#WhatsTrending
I am someone who enjoys staying up with the latest educational trends, so I enjoyed exploring some this week through this blog post from the International Society of Technology in Education. As Nicole stated in my course assignment post, “many of these “trends” stand the test of time- we may alter our approach to teaching them or discover a new rationale for why they are important.” I find that statement to be so true during the (ongoing) pandemic. Although some of these “trends” were not necessarily new, teachers had to shift their ways of implementing them. For example, I have prioritized Social Emotional Learning in my classroom for years and it is something I feel pretty knowledgeable about and trained in, but I really had to rethink what that looked and felt like in my classroom community online.
Digital Citizens of the 4th Grade...
I was most interested in the trend of Digital Citizenship because it felt extra topical right now. My own definition of Digital Citizenship is the responsibility to yourself and the community that comes with how humans present themselves and interact with others through technology. I spent most of last year teaching predominantly online, and I am again, as two of my three classes this year are already in a quarantine period after an exposure from the first week of school.
Will I ever get to say goodbye to teaching on Google Meets?
Last year, my team and I had some issues with our 4th graders over some hurtful things some of them had messaged each other online. It was happening both during class time, in breakout room chats, and in social media outside of school as well, and then it was bleeding into each other. We knew it was pressing to have important conversations about Digital Citizenship and their actions, and the impacts of their actions online, but we initially felt lost on where to begin. My awesome grade level partner ended up finding this entire Digital Citizenship Curriculum! We found some incredibly helpful videos that helped frame our conversations in our 4th grade community, and there are tons of other cool resources on the website as well. It truly helped us to teach our students about Digital Citizenship and the importance of their actions online, as well as the fact that they can have such a long lasting impact.
You can watch this video to learn more about this incredibly helpful tool.
...and Digital Citizens of the Future
The importance of digital citizenship will certainly not go away, and will only become increasingly more popular and necessary. I definitely plan to continue using more resources from the curriculum through Common Sense Education.
Here are some other resources you can check out. I personally think there is a massive overlap between Digital Citizenship and Social Emotional Learning, so there is definitely a tie in of that in the resources I’ve selected.
Other Digital Citizenship and SEL related resources:
What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship
15 Picture Books About Digital Citizenship
8 Ways on How to Teach Kids to be Good Digital Citizens
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