Advocacy Tools for Digital Citizenship
Barriers
Critical to advocating for the teaching of digital citizenship in your school is an understanding of some of the barriers schools and teachers face:
- turf issues
- insufficient training
- lack of vision
- resource scarcity
- teachers are not yet using the tools and don't have low-risk ways to learn the technology
- filter, firewall, and technical issues
- teachers do not have time built into the school day to learn new instructional and technological skills
- liability concerns
Creating a school setting that encourages teachers to integrate digital citizenship requires leadership and honest conversation. Teachers and administrators must work together to become model digital citizens, showing their colleagues the value of teaching this way without mandating any aspect of digital citizenship not already contained in the Standard Course of Study.
Some possible ways to become an advocate:
Model effective techniques. Bring administrators and school board members into the classroom. Provide documentation of what you're doing. Students who experience success with the tools in the classroom will ask for it when they advance to other classrooms. Encourage other teachers and administrators to do the same.
Become a user. Teachers have to be willing to try some of these tools before they will be able to make connections to the curriculum and the Standard Course of Study.
Keep a blog. Reflective practice is critical to effective digital citizenship. Of course, this also requires you to do some thinking about what kind of environment you are in, and make appropriate choices about what kind of information to include.
Comment in colleages' blogs. When your peers know that you are listening, it encourages them to keep reflecting, and when you bring those conversations into the school building, other teachers may want to participate as well. Commenting also adds value to colleagues' blogs, and brings new readers to yours.
License materials that you create through Creative Commons or GPU. Teaching has traditionally been an isolated and isolating profession. Sharing your materials with colleagues down the hall and across the state only encourages them to share as well, stimulating the flow of information about a profession that's remained secretive.
Create a digital space that encourages parents to participate in the classroom. As students grow older, parents will push for such access to continue in other classrooms.
Promote the use of tools for teachers with their peers. Small professional learning communities with "safe spaces" have more flexibility to learn the tools and fewer consequences when they "fail" with the technology.
Create all professional development around teaching concepts, not technical concepts. Software changes, and training someone to use today's version doesn't always prepare them to use the tools they'll encounter in the future. (This is especially true for students -- by the time they graduate from college, none of the tools they use will look like the ones we have today.) If teachers learn new and effective ways of teaching, they will keep abreast of the technology in order to keep using them.
Use students as advocates -- to administrators, their parents, and school boards.
Formal conference settings within a school system give teachers an opportunity to learn from one another.
Focus on the positive!
Compromises
Classrooms don't have to go straight to Blogger; they can use restricted, school-controlled blogs that provide safe environments for learning.
Make sure that teachers monitor students online and that they direct students to safe sites and legal sources of downloads -- avoid legal and safety issues rather than dealing with them after the fact. Don't use filters and manual blocking of specific sites as a substitute for classroom management.
Resources on the web for advocacy:
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