Promoting Digital Citizenship in the classroom

Krutka, D. G., & Carpenter, J. P. (2017). DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP in the Curriculum: Educators can support strong visions of citizenship by teaching with and about social media. Educational Leadership, 75(3), 50-55.

Every semester teachers are busy teaching the new curriculum to help build student skills, creating a rigorous class structure and focus on student SEL. One area in which educators have lagged behind is in the area of Digital Citizenship. While many schools block social media or discourage the use of it in their classrooms the truth is that we as educators are failing our students by forbidding the use of it.

Daniel Krutka and Jeffrey Carpenter argue that "if a central aim of schools is to help students grow as 21st-century citizens, do we want to implement school practices that resemble the social media policies of authoritarian states like China and Turkey(Krutka)?" It's true that students spend a good amount of time on social media and that fact that many teachers (including myself) do not allow students to use social media in the classroom. By avoiding social media and not teaching students how to properly engage in the online community we are missing an opportunity for students to have their voices heard and find online communities that would empower them to find communities of learners like them. Krutka goes on to state that in the 2016 election many students (and citizens) did not have the tools to disseminate "fake news" stories from the legitimate ones.

Our jobs as educators should not be to suppress students from joining the online community but to teach students the proper ways in which they should engage in the online community. The first way in which Krutka and Carpenter argue that students need to be taught is to be able to be personally responsible citizens. In this stage, students are taught to look for credible sources. For example, many students that go to MartinLutherKing.org may take research from this site, but it is secretly run by white supremacists groups. With all of the news outlets on the internet, students need to be able to have the skill to find credible sources.

Teaching students to become digital citizenships gives them the tools to then teach and educate others online. In this way, Krutka and Carpenter argue that teachers should create a class Twitter page to teach students how to respond to others online and how to carefully craft responses to other online(ibid). This then allows students to be "justice-orientated citizens" in which they can delve into topics and fight for justice in areas that affect them-such as cyberbullying. Teachers and students can then create hashtags as a class to raise awareness for critical issues.