Week 14: Thoughts on Digital Citizenship

(Readings at Bottom)

The readings this week were in more or less two parts. The first part was a discussion of perhaps what exactly the goal is of digital citizenship, and the other part involves examples of how to properly prepare young people for that digital citizenship.

When reading over the Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship, what really struck me is the fact that the themes can’t be just taught and learned, but rather there is a need to “practice” and “work out” the skills, as is mentioned at the end of the article with the REPs. It made me think of the technology classes I had in elementary and middle school. 2 days a week, the class would go into a computer lab and do activities with the computer. Thinking back on it, that is likely where I gained a lot of the basics of my knowledge of the digital world. I remember doing activities that helped us learn about Microsoft PowerPoint and how to type effectively on a computer (digital literacy) as well as activities that showed how easy it was to get information on people, essentially doing a simulated man hunt for a missing child that was talking with someone online (digital law and digital security). With all this came the discussion of what to do when we see suspicious activities and how to respond to what people might say (digital rights and responsibilities and digital etiquette). I don’t think I would be as aware of these themes had I not gone through that technology course. I think more than anything, the schooling formed a basis from which I could go on and learn more, like going from how to look things up in school to looking up social media and products online at home (with parental permission of course at a young age). I think that is the key when talking about what a digital citizen is. Perhaps they learn the basics during school or a class, but it is only when they put it in practice in their personal lives that they become true digital citizens.

Digital citizens are increasingly young people rather than older adults, so digital citizenship policy needs to be discussed in a new way, as demonstrated by the TEDx talk by Anne Collier. The idea I pulled out of this video was the fact that we need to look at digital policy from the human view, from the view of the young people who are the new generation of digital citizens and see what their input on the matter is. That involves engaging them rather than being “scared and controlling adults,” as Collier says. That, in addition to the idea of juvenoia, (the exaggerated fear of the influence of social change on young people) reminded me a bit of my mom with playing video games, specifically shooting games. I don’t particularly enjoy shooting games, but during middle school, they were all the rage among my friends. My mom was very much against letting me get a shooting game because she didn’t like the violence and felt that it perhaps might make me violent. She finally let me get a first person shooter game called “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” the only shooting game I ever got.  The reason I was reminded of it is twofold. One reason is that in a sense, I think she had an “exaggerated fear” of shooting games, that they would somehow increase violence among young people. To some extent that might have been true, but it wasn’t nearly to the scale my mom thought it would be. As far as I know, I didn’t suddenly get more violent because I was playing the game. The second reason is the connection between the digital citizenship and actual citizenship. To some extent, the video game was part of my digital citizenship. It was something I was participating in in the digital world. However, it was also part of my actual citizenship, in particular my social world. Because I didn’t have the game, I was left out of some conversations with friends who did. In that way, my lack of participation in the digital citizenship affected my social life at school. Admittedly, it didn’t have a huge impact on my life and mindset, but I think it is still valid to say that digital and social citizenship can sometimes be linked, with one affecting the other, which only makes the emphasis on digital citizenship that much more important.

I tried out the Digital Compass game (found here), and it was as you might expect for games that intentionally try to teach some sort of lesson. It had the whole “yeah feel good” result when you did something good that is pretty cliché in those sorts of games. It did do a good job of making the correct choice not too obvious. There were times where I thought the decision could really be made either way, there was sometimes no clear “correct” answer. It did seem like there were a lot of pre-recorded tracks, which sometimes made it confusing because you wouldn’t expect that result/cut scene based on what you picked. But that was just how the game was designed. Finally, I think the game did a good job of going through and introducing a theme of digital citizenship with the story (passwords, what to post, who to trust, etc) and then having a game afterwards that served to strengthen the player’s ability to recognize good citizenship versus bad citizenship. Of course, a lot is to be desired from the gaming aspect of things, but it is meant to be educational, and I think it does a good job in doing that. There are lots of colors and interesting characters that would keep someone from grades 6-8 engaged, and I think they’ll likely be a lot happier to play a game like this instead of listening to a teacher talk about it, so I think it serves its purpose well.

I found this lesson plan for starting people off on the KidPix program in grades K-3. This plan is teaching about digital citizenship from the digital literacy angle by encouraging kids to learn how to use this basic “painting” tool. It also hopes to improve mouse skills of the kids. The plan has some ideas of how the kids might get started with KidPix, encouraging the teacher to talk about the differences between the computer and paper, and having the kids do different things with different tools provided by KidPix. Then, it encourages the teacher to let the kids try some tools on their own and having the kids explore what else KidPix can do. It thus wants to encourage digital literacy by showing kids what different tools do as well as promoting the idea of self-exploration, which helps with literacy because it means that kids get a sense that they should try things on their own to learn new things. I think this plan is effective for the grade level because the kids are not as advanced yet, so introducing them to an easy-to-understand program like KidPix is optimal. It also has a good flow from demonstrating what different tools and buttons do to telling kids to explore on their own. It also gives some troubleshooting tips for the teacher, since ideally kids will ask the teacher for help if needed. I think this plan would help a lot because learning basics of how one can discover new things is essential for an individual to go on and discover new things in more complex environments. It is a safe environment to play around and learn before going on to more intricate tools that require more confidence in mouse movements as well as a good idea of toolbars.

Readings for the week

TEDx Talk: Anne Collier, The Heart of Digital Citizenship

Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship

(Game and lesson plan links found in blog post)