In 2013 I attended an Educafe evening at the National Library with my colleague Mandy Heim. This was my first attendance and I connected with some incredibly innovative educators one of them being Andrew Cowie. Andrew is the development specialist at the National Library. We briefly chatted about the work he has been doing with schools for Digital Citizenship.

Andrew was trialing a pilot programme on DC and I requested that Elim be  put on the pilot programme. Fortunately we were probably the last school Andrew was including in the pilot programme and few months later 5 staff from Elim had the opportunity to trial the programme for 2 days at the National Programme. The programme  included trialing resources created for the 7 DC themes:

1. Defining Digital Citizenship

2. Understanding the Shared Landscape

3. Cybersafety

4. Research and Critical thinking

5. Intellectual Property

6. Personal Currency and Digital Footprint

7. Beyond our Borders

My very first meeting with Andrew as we reflected on how to shape the journey ahead using the 7 DC themes.

The resources created for these 7 themes challenged each of us personally and professionally and we really couldn’t wait to unpack it with our staff.

Andrew was keen to work with our entire staff the following year and before we knew it one brief chat at EduIgnite has led to a robust PL programme on Digital Citizenship for Elim in 2014 with Andrew.

Watch the space for my next blog where I unpack the DC story for 2014.