Digital Citizenship in Action, Second Edition: Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities

By Kristen Mattson

Help students of all levels develop relationships based on mutual trust and understanding in digital spaces and become active, participatory citizens in these spaces.

During her doctoral program, Kristen Mattson became frustrated by the negative underpinnings that described the internet as a dangerous place and positioned young people as careless victims or malevolent bullies. Digital citizenship curriculum became the focus of her work and led to the development of her book Digital Citizenship in Action, which focuses on one of the most important aspects of citizenship – being in community with others.

As citizens, we have a responsibility to give back to the community and work toward social justice and equity. Digital citizenship curricula should strive to show students possibilities over problems, opportunities over risks and community successes over personal gain. Digital Citizenship in Action shows educators how to do just that.

In this new, expanded edition, Mattson incorporates the latest research from scholars in media and information literacy, educational technology and digital citizenship. She also extends the coverage to provide guidance for elementary and secondary teachers, and includes updated examples that are relevant to today’s most widely used technologies.

The book:

• Includes tips for creating a digital space where students can try something new, grow through mistakes, and learn what it means to be a citizen in different spaces.
• Features “Spotlight Stories” from teachers engaged with participatory digital citizenship that demonstrate how these ideas play out in actual classrooms.
• Includes a featured activity for elementary students and secondary students in each chapter to help teachers integrate the ideas into their work.
• Provides QR codes linking to additional resources in “You Can Do It!” sections throughout the book.

In this book, you’ll find more ways than ever to take digital citizenship beyond a conversation about personal responsibility so you can create opportunities for students to become participatory citizens in online spaces.

Audience: Elementary and secondary educators, curriculum directors and library media specialists

• Language: English
• Publisher: International Society for Technology in Education
• Release date: Apr 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798888370186

Kristen Mattson

Kristen Mattson is a former middle school English teacher and high school library media specialist who has long supported teachers, leaders and learners with innovative curriculum and instruction. She currently serves as managing partner for Edvolve, which aims to help teachers and leaders transform digital citizenship education. She also teaches graduate courses on media literacy and digital citizenship at the University of Illinois. In addition to Digital Citizenship In Action, she is the author of Ethics in a Digital World (ISTE, 2021). She was named an ISTE Emerging Leader in 2018, and developed one of ISTE U’s first courses, Digital Citizenship in Action.

Book preview

Introduction

The original Digital Citizenship in Action was published in 2017 after I had just completed my doctoral dissertation. During that research process, I reviewed more than 60 pieces of student-facing lesson materials from three different digital citizenship curricula that were freely available and widely used by middle school teachers. I found myself frustrated by the teacher-centered, rule-based, lecture-style lessons that asked students to do nothing more than regurgitate surface-level tips like don’t share your passwords and be kind online.

While the intention in many of these lessons was good, I did not see them translating into practical skills during my work as a high school librarian. While kids knew not to share passwords, I watched 17- and 18-year-olds struggle to create passwords that met minimum requirements or retrieve and reset lost passwords. There was such a disconnect between the few lessons they were receiving each year and the actual skills they needed to be successful technology users. I knew I needed to offer some suggestions to my fellow teachers.

In 2017, the only advice I could offer was that we should stop collectively lecturing kids about technology and instead create the types of digital environments that would allow them to practice, fail, learn, and try again as digital citizens. I pleaded my case to put digital citizenship in action in our schools, and my work began to gain some traction.

In the spring of 2020, though, our lives changed. Teachers and students were suddenly forced into digital communities, and it became apparent that our mini-lessons and bits of advice that looked great on classroom posters just weren’t cutting it. I saw teachers and librarians complaining on social media that their kids just didn’t know how to act in a Zoom chat. Parents lamented, How is it my 14-year-old can figure out how to use every TikTok feature known to man but can’t figure out how to turn an assignment in on Google Classroom? Suddenly, the whole world had its eyes opened to the fact that even though kids might be swiping, tapping, and scrolling from the time they are toddlers, there are plenty of skills, habits of work, and areas of content knowledge that need explicit instruction.

