“If I can share my work online, I get more out than I put in; then I can add even more and benefit from others’ expertise,” said 15-year-old Nicola from Edinburgh here at the Internet Governance Forum. Her comment sounded just like 17-year-old Canadian cinematographer Mark Klassen’s and that of an Australian student marveling that her own class blog had gotten “533 visits worldwide. Amazing or what?” Don’t miss the rest of her comment at the end of “Six reasons why kids should know how to blog” in KQUED’s Mind/Shift blog. This is how Melbourne teacher Jenny Luca is teaching digital citizenship – by giving her students hands-on opportunities to learn and practice it. They’re learning how to create “positive digital footprints” (put their best foot forward online with meaningful content and respectful behavior); find, get proficient with, and optimize digital tools for their own needs and interests (and learn media literacy in the process); and exercise their citizenship as active participants in social media.
Related links
- “The goal for digital citizenship: Turn it into a verb!”
- “5th graders teaching us about digital citizenship”
- “Student PLNs: Great social media use”
- “From users to citizens: How to make digital citizenship relevant”
[…] Will citizenship and human rights need to become more of a focus in schools worldwide – in the curriculum (e.g. in civics, social studies, history, government, and world cultures) as well as in what is modeled and taught as behavioral norms (online and offline) in classrooms? That’s what my colleague and fellow IGF panelist Janice Richardson of European Schoolnet in Brussels said in our workshop, and I agree with her (see this). […]