Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

In today's technology-driven world, educators as well as parents are immersed in activities that required the use of technology. Our students (children) effortlessly learn to use any and all technology that is available to them; however, they seldom think about the issues that are part of using technology such as safety, legal, and ethical responsibilities. Therefore, educators need to examine and apply the National Educational Technology Standard 4 for Teachers--Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility. As most school districts these days require all staff and students to sign some type of technology responsibility agreement at the beginning of each school year, students will undoubtedly explore technology without a second thought to the agreement they signed. This could result in safety, legal, and ethical issues. Bottom line...teachers must facilitate and model guidelines and procedures for technology use in their classrooms and even outside of the classroom. One way to complete this is when students begin to use new technologies, establish appropriate guidelines, procedures, and agreements. For example as part of a sixth grade literature group collaboration, students will enrich and expand their ability to collaborate by using a wiki space through wikispaces.com. Each student and parent will be required to read and sign a technology responsibility agreement. (The agreement will be available for parents and students to download from my school web page under "Language Arts -- Downloads".) In addition, the teacher will model appropriate use of the collaborative space.