Digital Literacy Quiz
Digital Wellbeing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-VP58ncwJU
Presentation of Empathy Skills
What is Digital Literacy and Why It Matters
Digital Citizenship
Overview
This course is about digital citizenship and its importance in using the internet. This quick and easy-to-follow module includes the four key aspects of digital citizenship and videos that contain further information on those key aspects. This resource can be utilized as a learning tool for both teachers and middle school-aged/high school-aged learners who are directly interacting with or new to how the internet works. This resource can also be utilized as a source to learn and practice digital citizenship together in the classroom.
What Does Digital Citizenship Mean?
In the 21st century, there are many types of citizenship, nationalities, and origins for the people around us. When we introduce ourselves to others, we may say: "Hello, my name is ____ and I am from ____." This introduction in the physical sense has informed the way that we interact with the world and how those interactions shape us. As we go into becoming a more digital age, it is even more important to think about how we are interacting with each other on the internet. If you are taking this module, you may be wondering to yourself, what in the world is digital citizenship and why is it so important?
Before you continue with this module, I'd like for you to watch the video below to learn about Digital Citizenship.
After watching the video above, you probably have a lot of questions about the aspects of Digital Citizenship. In this module, we will cover the 4 key concepts of digital citizenship, which are:
- Empathy
- Digital Literacy
- Digital Divide
- Digital Wellness
Check out an additional video below with even more information.
Empathy
When we think about "Empathy" in the in-person sense, our mind immediately flickers to thoughts of interpreting and understanding how someone is feeling and why they are feeling that way. Online, empathy works in a similar manner, and having empathy online is crucial to being a good digital citizen. Empathy online means trying to understand another person's perspective and understanding them beyond the digital screen, because everyone online is a person with feelings that we must respect. Having empathy online means that we:
- Remain responsive to others in a positive and open manner
- Be understanding of a person's living situation, especially on video conferences
- Refrain from making rude comments
- Recognize that certain verbal expressions may be missed online, as everything is text-based
- Always use respectful language
- Be compassionate
Below is a video resource showing empathy in action.
Digital Literacy
In simple terms, digital literacy is being able to understand the purpose of technology, and how to use that technology effectively.
Picture this: you're a teacher during the pandemic and you have students who have never taken an online lesson. Digital literacy is the ability to understand how to navigate that environment, such as being able to open a web browser, view your emails, send text messages, write blogs, and communicate with your students or create resources for them using Powerpoint or Google Docs. Beyond that, digital literacy is understanding how to reach your students and the effectiveness of those online resources.
While digital literacy is important in terms of understanding the basics of the internet, digital literacy is also extremely important in terms of understanding the dangers of the internet. Some of the dangers of the internet include:
- Phishing
- Viruses
- Imitators (people who lie about their identity online)
Below is a video resource which further breaks down digital literacy.
Digital Divide
The Digital Divide refers to the equity gap that exists after the digital and technological age. This divide exists between students who are able to access technology freely and students who are cut off from accessing that technology due to socioeconomic or other factors. These factors make come into fruition when students do not have computers at home or access to the internet in the same manner as other students. As an educator, it is important to learn about the digital divide because it shows one of the problems of the digital age and increases our ability to be valuable digital citizens.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, we have seen this problem of a digital divide manifest itself in many ways. There are students who did not have access to computers or technology who were completely cut off from receiving an education. For those students, the school environment in person was their main interaction with learning. Understanding the digital divide helps teachers understand how to better serve students who do not have the same access and helps students gain similar access to their peers.
The digital divide is based upon two key factors, which are:
- Race: The number of African American students and Hispanic students who are impacted by the digital divide. African American students are impacted at home and at school, as schools that serve the majority of African American students are underfunded and therefore, have fewer computers. At home, fewer African American and Hispanic students have access to computers for school.
- Income: Income is a huge factor of the digital divide, as many parents do not have the money to buy students computers and tablets to complete their schoolwork. Beyond that, a parent may be provided a laptop from school, but not have enough money for internet service.
Below is a video resource that discusses the digital divide.
Digital Wellness
Digital wellness is essentially the practice of checking on your wellbeing in the digital environment and how that digital environment is impacting you in your personal and professional life. Digital wellness is the most important aspect of digital citizenship because it directly impacts a person outside of the classroom. For students, digital wellness includes how they interact with social media comments from friends or internalize new social media trends. There are certain trends, diets, and body types on the internet that may impact digital wellness. Digital wellness may also be impacted by mean or derogatory internet comments meant to make a person feel bad about themselves.
In order to practice digital wellness, a person must:
- Limit the amount of time they spend on social media, logging off when they feel overwhelmed.
- Be alert of digital habits, including how much time is spent online.
- Make rules for yourself, including times when you will or won't be on social media.
- Practice and model kindness in an online setting.
- Do not say anything that you would not say in person.
- Create a social media routine.
- Turn off social media or online activities when engaged with people in real life.
Digital wellness is incredibly important to overall wellness and being a good digital citizen.
Below is a video resource that discusses digital wellness.
Conclusion
In our module today, we covered how to be a digital citizen. Being a digital citizen is a long process and requires a lot of time and effort. However, if we all do our parts to become good digital citizens, the internet as a whole will improve for everyone.
I hope that you learned some new information about digital literacy.
Below is an optional quiz that you can take to test your knowledge.