Are you encouraging digital citizenship practices among your modern learners? If not, you should be. It’s one of the easiest and most beneficial things we can do for their safety and their curiosity. You can ask important questions, share age-appropriate guidelines, and discuss media that present the consequences of our behaviour online. There are many things you can do for encouraging digital citizenship. However, the 7 below are among the simplest and the most effective.
Encouraging digital citizenship in our learners isn’t a passing fad. In fact, it’s a way of living well in a virtual world that we ourselves have created to serve our needs. As Stan Lee has cautioned, with great power comes great responsibility, and we know this to be true. Obviously the online world is a domain which has empowered and emboldened us in many ways. So why would we be lax in taking responsibility within such a potentially beneficial environment?
The world online is for all of us, not just some of us. That means we need to feel safe and secure as we experience it. In that regard, the physical and virtual worlds are no different.
7 Tips for Encouraging Digital Citizenship in the Classroom
The following 7 suggestions come from the Edudemic article Teaching Students Good Digital Citizenship by Joni Nguyen. Joni believes that as our lives become more virtual, encouraging digital citizenship practice becomes more important. We couldn’t agree more—her suggestions go hand in hand with our own guidelines for encouraging digital citizenship.
Here are her suggestions for promoting its continual awareness your classroom.
- Remind students that it’s very hard to erase information on the Internet, so they should be extra careful about what information and opinions they make public.
- Create a student etiquette guide for online behavior that teaches students how to “play nice” on the internet.
- Teach students about online “stranger danger” since it’s very easy for online users to pretend to be who they are not.
- Make sure students understand the difference between sharing and stealing online content. While it may feel like anything on the internet is up for grabs, copyright and intellectual property laws protect almost all online content.
- Use online forums or social media networks to facilitate student discussions so students have a safe space to practice good digital citizenship.
- Ensure your students know how to identify a “troll” — an online user whose goal is to provoke others or derail conversations — so they can avoid engaging with them.
- Encourage students to step away from phone and computer screens during family dinners and when hanging out with friends; offline relationships are just as important as online ones!
Read the full article Teaching Students Good Digital Citizenship on Edudemic.
Additional Reading