Social Networking and Digital Citizenship Reflection

Before starting this week’s assignments, I looked at the heading and read “Social Networking and Digital Citizenship” and I felt like I already knew a lot about these two specific topics. However, once I started to do some reading on the topics, I realized that there was actually quite a bit about both that I never really considered. For starters, I consider myself to be pretty proficient in the world of social media. I am an active member of many different types of social media personally, but I never really looked into bringing it into the classroom. I always kind of figured that those types of things would be blocked for students, especially students at the middle school level, and so I stuck with the programs offered by the district like Blackboard and ePals. Now that I have looked at various free educational social media sites, I realize that some of these other options may fit my instructional needs a little better. As far as digital citizenship, I teach my students the basics about security, responsibility, etiquette (I call it netiquette), communication, and access, but I don’t specifically teach the education, commerce, rights, and safety aspects. Although I don’t personally teach all of the aspects of digital citizenship, I know that the students are explicitly taught each of these elements in the Web 2.0 class. Every 6^th grader is required to take Web 2.0, so by the time the graduate 8^th grade every student has had exposure. In 7^th and 8^th grade students receive a refresher course on internet safety and digital citizenship in their advisory class. Even though I know students are getting the knowledge in other places, I am going to look for ways of incorporating these aspects when I teach with technology. It is important for students to see that digital citizenship is important in all setting, and not just in Web 2.0 classes.

One specific area I think it is important to address is the physical safety aspect of using technology. This year there has been a big push to use technology on a regular basis in the classroom. All of my trainings cover all the benefits and possibilities of using technology, but the physical repercussions have never been addressed. If students are using computers in every class every day, then they need to be aware of appropriate ergonomics to help prevent long term effects. This is an area where our entire faculty could use some education.  I plan to share my findings with my grade level team, and possible the entire staff at out next staff meeting. The entire faculty in the building use computers on a regular basis, and they all could benefit from a course on how to protect ourselves. I would also like to look into possible grants to fund some resources that would help meet the ergonomics of regular computer use.