Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship

As the use of technology in the classroom increases, we have a responsibility to teach our students good digital citizenship in the same way that we teach good real-world citizenship. Here are some ideas related to that:

Respect the equipment.
Follow the rules.
Protect yourself (identity, reputation, person).
Have a Plan B
Maintain your focus/purpose.
Be kind to others.
First, do no harm.
Take responsibility- 3, then me; know when to hold ‘em…
Respect intellectual property.
Honor academic honesty.

Respect the Equipment

Students need to learn to respect the equipment that is given to them to use. For many students, the netbook may be the most valuable thing they have ever been trusted with. We need to reinforce basic care behaviors that they may not have learned at home. Here are some behaviors to reinforce:

Shut down the computer and close the lid when not in use.
When travelling, keep the netbook closed and in its neoprene sleeve.
Shaking or hitting the netbook will not make it work better.
Keep the netbook in a safe and secure place when not in use.
Be patient with the netbook. If it isn’t doing what you want, give it time and try again later.
Respect the limitations of the netbook and the restrictions that have been put in place.
Keep food and drink away from the netbook.
Keep the netbook in a comfortable environment.

Follow the Rules

As with anything, the digital world as rules. Some are rules that are put in place by the government, some are rules that exist within a particular environment, and some are school rules or rules for your classroom. Generally speaking, students should be held accountable for any and all rules regardless of whether they are real-world or digital environmental rules. Also, as teachers we need to make sure that the rules are clearly defined and fairly enforced. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Teachers should have a clear set of rules and expectations that are available to students in the digital environment. Make it clear what your expectations are for students with the netbooks in your classroom and in any digital environment that you share with them (Angel, blogs, discussion forums, etc.). You are likely to find that your expectations in the digital environment mirror those that you have already established in your classroom.
Teachers should help students to understand plagiarism and how to avoid it, as well as pertinent copyright laws and how to obey them.
Teachers should model proper digital citizenship by not breaking copyright law in class and by citing sources of information in their lessons.
Teachers should not help students break the rules by sharing workarounds to beat the filters. Teachers should also discourage students from doing things with their netbooks that are clearly outside of their intended use (Facebook, MySpace, proxies, etc.).
Teachers should supervise students’ use of the netbooks. Good monitoring will prevent students from breaking the rules to begin with. Have a strategy that will allow you to check on students from time to time. One useful strategy is the “hands up” rule. Tell students that if you say “hands up” all students should remove their ands from their netbooks. Then, simply walk around and check to see that students are on task. Students who know they will be held accountable for their use of time are less likely to stray off task.
Students should be ready and willing to discuss the reasons for the rules and laws that exist, governing the digital world, in the same way that one might have that discussion related to other laws and rules. Students need adult models who will reinforce the value of good citizenship.

Protect Yourself (Identity, Reputation, Person)

Students need guidance in understanding how to protect themselves from predators who exist in the digital world. Security is a prime concern in the digital world, partly because information that we share in the digital world can be shared with people we don’t know, and partly because even when we are careful with how much information we give out, we forget that we provided other information at an earlier time. Students need to be given strategies that will help them protect themselves against identity theft, damaged reputations and personal endangerment. Here are some pieces of guidance that students may need:

Avoid putting information out into the Internet that could allow people to use your identity for their own purposes. Be especially careful not to provide birth date information and social security information. Also, do not share your passwords with other people such as boyfriends or girlfriends. They can later use that information to cause you problems.
Don’t put anything out on the Internet that you wouldn’t want your pastor, grandmother or future employer to see. Social networking sites can ruin a person’s reputation. Also, monitor what others are sharing about you on their sites and request that questionable material be removed immediately. Additionally, be conscious of whom you allow to be your friend. Their reputation can affect yours.
Think twice before doing something on the Internet that others would think less of you for. Your moral and ethical judgment can be brought to light at unexpected times and in unexpected ways.
Be kind to others online. Your behavior in the digital world may feel anonymous, but it has real-life consequences.
Don’t use the digital world to bully others. Bullying is always bad. Bullying in the digital world leaves a trail.
Be especially careful posting to the world on Twitter, in a blog or on a social networking site. Any information you post can be used to stalk you and place you in danger.
Don’t assume that people you talk to in the digital world are who they say they are. Predators lie.

Have a Plan B

Students and teachers need to understand that technology is a complicated tool that may not always work the way we want it to. All of us need to approach learning in the digital age as requiring a heightened level of flexibility. Students need to be encouraged to plan ahead for the possibility that their technology might not work just when they want it to. Teachers also should work this way, modeling flexibility when things go wrong and preparing for problems with suitable back-up plans. Here are some basic strategies:

Build redundant systems. If you have a PowerPoint to share, make sure that you have it backed up somewhere convenient. I tell students to have a copy on their netbook, a copy on a flash drive, and a copy saved to their email.
Check your technology ahead of time. Don’t assume that because it worked at home, it will work at school. Also, don’t decide to try something new without doing a test run.
When in doubt, go old school. Students and teachers should always be prepared to keep on learning by pulling out the textbooks, paper and pencils. Over time, we hope to eliminate more and more technology problems, but there will always be the chance that a digital lesson can fail due to unexpected complications.
If some kids’ netbooks are working and others are not, be flexible and create groups to accomplish the task. More often than not, that will work just as well.
Consider whether or not the digital portion of your lesson can be made into homework. If so, perhaps the problem you are facing won’t be there a few hours later.
Finally, as frustrating as it can be, students really do run into technology issues (I ran out of ink, I couldn’t log on, etc.). Plan to be flexible when collecting and grading digital work. If the student runs into problems that are genuinely outside of his or her control, work with him or her to be successful.

Maintain Focus/ Purpose

Students already lack focus. Now we are handing them an electronic carnival to distract them further? Students will undoubtedly require constant social feedback related to staying on task in the digital classroom. The good news is that A) nothing really has changed and B) students may find the technology more engaging than other methods of instruction. That said, teachers need to keep the following in mind:

Help students remember that focus is required and that it serves a purpose.
Create engaging and meaningful learning activities that will help students maintain focus. Students will begin to drift when they don’t feel challenged and when they don’t see the purpose for what they are doing.
Don’t assume that digital = engaging. Sometimes it does, but sometimes there are better tools to use.
Structure time so that students aren’t doing one thing for more than 25 minutes. The human brain needs to shift gears in order to remain efficient.
Have students close their netbooks when they don’t have a reason to be working on them. If you want students focused somewhere other than their netbooks, eliminate the distraction.
Understand that students aren’t necessarily disengaged if they are doing multiple tasks in your classroom. Students will come up with very creative ways to use the netbooks to enhance learning if we let them.
Hold students to the same standard that you hold yourself to. While in your class, expect that what they are doing will be to focus on the tasks you create for them, and that the ways they use their technology will serve the purpose of accomplishing those tasks.

Be Kind to Others

I’ve always contended that good scholarship includes the willingness to be kind to others. Often we say that we expect students to respect others, but I believe we want more than that. Here’s how I see this playing out in the digital classroom:

Students need to be taught to treat others in a digital environment the same way we want them to treat others in our classrooms.
Students should be taught how to engage in discussion online in the same way that we guide them in the classroom.
Students should never be allowed to bully or to behave badly in our digital environments.
Students should be encouraged to help each other with both the technology and the contents of our digital lessons.
Students should receive feedback on the perceived tone of their online interactions. Sometimes they don’t know how to appropriately express tone in type.
Students should be encouraged to assume best intentions when they read the communications of their classmates. I teach my students to intentionally assume the best possible meaning of a written communication.
Students should be encouraged to think about what they say before they press send, particularly if they are emotionally charged when they write down their thoughts.
Students should be encouraged to remember that their netbook can be a distration to others, even if it is not a distraction to themselves. If they are listening to a video or music, they should use earbuds, especially in public places like the library. If students are doing things with their netbooks, during a time that requires their focus on something else in class, they should put their netbooks away until a more appropriate time.
Students should learn the rules of “netiquette” that govern the social behaviors of social networking sites.

