Week 3 Digital Citizenship

 It is everyone responsibility to teach Digital Citizenship.  However, I believe part of the issue is many people think it is someone else's responsibility.   Parents feel it is the schools,  some teachers feel it is parents.   I think prior to teaching this, we as adults need to practicing it.   This is no easy task at hand. Why Teachers need Good Digital Citizenship,   we can't be teaching our children or students about how to behave on Facebook or My Space.  If we are not being Respectful and Responsible on what we post on Facebook.   Even more so, we can't teach how to be respectful about Facebook, if we aren't on it.  

I believe that much of what Good Digital Citizenship starts with begins with All I ever needed to learn, I learned in Kindergarten.

Good Digital Citizenship starts with just good Citizenship.     Life is hectic, Life is busy but when we stop being civil and courtesy that begins to define who we are perceived as.  Citizenship is not just about our rights; citizenship is also about responsibilities - responsibilities to maintain, to protect, and to enhance the community in which we live   The Importance of Teaching Digital Citizenship.  We need to teach our young people what citizenship means, what good citizenship in our community is both in the communities we live and in the Cyber Community.

There is a school of thought that if we ban technology in our class rooms and go back to reading and writing our students will be better off.   However Banning is not the answer.  We need to educate students on balancing the use of technology with the misuse of technology.  We are also going to need to do this by in large as we are learning it ourselves.   We need to teach our students




How their brains are wired and not how our brains are wired.    The study of neuorplasticity has changed the school of thought on how brain growth is not completed at age 3 and how our Digital Natives Brains are different than that of their parents.   Since not teaching students how the learn would be a huge disservice to their education.  We must begin to teach them Digital Citizenship,  in a world where manners are far less important than in our parents generation.    In some respects we need to go back to the basics and apply them to our Technology Rich Culture. We also need to teach this at a very young age, Teaching Digital Citizenship in the Elementary Classroom