Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 233: Contextualizing Digital Citizenship

Transcript

Ep 233: Contextualizing Digital Citizenship · New Teacher Talk

Hey everyone.
Welcome back to New Teacher Talk.
It's so good to have you with us.
I'm Beth Wilkins.
And I'm Anna Quinzio-Zafran.
Digital citizenship can feel like a huge abstract topic,
so today we're bringing it down to earth and into the
classroom.
Our guest is here to help us do exactly that,
and we could not be more excited.
Please welcome the wonderful Bianca Tolentino.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Bianca.
We're looking forward to this information.
It's simple enough to look up lesson plans on digital
citizenship,
but I think it's more important to realize that we as
teachers are communicators in our classrooms.
We have access to a lot of higher tier concepts that we
want to disseminate as information for our students.
Therefore,
I think it is important to not just look for lesson plans,
but to look for language that helps us frame these
conversations that will inevitably happen with our
students.
My name is Bianca Tolentino,
and I'm a high school English teacher.
Today I'm talking about how to contextualize tenets of
digital citizenship by discussing age-appropriate scenarios
and topics that you may encounter in your classroom
community.
You'll walk away not with a lesson plan,
but with a framework on how to approach and discuss
scenarios pertaining to digital citizenship in your
classroom.
These are all based off of the ISTE Standard 1.2 for
students, digital citizenship.
When there's an online moment that becomes relevant to your
classroom's culture, and it will happen,
we now see that the online world makes up a lot of the
reality that our students are living in,
it is necessary to have a way to approach and discuss
what's going on with these digital citizenship tenets in
mind.
One of my least favorite parts about being a new teacher is
not having the language to address something that happens
in my classroom immediately.
Not having the fluency of knowing what to say has always
been a struggle.
Sometimes that learning moment is going to come in the form
of giving students language to understand what's going on
in their lives,
because communication is a key part of our job.
I appreciate the way Carolyn Sikora words it in her blog
post for ISTE titled A New Lens on Digital Citizenship.
She says,
"The three components of the standard address the student's
digital self, the student as a digital agent,
and the student's digital interactions." When I think of
these three core components of the standard,
it helps me understand how to approach conversations with
students because, as we all know,
we can't have a conversation about everything all of the
time.
Therefore,
it must become a strategic choice on how we approach these
conversations with students.
So with that being said,
let's walk through some different grade bands and think
through how to apply different kinds of conversations to
scenarios we may find.
For example, with elementary school students,
we can think about group chats.
Now, if you watched Toy Story 5,
you will already know what I'm going to bring up,
but if you haven't yet, Bonnie,
the main character of Toy Story 5,
experiences some bullying in a group chat once she gets
this iPad for children,
one that has group chats that are supposedly surveyed by
parents as they're talking to each other.
Now,
this is a scenario that many of our students will also encounter.
Because they are not 13 yet,
they're not allowed on public forums and will most likely
have these closed channels where they do communicate with
others.
If your school uses something like Canvas or like
discussion boards or maybe you use something like Padlet,
then you know these closed systems are where students will
communicate with each other and communicate with people
that they know.
So the kinds of conversations about the digital self or
being a digital agent or the student's digital interactions
are all going to come from a lens of a closed channel or a
closed system.
The digital self that the student is sharing may be in the
form of group chats,
may be in the form of comments or messages on a classroom
discussion board.
This online persona and digital record is something you can
discuss both in and out of the classroom.
For example, if you're using a Padlet,
just because somebody posts something on the Padlet does
not mean that those words can't affect the way you see them
in real life.
So if somebody says something mean to you on a Padlet post,
well, of course you're going to be affected by it.
They said that to you.
The intention was to communicate a thought or a feeling to
you.
So there is this responsibility as a teacher to remind
students that there is a cause and effect in communication,
that they have a social responsibility both in real life
when the communication channel is literal vibrations
through the air,
or in the form of comments or discussions in group chats.
As a teacher,
you may also feel more prepared if you read studies or
articles such as ones found on the American Academy of
Pediatrics website.
There's a really good blog post that they have on the risks
and tips around group chats as it pertains to students.
If you wanna know a better way to approach these
discussions with your students,
it would be wise to read up with the literature of what's
going on right now.
Now comes middle school.
Once the student hits 13,
they're really open to a whole new section of the internet.
They're allowed on Instagram, on TikTok, on Facebook.
They're allowed to post on YouTube comments.
They're no longer technically under YouTube Kids.
The restrictions get lifted for a lot of the internet.
What this becomes now is really emphasizing the idea of a
digital footprint.
We all know that in adolescence there is the invisible
audience idea that a lot of adolescents feel.
That's going to get magnified on the internet where,
in a way, that is now a real fear.
Your followers are not just the people in your life.
These followers can be anybody on the internet.
Sometimes the conversation to have with students will be
What consequences look like on the internet.
It could be as simple as talking about bans and reports all
