About me / Digital Citizenship

 About Me!

My name is Danielle Emmons. I am a 4th grade teacher in Bar Harbor, ME. We currently just switched to in person learning after being remote for the first three weeks of school. When I'm not teaching I like to spend time with my family, hike and be outdoors!







Share your thoughts on the teaching or training of digital citizenship / etiquette / rules in your classroom/work environment. 

I think that teaching students about digital citizenship is important not only in a school environment, but for students' lives in general. Most students, in addition to having technology access at school, have some sort of device at home. If students aren't getting the knowledge of and importance of digital citizenship at home, that makes it even more pressing that they learn about it at school. Kids need to know how to be respectful participants online, as well as how to use their devices and internet in a safe way. 

Is it embedded in the curriculum, its own unit, or something that you do not formally teach/train/manage? Explain why you follow this path.

Normally, it is embedded and it's own unit. On a typical school year, our technology coordinator will come into our class room at the start of the year and talk to our students about digital citizenship. They have activities they complete centered around the topic and a test to take before they can receive their chromebooks. A paper also goes home and the students talk with their parents at home about digital citizenship, both the parent and student sign the paper and they bring that paper back to school. Then throughout our year we continually refer back to these lessons and expectations. 
This year, for several different reasons, this went much differently. We started remotely, causing students to get their chromebooks before we even began our online meetings. Students figured out how to chat with each other, video call and all sorts of other things we would normally not allow them to do. Because of this, we had to work in reverse. When we had our first meeting with students, they began telling us about all of the "cool" features they could do to interact with friends. It can be hard to have them differentiate between us saying "yes, we do want you to communicate and collaborate with each other online" and us asking them to not do it without teacher permission. We are working on it slowly. We are back at school this week and slowly reintroducing their chromebooks and discussing the important parts we failed to have a chance to. 

Should digital citizenship be a part of the school-wide (work environment) curriculum?  Who should teach it or train learners/employees? How?

I definitely think that it should be.  It is important for learners to know about digital citizenship from a young age. The younger they are when they first hear it, the better chances it will become a natural part of their technology experience. I think that teachers should be trained in this, though I have no specific names for who would train us all. Teachers need to know about it and understand it well enough to be able to weave it into their everyday interactions with students and technology. 

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