Digital Citizenship

This week we focused on created a digital citizenship policy for our classroom. This assignment was difficult for me because I saw the task at hand as how to teach it to my students. While teaching it, I would have had the student come up with their own policies and added where I saw fit. However, because I were in a partner situation, we agreed it would be best to form a policy and a classroom graphic with it. I think by allowing the students to generate the policy the buy in is better and the education part of the policy would happen faster. I think that having a premade policy will give me an ending point as to the parts that I want to make sure are included.

I believe that digital citizenship is something that is often overlooked. At my FCCLA officer meeting I was at yesterday, the student spoke about what should and should NOT be on their Facebook pages. I found this interesting timing since this is what I have been discussion. It is my belief that a majority of teachers "give the talk" and leave it at that. Maybe that is what all is need at the high school level, but I still feel that it is a bit lacking.

After working in an alternative school, where students lack parental involvement, they tend to have a lot of gray areas for what is defined as appropriate. Generating this policy allowed me to think about the bits and pieces that need to be discussed before allowing the students to jump in.

As a lead in FCCLA at the state level (I will be putting on Professional Development for FCS teachers across the state), I think I want to run a series of digital citizenship workshops that will combine AUP's and building student awareness of their citizenship. I visualize the workshop incorporating other districts AUP’s and the 9 components of digital citizenship as well as the use of Worlde as a reflective pieces (which I love by the way!!).

For some advisors in rural areas, internet is not as readily accessed at it is here in the Denver area. I had my eyes closed to this until a recent trip to Texas where we saw Quest laying fiber optics. My husband laid the same fiber optics in urban areas over 10 years ago. I wonder about the impact slow internet has on current FCCLA advisors in Colorado. I feel that addressing this topics at a state conference will benefit most, but will it leave others in optic-less dust?