Digital Citizenship for ALL Stakeholders
While rolling out our one-to-one laptop initiative, I came to realize that it wasn’t just our students and our teachers who needed support with understanding how to be good digital citizens, but our parent community was also in need of support as well. I had initiated digital citizenship lessons in the past, but I wanted the program we developed to be more engaging than what Common Sense Media offered up and have a more lasting effect on our students, teachers, and parents. A colleague from my Mexican cohort of Apple Distinguished Educators had started a challenged-based digital passport program for their students, which required students to earn stamps in their Digital Passports prior to having access to their school network. Taking inspiration from his challenge-based idea, we too developed a set of challenges within our LMS for students, teachers, and parents to learn from. Below is my kick-off post shared with the community.
ASFM DigitALL CHANGE – Learn it. Do it. Share it.
To encourage better practices with digital resources, the ASFM Tech Integration Team has devised a digital citizenship curriculum to support our 1 to 1 parents, students and teachers. These lessons and trainings will not replace what students learn in their technology classes, but will support what is happening in the content classrooms.
Why DigitALL?
We chose the name DigitALL instead of Digital, because our goal at ASFM is to improve everyone’s knowledge about digital citizenship. We want not only students, but parents, teachers, and administrators to understand what it means to be a good digital citizen. So ALL means everyone.
Why CHANGE?
There are two reasons why we picked CHANGE. First, we would like people to CHANGE their habits with their online behavior and become better technology users. The second reason is that each letter stands for an important part of being a good digital citizen. In other words, CHANGE is an acronym.
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C – Critical – Critical means that you are critical about the information that you access on the internet. You don’t believe everything that you see or read on the internet. You also are critical of the information you use. You review multiple resources rather than just looking at one source. Critical is also important when you are thinking about what information you post about yourself online. Only share things that you are proud of online and don’t share private information.
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H – Healthy – Healthy represents the importance of balance between using technology and taking a break from technology. Humans are made to be outside exploring and interacting face to face with other people. It is important that you know when to shut down and take a break.
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A – Accountable – Accountable is about your responsibilities when using the technology. It includes taking care of the device so it doesn’t break. It also means being accountable for how you communicate online. You should stand up against bullying and respect others privacy.
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N – No Risk – No Risk is about not taking a risk with your information and accounts, by using secure passwords and not sharing passwords. It also stands for keeping your machine up to date with software, so it doesn’t get viruses.
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G – Global – Global is about understanding how technology connects you to the rest of the world. If you are global, you are able to understand, communicate, and collaborate with people from many different countries. Today’s world is a global world.
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E – Ethical – Ethical is about staying out of legal trouble online. You need to obey the law even if you won’t get in trouble for something. Understanding copyright, plagiarism, creative commons, are just as important as not stealing from a 7-11.
