What it means to be a Digital Citizen
For this week we are leaning off our group projects and instead looking at what it means to be digital citizens and how we can use social media in our favor. We were given two sources to look at, the first was a news post Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens and the second was a video From Knowledge to Knowledge-Able.
The first post was about how we could teach our students how to use the internet effectively. How students can learn how to use social media in a way that could benefit them with information rather than just jibber jabber. The idea is for students to learn that social media can benefit them and how they can use it. That was the main point, because of course students know how to use Facebook, so to speak, but what teachers want to do is have their students use it as a tool. To really start thinking critically about what can be said and how it can be used. To use social media in a way that they are being professional. Also how teachers can and should use these tools in their classrooms. That it is not only the students job to engage but for the teachers to help the students get started and to understand how it can be used.
The second post talked about how we know how to use technology already, but we need to learn how to use technology in a way that will benefit us. The speaker, Michael Wesch, also said that we are all connected. People all over the world can communicate. We weren’t able to do that a few years ago, and now someone from the U.S can talk to someone in Italy easily. He said “technologically” we are able to connect with others through cyber space, but it is actually hard to connect with others. There is a process of getting views and being shared. “Technologically” it is easy to do, but technically it isn’t. Not only that but our students are not engaged, they are a bit ignored. He even did a study with his class about how it feels like to be a student. Then he talked about how we could use technology to help change that.
So both of these posts indicate how important it is for teachers to represent these tools to their students. How technology is changing how we see the world. It is a much smaller place, we are all now connected. Most importantly how technology can be used to benefit ourselves and the world.
