DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

NOEMI PARCON-JONES

There is a need to teach digital citizenship in schools, because like it or not, the internet is not going away. Sadly, this is not a priority in schools, reason why most of the time, when students do something wrong on social media, we cannot fault them – because we don’t teach them.

Kids – our students – should know how to behave online. They use it every chance they get; the first things they get their hands on as soon as they come home is their gadget: smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

When they do this, then that’s the start of distraction from the task at hand. The distraction seems endless. They go to a social networking site, which leads them to another site, and then to another, and so on. Suddenly an hour and half has passed and they have lost track of any school work.

In a comprehensive study conducted recently by Kaiser Family Foundation in the US, it was found that kids age 8 to 18 actually manage to pack in almost 11 hours worth of media content into 7½ hours of using media. This leaves hardly any time for learning. There are researchers, who on the other hand, believe that a child’s learning – engaged and collaborative – is happening on social network sites. Deep and meaningful forms of learning, they say, take place through engagement with affinity groups and social networks online.

There are schools who use Facebook as their real-time information hub where they post their activities, programs and projects. But to those of us who allow our students some leeway using the internet, we have to keep close tabs on them and teach them the proper way to interact in the worldwide web.

For parents, they can use privacy settings when teaching kids about navigating the online world. They can guide their kids about what information is acceptable to be shared with friends and with the public at large and about social media etiquette.

With proper guidance and support, and with parents to set examples of what they think is appropriate, kids can learn their place and their responsibility as part of a worldwide community.

— oOo— The author is Teacher III at Northville 16 Elementary School