Citizen
ISTE-E Standard Text
Citizen - Educators inspire students to positively contribute to and responsibly participate in the digital world. Educators:
Create experiences for learners to make positive, socially responsible contributions and exhibit empathetic behavior online that build relationships and community.
Make positive, socially responsible contributions: For example, engaging productively with others online; sharing creative or intellectual work that is original, protected and documented; being involved in virtual social actions such as crowdsourcing, crowd-funding or mobilizing for a cause, using digital tools for entrepreneurship and innovation.
Build relationships and community: Using digital tools to contribute to the common good and build interpersonal bonds.
Establish a learning culture that promotes curiosity and critical examination of online resources and fosters digital literacy and media fluency.
Establish a learning culture: With students, create shared values, social norms and goals around the purpose and approach to learning in the digital world.
Curiosity: Encourage and support students' questioning of information and ideas put in front of them and pursuit of their own interests, ideas and hunches.
Critical examination of online resources: Assessing the credibility and usefulness of information found online and in the media, for example, evaluating accuracy of source data, bias and relevance to learning goals; learning to think about and check for personal biases and everyone's tendency to confirmation bias; and varying search terms to find alternative perspectives.
Digital literacy: Being able to use technologies effectively and being able to effectively discover, analyze, create and communicate information using digital tools and resources.
Media fluency: The ability to meaningfully interpret large amounts of complex information in multiple formats and communicate and share across various media formats.
Mentor students in safe, legal and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property.
Mentor: Coaching or ongoing guidance that includes modeling of your own practice; sharing with and teaching others; and providing ongoing, productive feedback and advice.
Safe practices: Interactions that keep you out of harm's way, for example, knowing the identity of who you are interacting with; how much and what kind of information you release online; and protecting oneself from scams; phishing shemes and poor purchasing practices (e-commerce theft).
Legal practices: Interactions that are mindful of the law, for example, abiding by copyright and fair use, respecting network protections by not hacking them and not using another's identity.
Ethical practices: Interactions that align with one's moral code, for example, preventing or not engaging in cyberbullying, trolling or scamming; avoiding plagiarism; and supporting others' positive digital identity.
Protection of intellectual rights and property: Mindful sharing of creative and intellectual work; knowing and using creative commons as well as innate copyright protections.
Model and promote management of personal data and digital identity and protect student data privacy.
Model and promote: Educators engage in these best practices themselves; bring transparency to them with colleagues, parents, students and other stakeholders; and promote them among students, colleagues and other stakeholders.
Management of personal data: For example, creating effective passwords, authenticating sources before providing personal information, sharing personal data conscientiously, not posting address or phone numbers publicly.
Management of digital identity: How an individual is represented online in the public domain based on activities, connections or tagging through social media posts, photos, public online comments or reviews, and awareness and monitoring of depictions by others.
Protect student data privacy: Actively protecting students' personal or academic information through such precautions as not sharing student work, pictures or identifying information without permission from students and parents or guardians; being safe when working with student data in public or shared spaces; understanding companies' privacy and data management policies; and avoiding or gaining permission to use those without strong management and privacy for student data.
Reflection
The biggest responsibility we have as educators is to teach our students how to be responsible and productive citizens in our society which makes this ISTE-E standard, in my opinion, the most important one of all. Beyond all the dates, facts, theories, and concepts we teach in our schools, the responsibility that we have to respect one another in our community should be the number one priority in all children's education. That is a timeless goal, irrespective of the role or presence of technology. That being said, our world is becoming much smaller by the decade and the ability to communicate and participate in these growing communities is becoming easier by the app. Every year a new platform to express oneself becomes trending. The inherently inquisitive nature of our species makes these vast tools of information very dangerous, and as access expands, we have a role as educators to teach our students how to behave responsibly on these platforms. The internet can be used for anything, and no amount of blocking or limiting will stop people from obtaining information that they want on it. The best way to address this reality is by teaching our students how to be members responsible members of that community. Not sharing personal information, developing strong passwords to protect the information you do provide, utilizing the technology for positive goals, recognizing others may use it for negative purposes, and the need to protect oneself are all lessons that have to be constantly reinforced with learners throughout their journey. All levels of education have age-appropriate concerns that can be addressed and citizenship can be taught in all areas of study. If it is true that we are training the leaders of tomorrow, we must teach them to be responsible citizens first.
Artifact 1
My first artifact is the Google Suite/Remind App usage from when I taught at a summer debate camp. The group that I was working with were novice debaters from around the country aptly named, "The Debabies." This camp was intended for high school debaters, but my group was targeted at prospective 6th-8th grade students, which already forced us to prepare for a big age difference with the rest of the camp and its goals. These were children that have been working with technology since they were babies, which means they have had a lot of exposure to it. That exposure, however, did not translate to responsible use. Through Google Drive, we were able to teach them how to collaborate on assignments and develop academic papers and arguments for any topics. They learned to label their arguments and to reference who came up with each idea, despite all working out of the same google doc. They were rewarded for giving credit to the initial author, whether it be from another source or one of their classmates, of the idea they were talking about which taught them both how to use the information responsibly and to analyze information with their own minds. They had to verify their sources and find multiple publications to justify their arguments in this camp. The topics we discussed were both fun and serious so that they can see the wide application of these skills. We didn't have a guarantee that all of these students would pick up debate as an activity in high school, but the skills they learned in those 3 weeks will benefit them for the remainder of their academic careers and lifetime.
Artifact 2
This is a Digital Citizenship Playlist that I created for EDTC625. This playlist was adopted from Common Sense Education online curriculum on Digital Citizenship and was supplemented using Google Interland and other youtube videos for comprehension. Students complete the 2 week unit by watching videos, taking quizzes, completing worksheets, and playing different games that assist in teaching how to behave responsibly online.