When I look back at this last year, I realize that without a computer lab or dedicated computer teacher, I should have taught Netiquette/Digital Citizenship from day 1. I made the mistake of assuming that my students were familiar with the curriculum. So I launched into teaching ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies content with the aid of the chromebooks before I had taught Digital Citizenship. I have to agree with the Implementing Digital Citizenship: Jurupa Unified School District video in that it is much better to have clear expectations for all the stakeholders in place so that we can eliminate the likelihood of having to have difficult conversations with parents and students. I have personally had to have some of those uncomfortable conversations and I will do my best to not have to have them again.
I watched the Teaching Digital Citizenship: Be a Super Digital Citizen video where the fourth grade teacher shared her lesson on digital citizenship. I thought that it was a good introduction sans chromebooks. I really like the curriculum set forth by CommonSenseMedia.org for 4th grade. In fact I put all the lessons for 4th grade into a Unit I will teach about Digital Citizenship next school year. I put all the lessons in that Unit into a google slide deck. I added the CommonSenseMedia.org -Our Student Games/Digital Passport, BrainPop and Padlet as well. My students and I will begin our Digital Citizenship lessons on day 1 (partly because I don’t know how we will be delivering lessons next year, whether it be remotely, or in class or some combination of the two). The CommonSenseMedia.org resources make the content personal by providing examples of online communication that my students can connect with. For example most of my students have played video games and texted one another about the strategies they used or about the hacks they learned on YouTube. Also, having students fill out a KWL chart on Padlet will give me a glimpse into their personal lives and give me a formative assessment as to what my students know and what we need to cover. As students work through the lessons, I will be listening and addressing those teachable moments as they arise. The digital citizenship lessons will open the dialogue to begin the conversation about what it means to be a digital citizen. Once we finish the classes as outlined in CommonSenseMedia.org, I will revisit the same lessons as packaged by NearPod. While they utilize the same concepts, the two platforms will feel very different and will allow the students to learn how to use NearPod as well as re-visiting Digital Citizenship concepts.
I liked reading about the 9 themes of digital citizenship from ISTE and thought that I could align the curriculum from CHARACTER COUNTS! with our current Second Step SEL curriculum. While working with the 9 themes of digital citizenship from ISTE, (#1 Digital Access, #2 Digital Commerce, #3 Digital Communication, #4 Digital Literacy, #5 Digital Etiquette, #6 Digital Law, #7 Digital Rights and Responsibilities, #8 Digital Health and Wellness and #9 Digital Security) my students will have a good foundation for being college and career ready in the 21st century.
I do have a few concerns. Since we do not know how we are going to resume the school year and that the students have had the chromebooks at home for the summer, I think it is most important to have parent buy-in. Seems we ought to teach Digital Citizenship to the parents as soon as possible. Parents are having a difficult time navigating this role that has been thrust upon them. They need our support navigating the digital universe. I think that we could begin by pushing out the CommonSenseMedia.org resources for parents. Thankfully CommonSenseMedia.org offers their resources in English and Spanish.