Digital Citizenship Letter & Contract

Digital Citizenship Letter & Contract

When creating both the digital citizenship contract and letter, I had the privilege of being able to collaborate with Bailey, Kristen, and Emily, all of whom are passionate future educators that aspire to create the best learning environments for their respective students. Unlike most other majors, when education majors get to work with fellow students, they are learning essential skills as teachers, since the vast majority of schools incorporate core planning time with multiple teachers.

Through the process of creating a letter, we all had wanted to ensure that the letter used positive vocabulary, as opposed to negative vocabulary (for example, instead of saying, “I will not…” we instead inserted the language of, “I will…”). We feared that negative language in regards to technology would make the administration appear to lack trust or faith in the students of their respective school, by using language that emphasizes what one will do, it places both responsibility in the hands of the students, as well as keeping a standard that they must uphold. Another component to our digital literacy contract pertained to the idea of the unique opportunity our particular students will have with a 1:1 initiative. We felt that it was necessary to highlight that not all students/families have access to technology, and our community has varying degrees of access to electronic devices.

In regards to the digital citizenship letter we hypothetically sent home, we agreed that the paragon of an appropriate letter home would need to include opportunities for all stakeholders to learn how to use technology accordingly. Each of us had a perspective on the need to have accommodations for different citizens within our community at large. For example, Bailey highlighted that we should mention the opportunities for ELL students with integrating technology, while Emily pointed out that we should mention the disparities in access to technology our community faces. In addition, Kristen articulated that the language within our letter should not sound dictatorial towards parents, instead we should incorporate language that includes parents as a part of digital age.

We connected our letter home to P.C. 10.1 by providing essential technological seminars for all community members to take part in during and after school hours. Considering that many our alumni were not born in the digital age, they may face difficulties with learning how to use devices without the natural integration that many of our youth have experienced today. Through providing these free seminars, we felt that our civic obligation to the community is quality in education, and we aimed to achieve this quality through the implementation of experiential learning with experts in the field of technology. From an employment point of view, digital literacy makes students and adult employees have a great advantage to enter or re-enter the workforce. More importantly, these seminars would shatter both the proverbial and physical communication barriers that people incur either due to distance, or learning disabilities.

Technology is the Greatest Opportunity our Education System Has

Truthfully, I do not have any genuine fears for incorporating any technology, other than seeking the “proper” balance of teaching with, and without technology. If my goal is based around the methodology of differentiated instruction and personalized learning, I see this as less of a fear, and more as an opportunity to let students learn in ways that make the most sense to them. I also am excited about what students will be able to produce through creating digital products, or using technology as a tools to express themselves in an academic way. Technology is the greatest opportunity our education system has ever experienced, and unfortunately we treat it as a burden, in regards to how we communicate with our students. Often times, digital learning is taught in a top-down process without any reciprocity. It is essential that we do teach our students how to be safe with technology, but we must avoid the pitfall of abstinence-only style learning, because instilling fear into students when learning about technology will push them away, and potentially make more harmful decisions with technology, due to a lack of proper understanding. A simple fix (albeit I am oversimplifying this a bit) would be to work with students to learn about what they want to know with technology, as that is a necessary step in order to better learn where students are, and where they need to be with the principle of digital learning. From an administrative/policymaking standpoint, I would want to also collaborate with a sample of students through all of the grades in the school to create a contract, which allows students to have a say in what rules are otherwise being imposed upon them. This also creates a culture in which administration and students trust each other more, and are more open to communicating with each other on a more level playing field.