Thesis
The teacher, facilitator, coach, and or mentor bears a tremendous responsibility in the discourse of modeling digital citizenship, to be responsibly self-aware professional practitioners in understanding where their personal belief system’s boundaries begin and end in not flouting their organization’s established practices.
Discussion
As I read many of my colleagues posts this week, one echoing thematic activity in driving home the importance of helping students responsibly interact with the online community, is “modeling” what that behavior would look like. It also further drove home to me the degree of responsibilities the teacher-facilitator-coach-mentor has in ensuring they personally have a solid understanding of what is socially acceptable or not, legal, and illegal, age appropriate, etc.
Seems like a “no-brainer” one can argue, but is it? I tend to read a lot of varied online news posts, technical and educational feeds, etc. I bring this up, because in recent times, many of us (or I) have seen an inundated rise in the many expressing their thoughts on any and everything from the culture(s) around us, politics, rights of the child, all colored through the various lenses of beliefs projected onto/deployed in the digital U-verse. Kids are increasing expose to such at an incredibly early age. These are so very impacting and challenging in answering the many questions of ethical practical behaviors when it comes to defining the importance of the “Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship” (Ribble, Digital Citizenship…). It is critical more than ever, beyond the written definitions of the Nine Elements… that the teacher-facilitator-coach-mentor understands in their role of modeling for each child, that they also carefully consider not infringing their personal belief systems beyond what their organization defines or ethically allows. This invariably challenges the teacher-facilitator-coach-mentor to perhaps decide whether they would want to work for such an organization or institution. But to do otherwise, puts that student and the teacher-facilitator-coach-mentor at risk in biasing train of thoughts at an early age.
Now it is worth differentiating here, that within the context of teaching students to use technology to make their and our community better, it indeed will involve respectfully engaging with others with different belief systems versus their own (Rethinking Digital Citizenship, ISTE 2018) . Beyond the strict clearly well-defined universal axioms of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology… societal current and impacting issues must be objectively presented to students, helping them to formulate their understanding, and facilitate development of meaningful debate. Doing so enables their ability to cohesively shape and change public policy, harmoniously contributing to not just the local but international community.
Conclusion
The teacher, facilitator, coach, and or mentor must exercise objective integrity-fidelity in the modeling of teaching great digital citizenship to and for their students
References
Ribble, M. 2015. Digital Citizenship In Schools: Nine Elements All Students Should Know 3rd Edition. ISTE. ISBN: 978-1-56484-364-7
ISTE 2018. Rethinking Digital Citizenship. ISTE. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwKTYHBG5kk&t=19s
