Digital Citizenship 2015

Holidays have come and gone. It has been a time of refreshment, re-energizing, slowing down the pace and spending oodles of time with family.

The New Year has arrived and so has a new term. New students, re-newed energy and the business of school has been missed. At our school we start the year differently thanks to Mandy Heim who has headed the First Few Days programme. The programme is based on Alan November’s book “Who Owns the Learning’ a concept we were introduced to in San Francisco at the Education in a Changing World Conference in 2013. At Elim this involves running key sessions that gives the students a holistic view of what the school’s expectation is of them.

I have had the privilege of delivering key messages on Digital Citizenship to students. This is timely especially with the bombardment of devices and technology in NZ schools has required practitioners to re-think how we embrace this third relationship in the classroom.

Patient wait for students to arrive

Patient wait for students to arrive

Whilst preparing my presentation I was a little nervous of the content but many thanks to Andrew Cowie’s sessions last year this has turned out to be a real success. A lot can be left to assumption that teenagers being technologically capable have a good understanding of managing devices in their daily lives.

DC1

Interesting discussions came up in regards to cyber-bullying and managing self. Students generally lacked an awareness of how their online footprint could impact their lives but were rather intelligent around areas of cyber security, theft identity and e-commerce.

Digital literacy is a foreign concept to students and much work is required around this to help students better understand that technology is a powerful tool when used appropriately. Educating our students to research and critique online information is important together with an understanding of legal vs illegal downloading of information and breaching copyright. I will be working towards embedding Digital Citizenship at our school this year to increase awareness amongst students and staff through the concept of digital literacy.

How will you be embracing digital citizenship in your programmes?

 

 

2 thoughts on “Digital Citizenship 2015

  1. Wonderful post Chhaya. Our ‘First 3 Days’ programme is a champion innovation of which Im immensely proud and want to use to share with many. You and Mandy Heim lead the way and ably supported by Yvette Britten, Mark Mack, Lyn Tito and others. The video Elim Values is now up on Youtube made by our young male staff woohoo!

  2. Timely messages for us and our students, Chhaya. There is talk now of a digital tattoo to emphasise the irretrievability of information.

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