the way to knowing how much of your information is not
private.
For example,
one of the conversations you can have with students in
Instagram would be Instagram safety features.
If you're talking about the digital self,
how do you keep your information private?
How do you stay as a responsible citizen to other people
when you're commenting on their work,
when you're sharing their posts?
You can also emphasize how there is no privacy to Instagram
likes unless you manually turn it off yourself.
So more information about yourself is being shared than you
may even realize.
If you have students who use YouTube,
there's an easy way to look up your YouTube comment
history.
That might be something to think about when someone can
literally see every single comment you've ever made on any
video.
There is a permanence to that record,
and unlike people that see you in your everyday life,
these people on the internet only get a snapshot of who you
are, whatever you had once said.
And there is now that difference between who you are and
this digital footprint,
this literal shadow that you're leaving behind in the form
of the data and the interactions that you've made online.
Sometimes when the idea of comment sections and forums are
too nebulous or too big for students,
you might simplify it and make the scope a little bit more
specific.
You can talk about how people's public personas may
influence the way that you interact with them on the
day-to-day.
You probably have heard students discuss what somebody has
posted before or maybe something that somebody else had put
on their stories,
and that can become a discussion on how your online persona
affects the way that people in real life will interact with
you.
Because sometimes the conversation with a student is people
will avoid you if they notice how you're being online is
not how they want to be interacted with in real life.
Sometimes it's people can see the way that you talk,
and people will believe you with whatever you post.
It is a responsibility not just on how you interact with
other people, but how you present yourself.
Who do you show yourself to be at the end of the day?
And in middle school,
when these conversations can become incredibly divisive and
vindictive when there are a lot of emotions that run high,
as we know in middle school it will happen,
this is the time to talk about the direct cause and effect
of what one person can say to another.
And I think in high school,
this is really where the widest range of conversations are
going to come in.
It's going to start going into the realm of really the
legal implications of all of this.
Data and privacy, as we all know,
there's so much going on right now about data leaks and how
to protect yourself against data breaches,
and even the agency of what you can and cannot say on the
internet, the privacy that you have on the internet,
and making yourself content as a form of showing who you
are online because inevitably some or many of your
students' work are going to require them to present
themselves in such a public way.
So from here,
think about what kinds of conversations would matter most
in your classroom community.
Would it be the kinds of conversations where you talk about
global audience, where sometimes when you, for example,
make a good LinkedIn profile,
who is your audience going to be?
Then you can talk about resume skills and how to really
talk about yourself in a flattering way,
how to use words to portray yourself in the ways that you
want to be perceived.
Maybe you can talk about digital responsibility in the form
of reviews.
Trustpilot has a really good how to write a good review
article talking about the core tenets on what makes a good
review that will help other people know whether or not they
want that product.
Because we all like going to Yelp,
we all like using product reviews to inform our choices.
Why not teach students that they are a part of that
process?
Because they are.
Sometimes the conversation is about privacy.
Many of our students are not being careful about what data
they are or are not sharing online.
Maybe you're the kind of teacher that likes bringing in
statistics.
You can s- use the Pew Research data on how much teens are
sharing about themselves nowadays.
This could be a conversation that you can include in your
homeroom classes,
or maybe it can become a discussion about the digital self
versus who you actually are.
There's a lot of different ways that these conversations
could go.
But at the end of the day,
you know that these conversations have to happen.
And as a teacher,
you are responsible for noticing not only what content your
classroom is consuming from you,
but also how they're talking about each other and the world
that they're living in.
Because whether we like it or not,
our classrooms are the real world.
Their relationships with other students are real and have
real consequences.
They are tangible.
We can't run away from that.
So to ground these teachings on digital citizenship with
what you see in your classroom community,
that's going to be where all of that learning is really
going to happen.
So continue to empower yourself by listening to the
students that you are with,
really hearing what their concerns are,
and being choosy about when to bring these things up,
right?
Not every single scenario is going to be a public teaching
moment.
Maybe some of these ideas you're going to have in a
one-on-one conversation with a student.
Remember that we're all here to give our students these
tools and the language to unlock the aha moments for
themselves.
We can see it.
Now let's help the students see it too.
Thank you very much for listening in,
and be sure to follow New Teacher Talk on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also,
find and follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky at New Teacher
Talk.
Stay safe, stay sane, stay hydrated,
and for all my fellow new teachers, best of luck.
I hope you're taking care of yourselves,
and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
If this episode resonated,
take 30 seconds and leave us a review.
Tell us what landed or what you'd like us to cover next.
We read every single one,
and they genuinely shape what we make.
Thanks for being part of this conversation.
Take care, and we'll see you next time.