Why a Second Edition?

This second edition is not only based on changes in our world, but it is also based on changes in my thinking over the last seven years. In 2021, I left my full-time position in a school district to work as a consultant with schools, non-profit organizations, and corporations who all have a vested interest in digital citizenship. I’ve continued to read about technology, education, and child development, and my own three teenagers have given me plenty of opportunities to reflect on parenting digital citizens. I am a firm believer in life-long learning, and my desire in writing this second edition is to share my most up-to-date understanding of digital citizenship with you in a clear and practical way.

What’s in the New Edition

This new edition gives more history and context to the digital citizenship conversation. Learning the historical roots of our digital citizenship efforts in schools made me stop and really think about why I was teaching the lessons I did. By giving you a brief overview of this history, my hope is that you will also become a more informed, reflective facilitator of student learning.

In this new edition, you will also read about educators’ continued, collective attempts to teach students a set of skills and habits that will stand the test of time, despite the rapid changes in our digital world. To that end, I offer you a structured framework of skills and ask you to consider how those skills can grow from the time our students enter preschool all the way through their high school graduation. Finally, I’ve expanded the number of stories, examples, and lesson ideas to be more inclusive of elementary-level teachers.

In this book, you may be challenged to think about digital citizenship in a way you haven’t before. To me, it’s more complex than a set of lessons about personal responsibility and online behavior. The ideas put forth in these pages will encourage you to create opportunities in the classroom for students to become participatory citizens—citizens who actively engage in multiple levels of community and who can develop relationships, common understandings, trust, and collective commitments with other citizens in those spaces (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). I will also be challenging you to think about where digital citizenship fits naturally within your existing curriculum as opposed to thinking about it as one more thing you must squeeze into your already busy day.

With these goals in mind, each chapter will include the following:

•recommended skills, enduring understandings, and standards to anchor your lesson planning and curriculum development

•suggestions for moving beyond teacher-centered lectures into opportunities for students to practice participatory citizenship

•ideas for integrating digital citizenship into content area instruction

•featured activities that you can take directly into your classroom or modify slightly to fit your community of learners

•Spotlight Stories that feature one or more communities of teachers and learners that are embracing the notion of integrated, participatory digital citizenship and doing amazing things as a result

•a summarizing You Can Do It! section with words of encouragement, final advice, and curated resources to get you started

Throughout the book, you will also see references to the ISTE Standards (International Society for Technology in Education [ISTE], 2016, 2017). (Scan the QR code to view the ISTE Standards in full.) These standards are designed to help teachers purposefully use and thoughtfully integrate technology in the classroom as a vehicle for developing both content knowledge and skill. Where appropriate, I will show you how the Student and Educator Standards can support your goals of a comprehensive digital citizenship curriculum.

iste.org/standards

Who This Book Is For

This book is intended for teachers, school librarians, administrators, and other adults who are responsible for developing and delivering digital citizenship lessons.

This book is especially for those who feel like there must be a better way to teach digital citizenship skills than through mini-lessons outside of an academic context. It’s for that school librarian or guidance counselor who wants something more for their students but isn’t entirely sure what more could look like. This book is for anyone who needs a little inspiration to think about digital citizenship differently.

If you are ready to take your digital citizenship lessons to the next level and engage your students in productive, supportive digital communities, you’ve chosen the right book!

Enjoy,

Kristen

Chapter 1: A Primer on Digital Citizenship

Like many of you, I feel as though I came of age alongside the internet. I died of dysentery in the back of my elementary school classroom and chased Carmen Sandiego around the world on a floppy disk. I’ve listened to music on cassette, CD, MP3, and even this weird toy from the ’80s called a Pocket Rocker!

My parents had a World Book Encyclopedia set in our basement, but by the time I reached high school, my mom had no problem interrupting whatever I was doing to make me get online and ask Jeeves some burning question that she had. Sidenote: Am I the only one who grew up wondering if their mom understood that Jeeves wasn’t a real human being?

