I always appreciate the weeks in class that we focus on digital citizenship and digital literacies. This is what relates most specifically to my work with fifth graders and what I’ve focused on for my work with the students this year.
I’ve found how important it is to foster a strong foundational understanding of digital citizenship in my classroom right off the bat and to continue to reference and build on it throughout the year. These students are entering a highly connected digital world where their actions are visible. They need to know how to be responsible and safe while online. They need to be able to analyze information for themselves. They need to know what credible resources look like. They need to know how to conduct themselves in a conversation even with the tempting facade of anonymity pushing them to test the boundaries of social norms. I want my students to succeed in the digital world and they won’t unless they are explicitly taught how.
This week what I really appreciated was seeing a new graphic that I hadn’t seen before from World Economic Forum. They have broken up digital citizenship into 8 categories represented in the infographic below.
World Economic Forum
I love this graphic because it offers yet another way for students to think about digital citizenship. I teach my students using a graphic from ISTE. This graphic breaks down digital citizenship into multiple categories as well.
International Society for Technology in Education
I really like the ISTE graphic because it correlates digital citizenship to citizenship in a community. This is easy for students to associate with their own background experiences. It’s a great graphic to teach the fundamentals of digital citizenship. But I love having multiple resources to reteach the ideas to students. Through use of the new WEF graphic, the same concepts can be retaught but in a way that may make more sense to some students. It’s always helpful to teach a concept in multiple ways and digital citizenship is no different. It needs to be taught explicitly and it needs to be taught cyclically throughout the year. Students need to know that it’s important. The more graphics and resources I see like these just help reaffirm my belief that this is work worth doing.
Words To Teach By 
I agree, digital citizenship is so integral especially for young people. If they can all learn this early on then they can evolve and have good habits in becoming good digital citizens. I believe that a good foundation must be set for students in order for them to achieve this. It’s difficult but if we continue to teach our children good moral compass than it can also spill into their digital lives as well. However, not everyone else plays by these rules. It’s almost like someone saying they will wipe out all the criminals and bad in the world. What can be some other steps in ensuring people can be good digital citizens?
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