Wow, has it already been five weeks since the Digital Citizenship course began? Time sure flies when you are…learning so much!! Through this course I have learned about the importance of an on-going program that teaches students about digital citizenship. Through the discussion boards I learned about CommomSenseMedia.org and all the available resources they have for teaching digital citizenship. I will be sharing this information with my administration as well as our technology integration specialist. One of my challenges during this course was completing all the readings. There was a lot of great information to read through but the volume of it was daunting. I feel my best work was creating the technology presentation to demonstrate my understanding of digital citizenship and how it pertains to my circumstances. From this experience I learned where my campus could focus on our own digital citizenship understanding and development. This course has taught me a lot about digital citizenship and cyberbullying. It has given me perspective and reasons why I need to take a more proactive role in teaching my students, parents and co-workers the importance of digital citizenship as it relates to so many aspects of our live and our students lives. One of the most meaningful things I learned in this course is the difference between a digital footprint and digital tattoo. I had not heard the expression of a digital tattoo before this course, and now that I have I will be using it more often in discussions about what we leave behind on the Internet. This course has shown me that to continue to grow as an educational leader I need to stay informed on all aspect of the educational world…especially the technology aspects. My favorite aspect of the course is getting to share ideas with my peers in the discussion posts. I love learning from my peers. For future students that will be taking this course I recommend that you love to read, watch all the videos and seek out resources that will improve your campus or district’s digital citizenship development. Also find ways that the course is meaningful to you and how it can impact your future in education. If I could change one of the activities in this course it would be my animated video about technology advancements. Powtoons was a new platform for me and I chose the easiest way for me to present the information, in hindsight I should have challenged myself more in this area. When discussing technology with friends I will mention the aspects of digital literacy as I feel that many people are lacking in this area. There are so many sites online that are, for lack of a better word, “fake” but people still believe them. Adults need to learn to verify and validate a site as reputable before believing what they read. Digital citizenship is very important for adults to understand because we are the models that our students are looking at to learn from. We want to make sure we are teaching them to “Create a digital footprint that leaves a positive impact.”
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This weeks lessons were about cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is where the use of technology devices and online resources are used to relentlessly and purposefully cause harm to a person. The use of the Internet has continued to grow and with the development of social media cyberbullying has become a topic of concern for adults. There have been many horrific outcomes as results form cyberbullying. The most recent is about the girl who through text messages encouraged a boy to commit suicide. She was found guilty, which has set a new precedence for the legal system. Cyberbullying has been a difficult concept for the legal system to take on and the laws have lagged behind, however now there is more understanding of the impacts that cyberbullying has and that it needs to be taken very seriously. As educators we need to be proactive in seeking out and participating in professional development to better prepare ourselves with understanding and dealing with cyberbullying and the other many digital citizenship elements. As the saying goes “it takes a village to raise a child,” we, as educators, are part of that village. The only way to combat the problem of cyberbullying and poor digital citizenship is to stay informed. It would be easy to crawl under a rock and act like it is not happening to our students but that is not going to help our students when they need us the most. During this weeks web conference an anti-cyberbullying campaign was mentioned called “I am a witness.” It uses eye emojis to shed light on the fact that what someone is doing is wrong towards another person and others can see you are standing up for what is right and join in to support you. I think this is a good start in getting young people to stand up for each other. This kind of simple campaign needs to be shared through social media networks. This is also something that can be discussed in class and shared with parents to encourage their children to be a positive light in when the digital world can be so dark sometimes. Other ways to help prevent or stop cyberbullying is to help educate parents on what is going on when their child is online. I feel that many parents do not realize the what all can be accessed on the Internet or they may think not my child but in reality curiosity can get the best of anyone and it is good to have discussions with your child. I also feel that limitations on usage and parent and child phone/internet contracts are a good idea. These contracts set up an accountability system for the child that outlines consequences for breaking the contract. It is time for parents and educators to team up to be more proactive with teaching digital citizenship instead of reactive. I feel by doing this we will see more positive results and hopefully less of the negative. Building communication between the adults and young people will help put a stop to cyberbullying.
This week’s lessons on Copyright laws and what to do and not do were very, very confusing. I understand the basics of the Copyright law and that it is to protect the rights of the creator from having his or her work copied. However, there are exceptions such as fair use, public domain, and the TEACH Act. I understand the reasons behind fair use, which is to allow libraries and educational institutions to use copyrighted materials for educational purposes. If there was no fair use than the educational world would be limited on the information that it could present to its students and that would limit the creativity and the understanding of the students. Then there is public domain. It is very difficult to understand what falls under Public Domain and what has not quite made it there. I am thankful for searches and charts that try to help people understand what is and isn’t public domain. I understand the use of items from public domain for creating lessons or videos because they are no longer under copyright law and are free to use. The TEACH Act is a fairly recent act and it stems from the development of distance learning, without this act I would not be working on my Masters. One of our reading this week was about if the Copyright Office should be removed from the Library of Congress and become its own entity. After some of the other readings and videos from this week I feel even more strongly that the Copyright Office should no longer be subject to the rules and regulations from the Library of Congress because many of them are no longer applicable in this digital world. The only way to keep up with the digital world and all its copyrights is to modernize the Copyright Office. Everything in the digital world changes so quickly that we need to change to keep up with it or at least try to keep up.
