Earning Your Digital Citizenship

I remember getting into fights on the playground as a kid. I remember my parents sitting me down and explaining how what I did was wrong, and then they told of stories from their youth when they had experienced the same types of situations. These discussions could be used for many challenges that have faced children of many generations. I bet even the kids of colonial America were caught cheating on tests or hiding their report cards.

The challenges that face students of today are similar in concept but radically different in the manner and form in which they manifest themselves.

The video by Dan Topscott "Grown Up Digital - The Net Generation is Changing YOUR World" is very interesting and worth the minute forty eight. He begins by essentially berating the digital generation. He tells them that they are lazy, lack motivation or interest in the world around them, that their only concern is of themselves, they spend too much time in front of their technologies, yadda yadda yadda. Once the viewer is fully irritated by his words, he breaks the news that all he has said is, in reality, unsubstantiated. He also says that this new generation is the smartest generation and possesses the capability for real change.

In Passport to Digital Citizenship, Mike Ribbie takes this and runs with it. He speaks of nine elements of digital citizenship that are aligned with the new NETS student standards. While I do believe them to hold a good deal of merit, the question on my mind is "On whom should this responsibility lie?" Should this duty be placed in the hands of parents, educators or both? Is the digital realm solely the domain of technology educators or should technology as an extension to learning be part of every subject area's curriculum? In this crazy world that we live in, who has the time to invest in this most important part of socio-digital development? Perhaps we should ask "Who has more time (but surely not enough?)

Remember the bully on the playground when you were a kid? What about when you were cyber bullied as a kid? Remember when someone stole your identity? Oh my gosh.. remember the time that you accidently commited to buying something on the Internet without permission? What about the time you installed a virus on your mom's computer by clicking on the link in the browser? Chances are, aside from the first example, you didn't have any of those experiences as a child. How do you prevent your children from making those mistakes when you don't have your own life experiences to draw from? As cyber bullying becomes more and more prominent, bully prevention programs (as antiquated as they usually are) are being forced to come into the 21st century and address this. I had this happen in my classroom about 3 years ago, so I began an "Ethics of Technology" program with my students. If you type the word "dog" into the search field of a search engine such our beloved Google, you will be face to face with nearly 100 million results (as of this writing). How can you distinguish "good" sites from "bad" sites? This has less to do with any kind of digital divide and more to do with being an informed and intuitive web surfer and person.

I have long been opposed to 'filters' or 'blocking software' or whatever soft and fuzzy name makes you feel like you are helping kids (NetNanny comes to mind.. what the heck kind of fuzzy name is that?). It's like teaching someone to drive a car in a parking lot, giving them their license and then giving them directions to get home on the Long Island Expressway. Filters are nothing more than putting bumpers up in a bowling alley, but they don't teach the student how to filter and censor for themselves. When they get home, odds are they won't have those filters. If they do, they won't be up for very long. We need informed Internet participants, as Web 2.0 has now transformed the Internet and its power. Once again... who is to teach it?

Who am I? I am Adam Dugger, and I am probably not what Marc Prensky would call a "Digital Native". To Mr. Prensky I most respectfully say that I disagree. While I did not have an Ipod or the Internet as part of my childhood (I remember the Internet coming about when I was finishing college!), I was a digitally immersed. Dare I say a "digital pioneer?" You see, I had a Commodore 64 in my bedroom. I did my programming in BASIC computer language, and I made my own games. I used my external modem to dial up into CompuServe and surfed text based "sites" if you can call them that. I did my word processing on a dot matrix printer that made so much noise I couldn't use it too late because it would wake my family up. I had cassettes and CDs. Although we couldn't burn CDs we did "dub" cassettes. Same thing? Nobody said that was wrong, but I suppose we had to buy the first copy...

I am able to navigate technology with relative ease. I would much rather 'play' with something and figure it out than be told how to do so. I like trying to make things better by "tinkering" and these are all extensions and evolutions of what I did as a child whether with Legos, bicycles, cars or computers. Having said that, rights and wrongs must be taught, learned and to some degree experienced.

I think that the ethics of technology should begin in the home. Parents must accept technology and the collaborative nature of the Internet as "here to stay" and treat it that way. Lack of information breeds fear and distrust. Just look at how "Internet security" is viewed on news shows. Tell someone that you are on a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook and immediately the glares come out. My own mother tells me that Facebook is bad news, and nothing I can do to explain to her the positive of social networking will help sway her.

Parents alone cannot handle the burden alone. We infuse technology into our lessons and explorations all of the time. We ask our students to grab hold of this resource and use it as a tool for their learning and expression. How can we as educators ignore the "right and wrong" part of that?

Morality has always been subjective, and it comes from your experiences as a child. Right and wrong are clearly defined with a wonderful little area in the middle we lovingly call "gray". If we are to share this digital environment, not as digital immigrants or digital natives, but as digital citizens, we must coexist with respect and keep the cyber landscape lush and green. The "not so good areas" must be allowed to stay, but students should be educated citizens that can quanitatively and qualititively make informed decision based on what they have learned.

The question is "from who?" I wish I had an answer... but this brings up even more questions for me.