Digital citizenship in school : Who, how, where and when?

Abstract

Digital citizenship has been regarded as highly important focus area of education for young people (see e.g. http://www.eun.org/focus-areas) who have constant online access through digital tools including tablets and smartphones. The concept digital citizenship has been evolving and been defined and interpreted in various ways. It can encompass a wide range of topics including character education, online reputation, rights and responsibilities, online communications and netiqutte, health and wellbeing, online safety and security and media literacy (see e.g. Ribble, 2011). For schools that want to have digital citizenship education as part of their curriculum there are many challenges and questions. •Who should give such lessons? •How should they be delivered? •Where should they be placed in the curriculum – in which subjects? •When – in which age groups/years, to what extent in terms of number of lessons per week or year? In this presentation we will provide an overview of the experiences of an Icelandic school district with nine schools which decided to place an emphasis on digital citizenship when all students in grades 5 to 10 were provided with tablet computers (iPad) for 1:1 learning in 2015. The results are a part of an evaluation study (Sólveig Jakobsdóttir and Skúlína Kjartansdóttir, 2023) on the effects of the tablet integration on teaching and learning in the schools. Survey among teachers (n=425, 86% participation rate) revealed that about 29% thought that their students‘ knowledge and competences in relation to digital citizenship had shown litte or no increase and another 29% were not sure. On the other hand, only 15% thought they had increased highly and 26% considerably. Interviews with teachers and support staff revealed that teachers were not confident to teach about digital citizenship and would rather ask members of the district support team to come in to introduce and discuss issues with students. Members of the support team thought this was not ideal because they did not know the students involved and underlying problems. Learning materials are needed in this area as well as better preparation for teachers in their basic training and in access to continuing education courses about digital citizenship. Also the national curriculum in ICT needs to be renewed. Swimming has long been a big part of the Icelandic culture and currently the national curriculum requires weekly swimming lessons for students at the primary and lower secondary level. It may be time to require weekly lessons in digital citizenship in a similar fashion to help students learn to „swim“ and avoid „drowning“ in our developing digital landscape. Digital citizenship is an important part of our current life skills. References Jakobsdóttir, S., & Kjartansdóttir, S. H. (2023). Spjaldtölvur í grunnskólum Kópavogs: matsrannsókn [Tablet computers in Kópavogur schools - evaluation study]. https://doi.org/10.33112/SGKM2040 Ribble, M. (2011). Digital citizenship in schools (2. ed.). ISTE.