As an educator I also learned the importance of using copyrighted materials correctly and to teach my students the importance of giving credit where credit is due. I feel that as a teacher of young students the first lessons should be about plagiarism. I think this is something that young students will be able to connect to because they would not want someone copying their work and claiming it as their own. I will be looking for ways to include this in my lessons this year during our research projects. During our web conference this week the guest speaker talked about Document Based Questions. These are things that I will begin to look into so that I can incorporate these ideas into my classroom. I also want to share with other grade levels the importance of understanding copyright laws because we need to be examples for our students. We cannot expect our students to learn these things on their own. We need to be the ones to teach them so that they are respectable digital citizens ad can be examples for others. Many people have heard of a digital footprint and understand that it means that what you post online will stay online. However, not many people have heard of a digital tattoo, which puts more emphasis on the fact that what is posted online is permanent. A footprint is something that can be erased where as a tattoo is permanent. As I have learned through this course the difference myself I feel that the term digital tattoo is more relevant to a person’s online information. As I was reading and looking up information about digital tattoos I came across a TED video that discusses our online life and likens it to a tattoo. According to Juan Enriquez (2013), a person’s tattoo or tattoos on his or her body send a message. A person does not have to say a lot because the tattoos can tell their story for them (Enriquez, 2013). This is true about our electronic tattoos as many of the activities we do everyday are left behind, such as using Facebook, online shopping, blogging, etc. (Enriquez, 2013). According to Enriquez (2013), Andy Warhol felt that everyone would have 15 minutes of fame, however Enriquez provided a different perspective that what if we are only anonymous for 15 minutes. Enriquez 2013, discussed four lessons from the Greeks. He discussed that people need to be careful of what they post because it defines your reputation (Enriquez, 2013). He also discussed not searching too deep into someone’s digital background (Enriquez, 2013). Think about the purpose of the posts and do not become too self-absorbed (Enriquez, 2013).
Think about how much online activity you participate on a daily basis…It is a lot. This idea of a digital tattoo and its permanence has made me think harder about what I do online and what I post. I remember when my family got our first computer. My Dad spent what seemed like forever setting it up. I learned to use a word processor on it but mostly played games from floppy disks. Then years later we got dial up Internet. It was an entire new world. I remember visiting chat rooms and talking to people from all over. I never gave it much thought about there could be bad people on the other end or that everything I did on the Internet would be there forever. As I have gotten older I have gained a better understanding and I am more cautious. But could I be even more cautious? Yes, I am sure that I could be by removing myself from the digital world but then would I be cutting myself off from a world of possibilities. There are many things out in the real world as well as the digital world that affect our daily lives. We just need to educate ourselves, children, students and other adults of the permanence of our activities as well as other’s activities on our lives. We have to make sure that we think about what information we are putting out there because some one else could be searching for that exact information to hurt you. How will you work to improve your digital tattoo? Resources Enriquez, J. (2013). Your online life, permanent as a tattoo. TED: Ideas worth spreading. Retrieved June 18, 2017 from https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread - t-337073 These are just a few things that I have been learning about this week. Digital citizenship has several variations of meanings such as the proper behaviors and responsible use of technology (Ribble, 2015). Ribble (2015) also discussed how these behaviors and responsibilities fit into nine elements of digital citizenship. These elements are digital access, commerce, communication, literacy, etiquette, law, rights and responsibility, health and wellness and security (Ribble, 2015). Another variation is looking at digital citizenship as apart of good character development and not a separate part of our lives (Ohler, 2012.) Yet another definition focuses on how our behaviors and uses affect others and the digital communities (Heick, 2015). A common factor between all of these definitions is that our behaviors and choices on how and what we do with our technology affect other people’s lives as well as our own.
One of the questions this week on our discussion board was what elements of Ribble’s (2015) nine element were important to me. It was hard to pin point one or two but I felt that the rights and responsibilities as well as health and wellness were important to my students and me. I feel that my students need to understand they have certain rights to technology such as being able to enjoy the use of technology while having responsibilities to use it wisely and fairly (Ribble, 2015). I do not think that students realize the power that they hold in their little hands and how by using it in an appropriate manner that they can change the world. I also felt that the element of health and wellness is important for my students and parents to understand because Internet and technology addiction is very real. I’ve seen it in students who are imagining a video game in their heads most of the day as well as family members who play video games more than interact with the family. The conversations and discussions on how much screen time a child should have needs to start early because if parents wait it may be too late. There needs to be a balance of activities from sports to t.v. to how much time a child is on the Internet or gaming. These two were important to me, however all nine elements are needed to develop a proactive digital citizen. Through this week’s lessons and reading I have learned that digital citizenship is an important skill that needs to be developed in our students today. As I looked back on how digital citizenship has been taught I can see where others and I can grow. Teaching digital citizenship is not a one and done lesson but an ongoing integrated curriculum with many thought provoking discussions to keep students aware of what is expected of them. As I read through the discussion posts this week I learned about Common Sense Media. I went to their website and was overwhelmed and excited about all the available resources to teach and start the discussion about being digital citizens into today’s digital world. I cannot wait to dive deeper to learn more on creating upstanding digital citizens in my classroom next year. Resources Heick, T. (2013). The definition of digital citizenship. Teach though: We grow teachers. Retrieved June 11, 2017 from http://www.teachthought.com/the future-of-learning/digital citizenship-the-future-of-learning/the-definition-of-digital-citzenship/ Ohler, J. (2012). Digital citizenship means character education for the digital age. Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 77(8), 14 17. Retrieved from Lamar University Blackboard June 11, 2017 (PDF: Ohler_Digital_citizenship_means_character_education_2012.pdf) Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know. (3rd ed.). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology. |
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