BlogWalker

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Tag Archives: #digcitcommit

February 26, 2020
by blogwalker
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ISTE Digital Citizenship 2020 Award – Go for It!

If you know a teacher or administrator who consistently “models and promotes excellent digital citizenship and who mentors and leads others to be more active digital citizens,” please nominate them or encourage them to apply for the ISTE Digital Citizenship PLN 2020 Award. 

Two years ago, I was awarded this honor. The value of he award goes beyond the lovely engraved plaque and the national recognition given during the annual ISTE Conference (with free registration included). Having Kathleen Watt, who co-directs our district #DigCit program, help me through the application process, greatly added to the honor.  Each question (see below) sparked a review, reflection, and evaluation of our #DigCit commitment and journey. The fact that mine was the award-winning application was simply the icing on the cake.

Whether you are nominating yourself or a colleague, I strongly recommend having a thinking partner (like Kathleen). It’s easy to forget or underestimate the scope, sequence, and impact of your efforts to model,  share, and promote digital citizenship resources and activities.

Just do it! But act fast. Applications are due March 1. Here’s the link to the application. 

Application steps:

  1. Upload a current CV or Resume.
  2. Provide a brief biography of yourself and your work (500 words max).
  3. Describe a project completed in the last year that demonstrates exceptional work in the area of digital citizenship. (500 words max).
  4. Upload an artifact that demonstrates the planning and implementation of the project.
  5. Describe the ways your work has advanced teaching and learning in the area of digital citizenship? (500 words max)

Can’t think of a better way to spend the weekend than highlighting your dedication to promoting #DigCit at your schools – and then celebrating with colleagues at the ISTE Conference, June 28 – July 1 (this year in Anaheim, CA)!

Digital Citizenship in Action

October 1, 2018
by blogwalker
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“Hacking the Learning Standards” with #DigCit Connections

 

“Stop thinking about digital citizenship as a stand-alone technology topic and begin thinking about it as an essential component of a well-rounded humanities curriculum.” Kristen Mattson, Digital Citizenship in Action

A top priority of my day-time job is co-directing my district’s Digital Citizenship program. Last week a teacher at one of our elementary sites reached out with concerns about a recent string of events, ranging from cyberbullying to even an attempted hack into some of their canned curriculum programs. As the computer resource teacher (CRT), he is the single staff member tasked with teaching digital citizenship, the norm for most of our elementary schools.

Yes, that would be teaching “digital citizenship as a stand-alone technology topic.” My co-director, Kathleen Watt, and I are constantly rethinking best practices to help teachers embed digital citizenship into the core curriculum in ways that go beyond stand-alone or one-and-done approaches and that bring students into an on-going conversation and commitment to practice good citizenship in person and online.

We often share (tweet, blog, text, email) #digcit tips from Kristen Mattson, pulling from her wonderful ISTE publication Digital Citizenship in Action – Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities. So I was delighted this week to receive the fall edition of ISTE’s quarterly magazine, Empowered Learner, in which Dr. Mattson’s article “Embed digital citizenship in all subjects” is the featured spotlight article. The article is a reminder and wake-up call to start “hacking learning standards to create opportunities to weave digital citizenship education into content area classes.” This process is exactly what Kathleen and I needed to help our elementary teacher.

Adding to the process, Saturday morning I received an email notification that Nicole Nadiz had posted new content to my Collaboration in Common feed: Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Digital Citizenship. I love this Google Doc! It’s a road map to “hacking learning standards.” Nicole has paired CCSS with Model School Library Standards (MSLS) and Common Sense Education. It took all of 3 minutes to add Common Sense Digital Citizenship connections to the Teacher Notes of our ART of Reading Laterally lesson. One down, three to go (The Forbidden Treasure, On Coming to America, I’m Not Leaving).

Whether it’s your own curriculum or district-adopted curriculum, having Nicole Nadiz’s document really speeds up the process for making the digital citizenship connections for whatever Common Core ELA Standards are listed in a lesson. Please note that Nicole has also invited educators to add their lesson samples via this Google Form. I just submitted The Art of Reading Laterally.

“Helping students explore the fine line between our technology and our humanity can be the work of every educator if we’re willing to be creative in the ways we think about curriculum and the ways we think about digital citizenship.” Kristen Mattson

#digcitcommit

 

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