Digital Citizenship, Ethics, and Netiquette 2

Digital Citizenship, Ethics, and Netiquette 2

Last week, I learned two technologies related to digital citizenship, ethics and netiquette from my colleagues, which I want to share in this week’s blog post. One is Digital Citizenship (http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/), which I learned from Hiraman Byrd’s blog (http://hiramanbyrd.blogspot.com/) and the other technology is Media Smarts (http://mediasmarts.ca/), which I learned from Seher Balkaya Bulat’s blog post (http://seherb.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/digital-citizenship-technologies/).     

Digital Citizenship is a site that aims at helping educators and parents teach learners and children how to use technology in an appropriate way. There are links to resources, publications, and nine elements on the site. The resources link may be beneficial for adult educators to raise their learners’ awareness of the new technologies and how to use them. I chose this technology because it is easy to use, up-to-date, and provides many links that can give practical ideas to an educator.

In my professional practice, I could use this technology to make my learners better digital citizens. The first way I would benefit from this technology is to adapt an activity described on the site, which you can reach through http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/uploads/GuideAct2.pdf. This activity focuses on the use of

cell phones. Instead of asking my learners to mock a phone conversation, as suggested in the activity, I would get them to watch short videos showing how people can interrupt others with their mobile phones. Then, in small groups, I would ask my learners to come up with some appropriate and inappropriate places and ways of using the mobile phone. Then, I would ask the groups to refer to the nine elements on the website and relate at least one element to the issue of disruption caused by mobile phones. Finally, I would turn this into a whole class discussion where each group reports what they have discussed. We would end the lesson by deciding on some rules for mobile phone use in our classroom. The second way I would use this site is to have my learners reflect on their use of technology, and, referring to the nine elements, to write a list of the things they are doing right and a list of things they should be more careful about as digital citizens.

Media Smarts is a Canadian site that focuses on digital and media literacy. It has a wide coverage – from teacher resources to detailed information about problems like cyberbullying. I chose this technology because it offers a lot of resources that can easily be adapted to cater for the needs of learners at all ages.

This technology can help my learners become better digital citizens. There are lesson plans under the resources tab that I can use with my learners. One example of how I would use this technology is that I would ask my learners to study the Cyber Security Consumer Tip Sheet (http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/tipsheet/CyberSecurityConsumerTipsheetv4.pdf), choose one potential risk of being online that they have experienced from the list, and present to class a detailed description of the experience, ways they used to avoid it, and ways offered by the site to avoid such experiences. Another way I would use this technology is by preparing a questionnaire using the information on Cyber Security Consumer Tip Sheet about

Safe Surfing (http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/tipsheet/Cyber%20Security%20Tip%20Sheet%20-%20Safe%20Surfing-EN.pdf).  Then, I would go over the results of the questionnaire with each learner, determine their weak areas and ask them to visit this link to learn how they can improve their surfing skills. They will be asked to report this in written form and submit it to me.