First, Do No Harm

I would argue that this is a rule we should all follow in all aspects of our lives. Students, though, are notoriously unafraid of experimenting with new technology. Generally, this is a good thing because it means that we never have to cajole them into trying out a new educational “toy.” The downside is that they often know just enough to be dangerous. As teachers, we need to help students to understand the difference between exploring a digital environment and manipulating it beyond all recognition. It is a good policy to trust students to know more than you do with a piece of technology, but there is point at which your instincts about what students should be able to do are correct. Trust those instincts and guide students away from tinkering to the point that they make their computers (or yours) non-functional.

If students want to use a proxy or some other workaround to get to content that is blocked, tell them no. We have filters for a reason.
If students want to alter the fundamental setup of their or any other netbooks by trying to work outside of the allowable parameters of the netbook interface, tell them no.
If you see that students have managed to install programs, play games, access social networking sites, let them know that is how viruses take over their machines and how their machines break down.

Take Responsibility

In some ways this is contrary to my last topic. We want students to learn to be fully functioning members of society who can identify a problem, search for solutions and implement a plan of action. While we certainly don’t want students to crash their machines because they tried to do something they didn’t know how to do, we do want students to try to solve their technology issues on their own when it is possible. We also want them to realistically recognize when they have created a problem and take responsibility for it. And we want them to know when a problem needs to be addressed by someone outside of themselves. In the digital classroom, we want students to do the following:

Ask three people how to solve a problem or answer a question before assuming they cannot fix it.
Recognize when something is not working and make reasonable guesses as to why (it stopped working after I downloaded that music).
Recognize when it is important to get help (I can’t use the Internet) and when it’s not (this machine won’t let me change my wallpaper).
Be honest when something they have done has caused a problem.
Take effective measures to avoid predictable harm to the netbooks.
Make good decisions about netbook use, and encourage others to do the same.

Respect Intellectual Property

Digital natives (our students) have grown up with a very different understanding of intellectual property. Because of the Internet and file-sharing sites like Lime Wire, students have come to expect that movies, music, pictures and other types of files are free to use because they are easily accessible. We have a responsibility to help students understand the issues related to Internet piracy and file sharing.

Students should understand that when people use their intellectual and creative talents to create something, it is theirs to control. Music that is downloaded from a file-sharing site or uploaded from a CD that is not purchased is not legal to possess. Movies work the same way. Ripping a movie to an iPod or netbook without purchasing that movie is illegal. Even pictures on the Internet may not be legal to use without the permission of the photographer.
Students need to know that when they use the creative work of others in projects for school, that work is not automatically fair-game. A student who uses a popular song as part of a video project may be doing so illegally. At the very least, students should be citing the work of others that they are pulling from.
Students need to know that when they use the ideas of others, even when they are not quoting directly, they need to cite those sources of information.

Honor Academic Honesty

As long as there have been schools, there has been cheating. It is a citizenship battle that we fight everyday. The issue doesn’t change much in the digital classroom, except that we have given students new ways to get information, including access to the Internet (ask the audience), instant messaging (phone a friend), and a notebook on their screen (I really wish 50/50 fit here). I would argue, however, that the fix for this is as it has always been in that constant vigilance will curb the majority of problems. Still, I can’t help but think that part of the solution is to re-imagine how we do things. Perhaps, it’s best to concede that the days of content testing are fading away. Instead, we should be creating opportunities for students to collaborate and create authentic assessments that test skills rather than content. If you want to test content, then I recommend you have the kids put the netbooks away for the duration of the test. If you want to test skills, then what does it matter if they have access to information? Successful people don’t know everything. Successful people know how to find everything. That said, we need to encourage our students to be good (non-cheating) citizens. Here’s my advice:

Teach kids to value the intrinsic rewards of education (the joy of knowledge, the power of abilities) rater than the extrinsic rewards (stickers, grades, candy bars).
Assess skills rather than content.
Go old school for tests.
Constant vigilance.
Allow students access to every source of information you can, and teach them to evaluate those sources before they rely on them.
Use timed assessments to discourage students from relying on the resources too heavily.