Are you preparing your students for digital citizenship?

Full transcript below video.

Video Transcript

Hey everyone! My name is Rae on the Teach Better Team, and we are talking Digital Citizenship and how to set that up in your classroom really effectively. Now before we get too much into the details, if you have not subscribed to our Teach Better Youtube, please make sure you subscribe and like this video, because that always helps then share out to more teachers and give them more support, because that’s really our goal.

When it comes to digital citizenship at the beginning of the year, we are constantly in this phase of our students usually know what the internet is. Actually, most of them have used it quite a bit, but when they come into our classroom, they’re now a year older and there are new things that are constantly coming out with technology that we need to make them really aware of, and then prepare them to handle all that our digital world has. So some of the few things that I want you to consider are really the basics.

What is your goal for digital citizenship this year? Depending on your age level it might look completely different, but as we talk about digital citizenship, this is going to have to do with how they use digital items in your classroom, but also how they use them out in their lives when they’re not immediately in front of you. So the biggest elements are really just that transparency. Tell them what your goals are for them, talk about what is appropriate for their age group, and then, be transparent with not only your students, but also your parents.

Many, many, many things are talked about in school and a lot of what we teach our students is not academic, because we need to teach the whole student. So as we’re teaching the whole student these life skills, these soft skills, these elements of how to be appropriate digital citizens, we also then need to help our parents, because they really should be echoing the same message, and we should be insured to be teaching the same message as well.

So one of the first things that I always want to tell you is that as your developing your digital citizenship lesson, right, as you’re thinking about this conversation, ask your parents, see what their thoughts are. Ask your PLN, what are other teachers doing to really share this initiative. The other element is that get your students involved in appropriate use of digital citizenship. There’s a lot of ways to do that, we write a lot of blogs on how to do this, and one of the most recent ones is that we talked about Twitter, and how to get your kids engaged in Twitter.

Now this is a very hot topic, some teachers say absolutely not, I don’t want them, they’re not old enough, and other teachers say yes, let’s try something new, the most important thing to remember though, is we need to find a way regardless of how you do it, find a way to model digital citizenship appropriately.

There are so many campaigns out there to support students with be the good, and kindness and sharing this element of how to appropriately talk to each other online. So, as you do that, allow students to model it. Now you can do this through Twitter and go to the extreme of some really public digital content, or you can practice it in a different facet of allowing students to interact through a secured system, but practice these comments that are appropriate or are not appropriate.

The last thing is, as your setting this up in your classroom and talking to your parents, consider having a night, an evening, or a webinar, or a video, to communicate what all you talked about to your parents, because even though we can collaborate with our parents and we can ask questions, and send paper home, sometimes our parents just need to be able to ask questions. One of the easiest ways I’ve done this is through holding a Google Hangout, and so my parents can sign in, ask questions, or you can do it face-to-face and welcome them into your classroom which would just be fabulous, or just do a video, similar to how you’re watching now, a video blog, or everything you talked about, maybe highlight some of the hard questions that your students might have asked you, and then talk about your responses and if you would’ve wanted or if the parents would’ve wanted that response or if they have a different suggestion for you.

Now throughout this time, take everything with a grain of salt. It’s important to tell our parents that they are stakeholders in this partnership because you are getting into this school year, and whether you like it or not, you’re like married to these parents for the year, you’ve got to figure something out, and so welcome them into the conversation, and then do the best you can to take that information and structure it to really support your students, because digital citizenship is all about being open, having the conversation and modeling the right way to do it. You’re going to be awesome.

If you have questions, feel free to post them in our YouTube, or also feel free to reach out to somebody on our Teach Better Team, we continue to build a network of teachers, at least our Facebook group from when I’m recording this we have over 700 teachers that are having these types of conversations. So reach out to your PLN, find ways to really teach students appropriately how to have that digital citizenship footprint, and then, let’s get started, and let’s start impacting awesome digital citizenships in our schools.

Blog header image photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash