Tool #11

I am very excited to be talking with my students about Digital Citizenship. For me, the best way to teach it, is to model it. I think some of the websites and links listed under tool #11 would be beneficial to read to my students. I think we as a class should be discussing formal reference sites versus blogs or someone's personal website. I would first model it, but using student comments to guide the lesson. Asking students,"where should I start?", "how do you know that information is true?", "how can I verify what I read?", "where did the information come from?" and so forth. We, as a class, should discuss comments written on the web...is the comment kind, opinionated, bullying, rude...is that okay?? Children need to understand they that they should feel safe on the web, and if not, they should be telling a parent or adult. Students should understand the importance of not using other's words without formal citing. They should be taught how to cite and when to cite. All of this will come with time, repetitive practice, discussion, and modeling. I've also been thinking about having students create a power point or iMovie about safely navigating the web, finding reliable sources of info, and being a great digital citizen. I also found a website early that had a pledge/contract for students to sign about promises made for being a good "digital citizen", however, I didn't bookmark it at the time and can't seem to find it. I liked the wording that was used, and I thought it was very kid friendly. For me, teaching Digital Citizenship will be an everyday thing. Just like it was stated in many of the blogs, it's something we should be teaching continuously because the advances in technology will only continue as time goes on.