Digital Citizens

Courtesy DLPNG (https://dlpng.com/png/1314728)

What makes someone a good digital citizen?  This was a topic of discussion in grad school this week.  Is it an educators' responsibility to help create a new generation of informed digital citizens?

As an instructional designer, creating a course for learning a topic is founded on  needs assessment and mandated learning objectives, but in the classroom, where there is teacher flexibility in designing assignments for student to demonstrate their knowledge and incorporate it into their knowledge base, what is the responsibility of the teachers?   Students should be taught the basics of netiquette, respecting human rights and personal dignity, and treating others as you want to be treated, to name a few.  But how do teachers escape putting their beliefs and ideologies into their assignments?

There have been numerous articles about students assignments that parents have objected to as being prejudiced or biased to one ideology or political belief, and in some cases, teachers have been fired or reprimanded.  And in public life, there have been many famous people who recently have been brought down by comments or posts they made years ago when the web was the Wild West with no frontier, boundaries or repercussions.

With the #MeToo movement, that has been brought to a close.  I think the bottom line is students should be taught by both teachers and parents the visibility, longevity and potential repercussions of things students post or say on the web, and how that can impact their future work opportunities. Wait and Think is a good tag line for this.   Also, to put students firmly on the path of being solid digital citizens, educators have a responsibility to instruct students to be effective critical thinkers in the classroom, and know how to analyze and determine the quality of information through rational and unbiased analysis.   As such, educators should strive to keep their beliefs, ideologies and politics out of assignments, and give students both the opportunities and tools to develop their own objective thinking.