Becoming a Better Digital Citizen

Prior to this course, I had no idea that the term “digital citizenship” existed. I had heard of the term “netiquette” before, and I suppose that I had just governed my own digital use in the same way that I would in my daily personal life interactions. Little did I know that there is so much more to it than that. After reading Ribble’s definition and doing some research of my own, I have become much more aware of what being a true digital citizen encompasses and how I can help my students, my colleagues, and myself become better digital citizens in our vast digital universe.

After reviewing Ribble’s nine essential elements of digital citizenship and working on my discussion board post for this week, I realized that one of the first places that I have to start working with my students to help them become better digital citizens is in the area of etiquette and law. So many young people (okay not just young people) use the online world as a place to say what they want, how they want, whenever they want with little to no thought of what their words and actions may do to others. They feel like they are untouchable in the digital universe and that there are no repercussions for their actions. Many of my students have admitted to either being cyber bullied or to cyber bullying others. Students need to know that the way they conduct themselves and how they treat others online is extremely important.

Another huge issue that happens all of the time in my classroom is online plagiarism. Students feel that they can just copy and paste anything that they Google search and pass it off as their own words. Law is an essential element that many people have a complete disregard for, because they believe that there is no way for them to get caught. I have been showing my students how easy it is for me to figure out when they are plagiarizing someone else’s work from the internet. I connect this lesson with a real life situation that happened in one of my college classes where a student in my class was actually thrown out of my university because they were caught stealing an essay off of the internet. Not only did they not get their over $200,000 dollars of tuition money back, they had to pay fines, and they were not able to get admittance into another college.

I am glad that I was also able to reflect upon what digital citizenship means and find some resources to share with my colleagues. Clearly it is important for all of us to be teaching our students these same ideals across the curriculum as well as for us to model what an exemplar digital citizen looks like every day. If I am able to convey this message to the rest of the teaching staff, then I know that we will be able to work together to help our students become the best digital citizens that they can be.

References:

Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know (Third. ed.). International Society for Technology in Education.