a dizzying variety of ways. Riddle (2015) categorizes three principles: respect, educate, and protect (REP).
Digital empathy comes from the thoughts that cultivating kindness in this digital world is most important. Students need compassion, and they need to be given significant learning environments to actually put it into play about how to act and how to treat each other. Dialogue-oriented activities are pedagogically effective for developing general reasoning skills (Wegerif, Mercer & Dawes, 1999), and reasoning skills related to online inquiry in particular (Knight and Mercer, 2015). However, productive dialogue is not guaranteed when students work collaboratively (Häkkinen and Mäkitalo-Siegl, 2007). Students often require support and scaffolding to be deliberate and explore ideas virtually (Mercer et al., 2004).
Dialogue serves several purposes during educational tasks: exchanging information and strategies, critiquing and building on ideas, enhancing explicit awareness of metacognitive strategies, and becoming aware that others have different experiences and views (Hicks, 1996; Mercer, 2013).
The educational activity provided an environment where the target language could be used several times naturally. This approach was shown to aid an individual’s ability to use the target vocabulary unaided later, implying a better understanding of key concepts behind the terms (Moore and Schleppegrell, 2014). Digital citizenship programs are consistently redesigned, and I still feel we still have the same issues. Just maybe how we teach in Blended Learning can have a different impact on digital citizenship lessons that might impact how students behave. We must be role models, and we must keep it safe. We should stay mindful of what we do and how we do it. The youth are watching.
Research shows that empathy can be foster when students have immersed themselves in certain practices. Developed to counter the more typical, opaquely worded policies in most schools, Trafalgar asked their students to rewrite it in their own words (as in, “Always think about the effects your words might have before you post. Imagine the person’s face when they read it” (Trafalgar, 2017). Ultimately, creating lessons that students will be engaged and have a takeaway from the learning is important. Their digital footprint and Character are in line. Good digital citizenship is what the digital world needs, and it has to be meaningful.
Cyberbullying defines call bullying online, whether in posts, comments, emails, or text messages. Being a cyberbully can be in gamming, Social media, and trolling dating apps. The cyberbullying from reading several of the research essays can be worse than any face to face actions. The victims of cyberbullying have words and images that burn in the victim’s memories and are shared repeatedly. There are no laws that protect, but policies have been put into place with school districts, and there are rules and guidelines when we accept being a part of social media platforms.
Thinking about what I could have done differently with my project would be to not have my 6th graders give me a million ideas. What I loved the most was they helped me decide which platform to use. Since I have been teaching them how to use Keynotes for presentation, why not. I would also love to see more educators serve as real role models and not confident. How can we make it easier for young users to make better choices? The educator can continue to improve relationships with their students and create safe discussions for the student to participate in. Give them a real understand that empathy and empathic behaviors matter to both the victim and the victimizer.
References
Hicks, D., 1996. Learning is a prosaic act. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3(2): 102–118. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1207/s15327884mca0302_3
Hicks, J. G., Skoog, S., & Crews, C. (2015). Empowering cyberbullied youth: A solution-focused Adlerian counseling model. Vistas 2015. Retrieved from http://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/vistas/empowering-cyberbullied-youth-a-solution–focused-adlerian-counseling-model.pdf?sfvrsn=8
Marshall, T.H. (1959). Citizenship and social class: and other essays. Cambridge, MA: University Press.
Mercer, N., 2010. The analysis of classroom talk: Methods and methodologies. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(1): 1–14. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1348/000709909X479853
Moore, J, and Schleppegrell, M., 2014. Using a functional linguistics metalanguage to support academic language development in the English language arts. Linguistics and Education, 26: 92–105. DOI: HTTPS:// doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2014.01.002
Ohler, J. (2012). Digital Citizenship means Character for education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-drawings-on-wall-3796599/
Pixabay.com free images or legally and attribution is not require.
Ribble, M. (2015). Digital Citizenship in Schools: Nine Elements All Students should Know. (3rd edition).
Trafalgar School for Girls. (2017). “Social media policy.” Retrieved from http://www.trafalgar.qc.ca/page.cfm?p=848
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