Technology and Learning in the Library
Course
Cultivate Student Leaders in Digital Citizenship [4:47]
- Learn to develop student leadership opportunities that encourage them to serve as leaders in digital citizenship efforts.
- Learn to leverage the power of storytelling and technology to inspire students to make positive choices in their decisions and actions related to digital citizenship.
- Learn strategies for creating mentorship relationships among students around digital citizenship.
Reward students with leadership opportunities to generate investment in digital citizenship learning. Offer a student leadership club for students devoted to improving the online culture. Establish a speaker series for this group in which you solicit experts to educate these students in areas of cybersecurity, online professionalism, and media literacy. Incentivize their willingness to expand their knowledge with a gamified badge system modeled after the one developed for teachers outlined in the previous lesson.
Allow student leaders the opportunity for field work. Enlist these students to create lesson plans for appropriate technology usage to execute within classes. Engage them to write blog posts on the school or libraries website sharing best practices for cyber hygiene. Assign these students to generate public service announcements about the pitfalls of cyberbullying to broadcast on the school's airwaves. Identify these students as designated leaders within their classes to provide copyright expertise when questions arise. Students can serve as enthusiastic, well connected resources that influence a culture of strong digital citizens.
Most students have experienced or witnessed some form of negative interactions online. Inspire students to change these narratives by inviting them to share personal stories in which technology was used for social good. Capture these stories with audio visual technology. Use the culmination of their captured stories to generate a digital citizenship exposé that can be shared widely among the student body. Sharing personal stories strengthens the community and make students feel seen and heard. Host a digital citizenship campfire in which students sit in a circle and share a digital citizenship related question or a personal story and solicit feedback or advice from fellow students.
Students enjoy taking on roles of authority. Leverage this interest and assign students to be digital citizenship mentors to younger learners. Outline topics on which these student mentors should focus. Employ them to create digital learning passports for their "travel buddies" in which they travel from one station to another, learning about a variety of digital citizenship topics such as protecting one's privacy, being kind online, establishing boundaries with technology usage, or thoughtfully sharing information online. Additionally, establish the mentors as research buddies to teach the littlest learners from an early age about the importance of critically evaluating online information, citing work, and navigating library resources.
Navigating the complexities of establishing strong digital citizens should not rest with the adult community. Once learners understand the meaning behind the term digital citizenship, students are intrigued by the complexities that permeate within the online community. Leverage this interest to raise student leaders that grow into responsible digital citizens.
Engagement is critical to success for reaching students when addressing digital citizenship-related topics. Exploring several different programs created for students and at times by the students, can help instill responsible choices when interacting with all things digital. After reviewing the resources below, complete the Reflect & Practice activity.
After reading Gill's article, "Vulnerability and Responsible Teaching and Learning," and reviewing the three student learning activities in the resources above, figure out which type of learning activity would work best in your school environment. Then, using page 15 of the Course Packet (found in the Resources above), create your own inspiring digital citizenship learning opportunity for your students.
MLA Citation
Brown, Stacy. "Technology and Learning in the Library: Student-Led Digital Citizenship." School Library Connection, July 2022, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2282107?learningModuleId=2281499&topicCenterId=2247902.
Entry ID: 2294728
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Brown, Stacy. "Technology and Learning in the Library. Cultivate Student Leaders in Digital Citizenship [4:47]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, December 2022, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2282107?learningModuleId=2281499&topicCenterId=2247902.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2282107?learningModuleId=2281499&topicCenterId=2247902
Entry ID: 2282107