Digital Citizenship

19 Oct Digital Citizenship

At the Educause conference last week, I attended several excellent sessions on teaching and learning. Some of the topics included social media in the classroom, a debate of whether or not technology makes us less intelligent, second life at a small university, and other similar themes– all topics I may write about in the near future. Although these sessions had different topics, I noticed that the presenters kept using the term digital citizenship when discussing students in the digital environment.

While digital citizenship may seem like a fairly new term, educators have been helping students develop it for many years, specifically in the areas of online literacy, conduct, and appropriate use of online resources. Some newer areas of digital citizenship, that many of us are struggling to figure out, are social media in education and the ever-changing copyright laws.

What are your thoughts on digital citizenship? Do you think it should fall upon the institution or each individual faculty member to prepare students to be responsible digital citizens? I plan to explore this issue in greater detail and provide resources that will help us understand how online technology is changing the educator’s role in higher education. I’ll leave you with a video recorded at Educause about digital citizenship.

Edtech: Focus on Higher Education – What does “Digital Citizenship” mean in higher education?

Arturo