Digital citizenship

Shelby Trejos & Kaitlyn Gillen

Jeffery Radlofft

EDU 315

12/01/2021

The topic we chose for our Ted Ed lesson is digital citizenship. A Digital citizen is known

as a person who uses information and technology to engage in society, politics, and government.

Digital citizenship is an umbrella term that encompasses concepts such as being healthy online,

how to engage with others civilly and respectfully, online safety, as well as effective

communication and media literacy. Digital citizenship is related to K-12 education in various

ways. Teachers must annually educate students in grades K–12 about appropriate online

behavior, including responsible use of social networking sites and cyberbullying prevention. Our

purpose of our Ted-Ed lesson today is to teach students what a digital citizen is and what it takes

for them to be one by being safe, responsible and respectful on the internet.

Digital citizenship is a vital topic to teach to students because this topic is an important

need to support students in using the internet in ways that are safe, responsible, and appropriate.

This is also an important topic because it teaches students to collaborate in positive ways that

helps them to learn and use technology in a supportive and inclusive school community. They

learn how to stay safe on the internet by practicing what information is safe to share vs. what

information is private and not safe to share. There are many benefits to teaching students how

they can be digital citizens. Students learn how to be confident and capable when using
technology to communicate. In the up and coming world our main form of communication is

through technology so it is crucial students have an idea of how to utilize it when it comes to

communicating. Not only do students learn how to navigate through cyberspace in the way they

communicate they also learn how to respect the privacy and freedom of speech in the digital

world as well as learning what is appropriate and actively promotes values vs what is considered

trolling and cyberbullying. Due to Covid turning all learning digital, this is the most important

time to teach children how to be a digital citizen. With everything being at the touch of a finger

tip it is crucial students know how to respect their devices and use it for what is appropriate and

when. Not only devices but themselves and others. Right now it is more valuable than ever to

make sure children understand actions can have consequences, and everything on the internet

never truly goes away.

The video that we decided to use for our presentation is called “Super Digital Citizen”.

We plan to engage our students with this lesson by asking the class a few questions about “what

a digital citizen is,what is safe to share on the internet, and how students can use their devices

effectively to communicate with one another.” These questions are reflected directly from the

video and are a recap of what students can share about what they have learned. Some other

questions that we plan to focus on with our class are “how can we keep ourselves safe on the

internet, how to use our devices properly?, and what can we do as students, to stand up to

bullying and cyberbullying?” These are open discussion questions to get the children to

brainstorm answers and use text to world connections to tie together what they know about

internet safety as well as what they just learned. Lastly, our discussion questions will focus on

the students prior and background knowledge of digital citizenship. The students will take the

main idea from our discussion and elaborate in these questions. Our two discussion questions
will be “when is it important to be a digital citizen and why? and, why do you think it's more

important to be a digital citizen now compared to in the past? (pre-Covid-19). These questions

are more specific in context and require students to think on a deeper level however, with

guidance from a teacher and other peers these questions will deliver meaning and students will

continue to ponder over them anytime they are by their computer. Overall, the conclusions that

we have about digital citizenship in general is that being a digital citizen is crucial in a time like

this considering we have the world at our fingertips. It is important to know when and how to use

our devices so we can stay safe, protected and productive.

 References

Crwhitehead. (2020, October 19). The definition of digital citizenship - digital respons. Ability.

Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://respons-ability.net/definition-digital-citizenship/.

Cyber Safety / Digital citizenship. / Digital Citizenship. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://www.pghschools.org/digitalcitizenship.

Digital Citizenship . Digital citizenship. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://code.org/curriculum/course3/20/Teacher.

Digital Citizenship . Digital citizenship. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://infohub.nyced.org/in-our-schools/programs/digital-citizenship.

Digital citizenship. web. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/school-environment/digital-citizenship.

Early Digital Citizenship: Creating engaged and informed Lifetime Citizens • Tec Center. TEC

Center. (2018, November 19). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://teccenter.erikson.edu/tec/early-digital-citizenship/.

Written by John Roese, G. C. T. O. (n.d.). Covid-19 exposed the digital divide. here's how we can

close it. World Economic Forum. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/covid-digital-divide-learning-education/.