My very first experiences in an AOL chat room were in high school. I was an early adopter of social media, swapping out my MySpace profile for a more exclusive spot on TheFacebook, a platform that was reserved for students with college-affiliated email addresses. Of course, my college put out a statement assuring students that they were in no way, shape, or form associated with this random company that had been spamming our inboxes with invitations to join.

In 2001, I took my first distance learning course. It consisted of driving to the community college to pick up a banker’s box containing VHS tapes, books, and study packets and then driving back to campus at the end of the semester to drop it all off again while taking the in-person final exam. Who knew distance education was also synonymous with independent study?

Our world has certainly changed, and education has made some changes along the way too. The term digital citizenship is approaching its 20th birthday. When I took my first teaching job in 2006, the concept was just this small seedling of an idea that very few people were talking about. And in the same way that I came of age alongside our technical revolution, digital citizenship has been coming of age too. In these 20 years, it has grown and morphed in both concept and importance. Let’s look at the brief but powerful history of digital citizenship education.

Digital Citizenship: An Evolution

I tend to think about the history of digital citizenship education in three major phases delineated by marked shifts in how the concept is considered, communicated, and approached within both academic literature and K–12 curriculum and instruction. For the purposes of this text, I’ll refer to those three distinct periods within the evolution as Digital Citizenship 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.

Digital Citizenship 1.0: The Don’ts

In its infancy, digital citizenship was simply a solution to a problem. Mike Ribble, the godfather of digital citizenship, was working as a network manager at a community college while simultaneously pursuing his doctoral degree. As a former teacher and assistant principal, Mike was aware of the value of technology in the classroom and was working hard to bring connectivity and access to his community college campus. He found himself frustrated by the lack of respect students had for the shared computer lab spaces and felt that . . . mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and e-mail have become a source of abuse and misuse in our society (Ribble, 2006).

Ribble used his doctoral work to develop a technology leaders’ guide for the implementation of Digital Citizenship education in schools noting that, one of the reasons for technology misbehavior is attributed to lack of education or training in schools (Ribble, 2006). His research into the most common problems associated with technology resulted in a framework of Nine Elements that he felt should be addressed through formal education: digital access, digital commerce, digital communication and collaboration, digital etiquette, digital fluency, digital health and welfare, digital law, digital rights and responsibilities, and digital security and privacy (Ribble, 2015).

LEGISLATING INTERNET SAFETY

While Mike Ribble coined the term digital citizenship, his work was not the only factor influencing schools to teach about digital topics. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, most schools and public libraries saw the promise of technology and were working to add computers and better internet connections to their campuses. To accomplish this work, most relied on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) E-Rate program. This program helped schools and libraries bring access to their communities through grant funding (Federal Communications Commission, 2023). But of course, these dollars came with stipulations.

To this day, schools and libraries that participate in the E-Rate program must self-certify that they are complying with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, commonly known as CIPA, of 2001. CIPA requires that schools and libraries use protection measures (such as blocks or filters) to keep minors from accessing pictures that are obscene, pornographic, or otherwise harmful to children. Participants in the E-Rate program must adopt and implement internet safety policies that address everything from how they will handle unlawful online activity by minors to how they will restrict the unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of children’s personal information. Finally, recipients must ensure the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms and other forms of direct electronic communications (Federal Communications Commission, 2019).

Schools who participate in E-Rate have two additional requirements that public libraries do not. First, their internet safety policies must include a plan for monitoring the online activities of minors. Second, they must comply with the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act that requires schools to educate minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms, and cyberbullying awareness and response (Federal Trade Commission, 2008).

In the early 2000s, states were passing legislation that gave schools requirements beyond CIPA and the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act. In Illinois, for example, the Internet Safety Education Act of 2007 required that each school adopt an age-appropriate curriculum for internet safety instruction with a component to be taught at least once each school year in grades 3 and above. Requirements of the curriculum were outlined directly in the bill and included the following topics: safe use of chat rooms, recognizing and reporting online solicitations by sexual predators, risks of transmitting personal information on the internet, how to report illegal activities, and how to recognize and report harassment and cyberbullying. The