It seems that a number of participants in my Digital Citizenship workshop imagined they’d be learning about cyber safety for three days! Is that what comes to mind for some people when they hear the term digital citizenship?
Instead, we explored what it means to BE a digital citizen and, by the end of the workshop, every one of them had become an active contributor online, developing confidence to participate as thoughtful, active citizens themselves.
Can you teach digital citizenship, if you are not an active digital citizen yourself?
During the workshop, participants reflected on the ways they engage online and categorised their online activities under the headings of CONSUME, CREATE or INTERACT.
Participants also…
- Googled themselves and considered the impact of having a positive digital identity, a negative one… or none at all.
- Considered and prioritised the key competencies for our students (or anyone) to learn in order to participate in society today (online society too).
- Connected with educators around the globe, via Skype and Twitter as well as face to face.
- Explored our rights and responsibilities as digital citizens.
- Debated the risks vs rewards of online participation for ourselves and our students.
- Heard the perspectives of some enthusiastic and articulate Grade 4 and 5 students.
- Shared, discussed, collaborated, planned and reflected… face to face and via a range of digital avenues, such as Twitter, Today’s Meet, Google docs and our workshop blog.
- Inquired into digital citizenship through the lenses of the essential elements of the PYP – knowledge, concepts, attitudes, skills… but mainly ACTION.
Some of the action…
Take a look at the brand new professional blogs by Tania, Joel and Leona and follow up on the action via Twitter…
It’s exciting to see empowered digital citizens thinking about how to foster active digital citizenship in their students, instead of focusing only on the’ don’ts’ and the ‘dangers’.
I’m thinking about all the authentic learning about to happen in a real context…
What Ed Said 
I wonder this about lots of things:
Can you teach inquiry skills if you are not an active inquirer?
Can you teach reading if you are not a reader?
Can you teach writing if you are not a writer?
And so on…
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Edna, this is really thought provoking for me as I ask my teachers to talk about digital citizenship with their class, but the reality is that some may need to think about their own “status’ as a digital citizen first.
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