Why+Teach+Digital+Citizenship?

=Why Teach Digital Citizenship?=

As educators, we are well aware of the presence of the digital world in our own teaching lives (think curriculum guides online) as well as the lives of our children (How great is Angry Birds? Cell Phones, Facebook, World of War...). We cannot ignore it. We cannot pretend it is going away. We cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility to help teach students good digital citizenship.

In her paper "Digital Citizenship: Developing an Ethical and Responsible Online Culture," Cathy Oxley states that "Three of the biggest problems facing young people today are: their perceived anonymity, their accumulated digital portfolio or digital footprint, and the legal implications of thoughtless or malicious actions."

Below is just a sampling of the research Oxley includes in her paper:

The following National Teen Internet survey was funded by Cox Communications in partnership with NCMEC and John Walsh and was conducted in March 2007 among 1,070 teens age 13 to 17. The research was conducted online by TRU.
 * A majority of teens (58%) don't think posting photos or other personal info on social networking sites is unsafe
 * About half (49%) are unconcerned posting personal info online might negatively affect their future
 * Teens readily post personal info online. 64% post photos or videos of themselves, while more than half (58%) post info about where they live.
 * Females are far more likely than male teens to post personal photos or videos of themselves (70% vs. 58%)
 * Nearly 1 in 10 teens (8%) has posted his or her cell phone number online
 * 49% of high school students have posted personal information on their Web pages — such as name, age, or address — that could assist a stranger(from http://www.safesurfer.org/websafe.html)

A report published by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the University of New Hampshire revealed that of a sample of children & teens who use the Internet:
 * 1 in 5 children - solicited for sex in the past year
 * 1 in 17 children - threatened or harassed on the Internet, including threats of harm to the child, friends or other family members
 * 95% of parents didn't recognize the lingo kids use to let people know that their parents are watching
 * 81% of parents of online youth say that kids aren't careful enough when giving out information about themselves online
 * 76% of parents don't have rules about what their kids can do on the computer
 * 65% of parents believe that kids do things online that they wouldn't want their parents to know about
 * 4,000,000 children are posting content to the Web every day
 * 15,000,000 youth use Instant Messaging(from http://www.safesurfer.org/websafe.html)

To read Oxley's complete paper, follow the link for

Associations like ISTE (International Standards of Technology in Education) provide guidance for school divisions, professional associations and teachers around the world. Below is a slide show by author of //Digital Community, Digital Citzen//, Jason Ohler as he looks at the refreshed ISTE standards and how we can translate those in our classrooms.

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Scenarios like the one in the following slide show are all too common. While this is a isolated reason for teaching digital citizenship, it includes an excellent visual to use with students and simple steps for dealing with online bullying.

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If you still need convincing, the video below provides some statistics about social media in Canada. Although it was produced for business, its implications for schools is clear. Social media is here to stay, and our students will need to function in a world that relies on social media for many different purposes.

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In order to give more depth to our understanding of digital citizenship, let's look at Mike Ribble's Nine ELements of Digital Citizenship.