Digital Citizenship

Before I start comparing Digital Citizenship and Traditional Citizenship for anyone who may be unclear I would like to define both.
Digital citizenship is defined by the wonderful people who edit Wikipedia  "as a person utilizing information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation." For example those who use Facebook, Twitter and many others to interact with a digital community.

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A traditional form of citizenship would be defined by Dictionary.com as "the status of being a citizen. If you have citizenship in a country, you have the right to live there, work, vote, and pay taxes"

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In this blog post I want to answer 3 major questions:
1.In what ways is digital citizenship similar to and different from the traditional view of citizenship in the world beyond our devices?
2.How can we apply traditional citizenship ideas to our work in helping students develop digital citizenship?
3.What is the teacher's role in helping students develop digital citizenship?

1. Digital citizenship can be similar to traditional citizenship, but the same time much different. You can be apart of a digital community and be a citizen of a certain app or group, but that doesn't really have the same ideas as a regular citizen. A citizen is a part of a certain location for example I am a U.S citizen because I was born in the United States, therefore I have citizenship in the U.S.A. I have the right to be a productive member of society in the U.S, I can work , pay taxes, vote and live here. The same types of rules apply for being a digital citizen sort of. To be a digital citizen I am still a productive part of society, but my community may be somewhere across the world. People all over the world use Twitter for example. So, I can communicate and participate with others all around the entire world. I can participate in politics through the internet just the same as  I can go somewhere to vote. Using the internet in a smart and productive way, I can build a personal learning network that is beneficial to me as a teacher.
What does it mean to be a good citizen?

What does it mean to be a good digital citizen ?

 

2. I like to look at it as what you can do for others. In a digital community beware of oversharing and never Bully Others! If everyone followed the Golden Rule everyone would be fine. We all know that the internet can be a very un safe environment, so the first rule of a digital anything is to know the rules and to be safe. Know the rules and always be safe!!!!!
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3. The teachers role in helping students build digital citizenship.
On the Teaching Channel there is a great example of teaching digital citizenship in a fifth grade classroom. In Mr, Pane's fifth grade classroom he uses a website that allows his students to create their own Super Digital Hero. The children get to first create a super hero of their own and then they have to write a little scenario that their hero has to come in and redirect them from a un safe situation. He also has the students read the rules out loud together. I love his entire lesson so so much! It is perfect and even though some girls in the class may not be that into comic books, their is a girl superhero that they can create to be more feminine. The teacher is a very important person in the process of teaching interment safety. The video below is a little bit lower in grades so more K-3; between both sites and videos all elementary grades were covered an both ideas are age appropriate and a wonderful way to introduce this topic!

Cooking with TPACK

In this cooking with TPACK quest, I was given a list of 5 task that you had to pick from a hat: 1. Slice Hard Cheese, 2. Make whipped cream from 35% heavy whipping cream, 3. Make a fruit salad, 4. Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich or 5. Slice Veggies for a Veggie Tray. The point of this cooking with TPACK experiment was to repurpose tools and figure out a way to complete a rather simple task with whatever tools or materials you are given. My partner for this quest was Kaley Stone (my fiancés daughter).
First I had her to come into the kitchen and pick three utensils or tools that she was going to have to use to complete a random task that she was unaware of, she chose a fork, a bowl and a pair of tongs. Second she chose a slip of paper from a hat that had all 5 of the above task inside of it; she chose "Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich". Third she grabbed the bread an started to pull things together. She used the tongs for peanut butter, the fork for jelly and then when she was done she had to put it in a bowl (because that is what she chose)

I know the video has a annoying thing across the screen the entire time sorry!! It is the only way that

I could get it to work.

 

The tools that Kaley chose weren't to impossible, the fork worked fairly well and the bowl looked sort of funny holding a sandwich, but the tongs would of probably have to be the hardest part of the entire task. Tongs probably wouldn't be the easiest thing to grab and spread jelly so she made a smart move by using the tongs for the peanut butter because peanut butter is a lot thicker so it was easier to manipulate than jelly.
We had a lot of fun completing this task and I think it was a wonderful idea, trying to figure out a ways to repurpose tools in such a way that the task could still have the same outcome. Just like TPACK is all about changing and repurposing otherwise simple task.