Week 8: Digital Citizenship

    Digital citizenship is an extremely important component to healthy and productive internet use. However, in many classrooms across the United States, digital citizenship is often glossed over, and I'm guilty of that myself. Maybe it's because many teachers today either grew up in an era where digital technology was uncommon or they grew up during the technological boom and "learned by fire" without any formal instruction. For me, I'd like to say it's the latter, but maybe I'm just making excuses. There are likely many factors that contribute to lack of instruction in digital citizenship. Whichever the case may be, as I reflect on my current practices, it is evident that I am not doing enough formal instruction. Looking at the 9 elements of Digital Citizenship that Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey created, I see room for growth in all 9 areas. With the advent of widespread online learning that began almost a year ago, I have spent more time with instruction in the following elements: digital communication, digital literacy, and digital etiquette. These were areas of need that seemed glaring as we transition to online instruction. However, in regards to several of the other elements, I have merely been monitoring rather than instructing. Monitoring does play a very important role in digital citizenship but without explicit instruction, it only reaches so far.