Week 7: Digital Citizenship

This week, we were asked to reflect on how to teach Digital Citizenship. For a lot of students, their entire lives outside of school are online. For example, the CDC states that students in middle school spend almost 9 hours a day on average being entertained by screens. That’s an unbelievably high number to me- that’s over half of their waking hours, assuming students are getting a full night’s sleep.

A lot of my classmates shared on the forums that their young elementary school students had yet to fully participate in social media. I’m very happy for their students, but unfortunately that hasn’t been my experience. I think that over half of my workplace’s third graders have their own cell phones, and for context, most of our families are not well-off. There’s one girl who is regularly in tears because of text conversations with her friends. These incidents aren’t cyberbullying- they’re simply the misunderstandings that have happened between friends throughout history. But since they now take place digitally, they’re permanent, and this student keeps revisiting them.

As a result, I’ve come to believe that Digital Citizenship should be a part of SEL, or Social-Emotional Learning, which itself can fall under the Civics strand of Social Studies. Students cannot be good Digital Citizens unless they know how to manage their emotions and how to communicate with others in the physical world. Students should practice these skills and then be explicitly taught how they transfer to digital spaces. For example, just as students are told not to talk to strangers in person, they should be told to be cautious and guarded online. Just because there is less imminent physical danger does not mean that oversharing does not result in very real danger. Children are also taught to walk away or talk to an adult when fighting with friends, but are not always taught to put the device down when engaged in an angry discussion online.  

Fortunately, there are many fantastic resources available both for educators and parents that discuss and even sometimes gamify digital citizenship. Common Sense Education provides lesson plans for students grades K-12 as well as a wealth of family resources. Google has Interland, a game dedicated to teaching students Digital Literacy skills, as well as several resources that will help reinforce the game’s learning objectives. PBS LearningMedia has nearly 100 videos that can help spark classroom conversations around online interactions. 

That said, one should always close out a lesson with a discussion on just what the resource or online tool was trying to teach. Students may try to rush through walls of text to get to a game, or to simply have fun watching a video without truly taking in the meaning. Discussion is needed to make sure that students truly grasp the message. 

This is our class’s final required discussion post. I think I would like to reflect on the blogging aspect of the class one more time, though. So, thanks for reading, and see you next week!

    Mary

Arcay, J. (2022, January 24). Why is Digital Citizenship Important in Education? TASIS England. https://www.tasisengland.org/about/blog/post/~board/blog/post/digital-citizenship 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, January 29). Screen Time vs. Lean Time Infographic. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/multimedia/infographics/getmoving.html 

Common Sense Education. (n.d.). Everything You Need to Teach Digital Citizenship. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship 

Google. (n.d.) Digital Safety Resources: Tools for the classroom. https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us/educators 

PBS LearningMedia. (n.d.). Technological Literacy. https://nhpbs.pbslearningmedia.org/subjects/engineering--technology/technological-literacy/digital-citizenship/ 

Week 6: Difficult History

This week, we were asked to blog about difficult history. I’m glad our class is taking the time to address this topic in this current era, where political tensions are high.

I know that, as one of the original colonies, New Hampshire too has a past shaped by slavery and injustices. That said, it's easy for us New Englanders to think of racist policy and hate groups mostly as problems that other states have. I see questionable educational policies on the news, and I go to work the next day and silently thank my union reps for existing. But this way of thinking is incorrect and lulls us into a false sense of security. 

One of our tasks this week was to explore Learning For Justice, a website filled with resources about hard history and social justice for educators. This site is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, so, on a whim, I decided to explore their website as well. What I discovered shocked me. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a tool called the Hate Map, which tracks hate groups across America. New Hampshire is a dark crimson. After doing some math, I learned that in 2022, New Hampshire had the fourth-highest rate of hate groups per capita in the country.

With this newfound knowledge in mind, I returned back to Learning for Justice to look for resources that might help. The website features a comprehensive lessons section. Premade lesson plans are available in all four Social Justice domains (Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action) and sortable by a myriad of subjects, both within and beyond the traditional Social Studies umbrella. Educators interested in implementing the Teaching Hard History framework in their classrooms or schools can simply select a grade level and target subject and be presented with several ways to address the key concepts and standards. For example, this lesson, targeted at kids in grades K-5, asks children to explore pictures in books and then discusses what diversity and beauty they observed. It contains a premade graphic organizer, scaffolds for classrooms newer to discussions about race, and potential accommodations for children who cannot read or write independently. Finally, it provides further connected reading for teachers interested in learning more about the topic. This is just one of the many, many lessons available through Learning for Justice.

One of the key concepts of Learning for Justice’s Teaching Hard History framework is that slavery existed and was perpetuated throughout America. It can be hard, however, for students in New Hampshire to connect with this fact. Many history classes, especially in elementary school, may mention this in passing, but more emphasis is placed on the Civil War, where we are solidly Union members. The Black Heritage Trail NH is a local resource that educators can use, or maybe even visit. Markers commemorating important sites and people are present across the state, and one can even go on a self-guided walking tour in Portsmouth. Additionally, their website offers many New Hampshire-centric resources, from a local event hub to profiles on little-known Black historical figures.

This issue is too complex to address in a single blog post. But I hope I’ve given you some food for thought, and some good resources to look at going forward.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

    Mary

Black Heritage Trail NH. (n.d.) Black Heritage Trail NH. https://blackheritagetrailnh.org/ 

Learning for Justice. (2023, April 20). A Quick Reference Guide to Teaching Hard History: A K-12 Framework for Teaching American Slavery. Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/2023-04/LFJ-Quick-Reference-Guide-Teaching-Hard-History-K-12-Framework-WEB-April2023-04202023.pdf 

Learning for Justice. (n.d.). Looking at Race and Racial Identity in Children's’ Books. Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/lessons/looking-at-race-and-racial-identity-in-childrens-books 

Southern Poverty Law Center. (2022). Hate Map.  https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map