Let's Talk About Digital Leadership

What is digital citizenship?

Common Sense Media, a leading nonprofit organization that “provides education and advocacy to families to promote safe technology and media for children,” defines digital citizenship as: 

• a way of acting, being, and thinking online

• thinking critically (and mindfully)by not trusting everything you see

• being safe with your information and who you connect with

• acting responsibly in how you communicate and behave

With the rise of social media, our students are reminded of how connected they are with a stream of constant notifications. It is even more important to equip our students with the appropriate and necessary tools to navigate the digital world.

How did I start thinking about digital citizenship?

During my presentation with a group of Master of Teaching candidates from the University of Toronto’s,  Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), I shared my experience with teaching in the hybrid model during the pandemic. One of the students asked:

How do you think pedagogy or teaching approaches will change in the post-pandemic era?

That question got me thinking about how we view technology as teachers. Traditionally, educators viewed technology as means to enhance curriculum content; however, since the pandemic, educators are now seeing technology as means to deliver content and are relying more on technology than before.

 More specifically, with  collecting homework and assessing students, digital citizenship has never been more prevalent and critical. It pushed me to re-evaluate the role of technology and ask the important questions of what digital citizenship really means:

• How can we as educators empower ourselves with an adequate competency level with technology so that delivering content to students can be more engaging and meaningful?

• How can we build communities and relationships when we don’t physically see all of our students?

• How can we leverage these tools so that learning can be done in a more collaborative manner despite the lack of face-to-face interactions?

While digital citizenship is integral to ensuring our students are empowered users and learners online, I wonder if we should also re-think what digital citizenship means to them. How can our students demonstrate good digital leadership as well?

Why digital leadership?

Digital leadership empowers us and our students as we navigate the digital world. As Erin Sheninger states that digital leadership “is not about flashy tools, but a strategic mindset that leverages available resources to improve what we do while anticipating the changes needed to cultivate a school culture focused on engagement and achievement.” (The Future of Learning). Since the mode of teaching and learning has changed so much in the last couple of months, educators and students have started the transition from digital citizens to digital leaders. 

While students nowadays are digital natives, I realized that they are more well-versed in the realm of social media than most teachers. Skills such as formatting a document or using a spreadsheet that were taught in IT class back in my school days are becoming a lost art.It is my responsibility as an educator to provide them with opportunities to gain these older skills, in addition to familiarizing myself with the new tools and technologies that my students see every day. 

Social media was created to capture its users’ attention, so the challenge is how might we as educators adapt similar concepts from social media into teaching and learning? Can we assign students to create IG profiles for get-to-know you activities? Can we create TikTok videos to explain science concepts to a non-science audience? 

Resources to support yourself and your students on becoming digital leaders

Here you’ll find a list of resources that I use for digital citizenship and leadership. If you have any other resources that you use to teach digital citizenship, please share them in the comment section below so I can add it to this growing list!

• Social LEADia by Jennifer Casa-Todd

• Empowered Digital Leaders Course by Adam Hill & Jennifer Casa-Todd

• The Social Dilemma directed by Jeff Orlowski on Netflix

• Digital Citizenship Curriculum from Common Sense Media

• Fake News vs. Real News from The Learning Network by New York Times

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