Monday, May 25, 2009

Digiteen Project speaks with Mike Ribble

This is a cross-post with the DigiParent Ning.

Teachers and students of the current 'Digiteen' project as well as other international participants had the opportunity to speak with Mike Ribble via a virtual classroom linkup in Elluminate recently. Mike is author of 'Digital Citizenship in Schools' and 'Raising a Digital Child.'
The conversation talked about the evolution of 'digital citizenship' as a concept and how it is still not a widely used term. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) now include 'digital citizenship' as one of the six NETS.S (student) standards for 21st Century learning using technology. We also talked about how Mike created the nine elements of digital citizenship, that now form the basis of the Digiteen project.

I found it interesting to hear some students mention they felt alienated from the nine elements and I couldn't help wondering if as adults we are 'over-theorizing' something that comes naturally to the digital learner. However, the educator and parent in me knows that digital fluency does not always equate with knowing how to be a reliable and responsible as well as safe digital citizen.

Listen to a recording of the 60 min. online conversation and tell me what you think about this.

Technorati Tags:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've just been reading 'Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship' and am very impressed with the clear the way it's separated out into such clear categories. Obviously using technology is not such a compartmentalized process and some won't see the need for such explicit themes. I feel that it is an excellent framework for teachers to begin to understand the complexities involved in being a digital citizen and it will be a useful tool for discussion in staffrooms. I can see how this would be a brilliant tool when working with the 'emerging adolescent' and raising key issues for them to discuss and debate.

Julie Lindsay said...

Hi Rachel
Thanks for reading my blog. Your comment is interesting as I do agree that Mike's work on digital citizenship is particularly relevant to the needs of educators and parents, but I am finding a disjuncture between the segmentation and student needs. I believe this is evolutionary and students are becoming more fluent with digital learning and assume the role of a digital citizenship more naturally than we as adults do.

Character Education said...

this concept is amazing, using digital citizenship. Well this concept can improve the behaviors and also build character education.

Anonymous said...

Hi Julie,
I was at the gym on the weekend and the 'nine elements of digital citizenship' popped to mind. I was thinking about ELEMENT 1: Digital Etiquette. Although I completely agree with your point above for elements 2 - 9, I don't think it necessarily applies to the first element of the document. Rules, codes and behaviours that are obvious to some are not necessarily as obvious to others. eg. 'Pants man in the sauna.' That guy hasn't mastered social etiquette let alone digital... Don't you think there will always be a certain proportion of any community that will need things that are implicit to be broken down and taught in an explicit way?

Julie Lindsay said...

Hi again Rachel, I have been thinking about your question, and decide I do agree with you. Yes, we have a responsibility to share our knowledge and experience explicitly and digital etiquette is one area, same as social etiquette, where it is useful if not necessary to 'teach' and share commonly accepted practice in order to best promote successful communication and understanding while working in a digital mode.
Thanks for the question and valuable comment to this post!

Yazure said...

Hmm...Sounds Very interesting, a few years ago i picked up a digiteen pin at VIS (Vienna International School) and never really knew what it represented, till i got the idea of googling it just for the hell of it, and Wow. its quite an intresting project in which schools are working on..