Chapter 4: Exploring the ISTE Standards for Students - Digital Citizenship - Part 4 Date/Time: 4th March 2024 - 2:22 pm

 Chapter 4: Exploring the ISTE Standards for Students - Digital Citizenship - Part 4

Date/Time: 4th March 2024 - 2:22 pm

This is my fourth blog post exploring the ISTE standards for students and this post will focus on the ISTE Standard “Digital Citizenship”. It was great to explore in depth the standard and had definitely led to enhanced learning about how, when and where to incorporate this standard in the curriculum in schools. The blog post will share my key learning from the  module and share ideas on implementation in schools in Pakistan. 

Standard 1.2 Digital Citizen says 

Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities  of living,learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical.

The standard basically focuses on how to empower students to keep themselves safe in an online digital world , how to protect their digital identity online, how to act responsibly and respectfully in a digital world, and to be cautious and aware of the consequences of acting in a digital world. 

This standard has four indicators and I will try to explain each indicator with examples of how we can embed these in the curriculum in schools. 

Example ISTE Standard 1.2a emphasizes on managing a digital identity online, it teaches students to be aware of permanence of their actions online , which means whatever work they do online, remains safe and at times cannot be erased. The data students share online can be seen by other people, they can comment on your work personal or professional, and similarly you could also comment on others work. This can either make people happy or sad or act in not appropriate ways. Students could be asked  to explore themselves online or write their names in Google search. They could then analyze the data saved about them. I did this activity for myself and was amazed to see how much data about me was saved online and how many people had accessed my work. For example my ICT blogs are public, and I was awe inspired that around 70K people have viewed the blogs online. The blog is a public blog and anyone around the world can view , like or comment on the blog. Students should be aware of the setting for private and public posts online , and only allow people to access data when it’s safe. Another interesting activity that I liked was about writing rules to be cautious and careful and students can be asked to write rules in a social collaborative forum. The rest of the students can comment on each other's rules. This idea was shared by a teacher in the online course. The standard focuses on empowering students by teaching, modeling and mentoring on how to surf safely in a digital world. It triggers them to think about what to post online, how to comment online, what to comment online, how to keep their reputation safe online. 

Example ISTE Standard 1.2b focuses on safe, legal and ethical behavior online. It explains using examples what safe, ethical and legal behavior online means. Students practice and learn to be safe online. I liked the example shared in the online course where a teacher works with students on a project about relocating residents to a safe place due to the building of a reservoir. Students are asked to peer review the work and give positive and constructive feedback. In this way they develop positive relations and help build a positive community online. 

Another idea could be to ask students to share their work online documentaries, podcasts, blogs etc and let the audience comment on their work. They can then respond to queries , questions about their work. The teacher could moderate the interactions online. Students can present work in a YouTube live event and respond to queries, questions from the audience. The students could ask questions from an expert during an online interview, provided the parents approve of questions online. Usually parents encourage such interactions. 

Students need to balance the time spent online and the time spent in physical activities, they should be aware of concerns related to ergonomics, posture, seating, eyesight etc. Students need to be safe online, knowing what to share, when to share and with who to share. They should be taught or modeled about issues related to scamming, phishing, hacking etc. Students should be aware of legal issues, how to give a proper reference or cite properly or give due credit, not to hack someone's work. They should know about copyright and fair use concerns. Students should be aware of ethical issues including cyber bullying, plagiarism, trolling, scamming etc.

Example ISTE Standards 1.2c this standard focuses on creating awareness among students about digital rights and responsibilities online, these can be related to students or others. We all know there is an endless and infinite amount of information available online, but not all is freely available or accessible. Also the information may not be true at times, it can be fake or real. Students must be aware of the criteria to evaluate information online. There are copyright laws that protect the identity and work of the owners of the original work. This work could be an original image, document, art work, manuscript, research, experiment, music, design etc. Any creative and original work. 

Students could use the insert citations option in Google doc to insert proper citations and give credit to the author whose work has been cited.Students could search for images using Google tools, and select the images using the usage rights option in Google image search, there are 3 options available including all images, creative common licenses and commercial/other licenses. Students could practice such activities. Students could use various filters to further narrow search, these could be image, video or news. They could also search using the search operator to narrow the search and find qualitative and authentic information online. The operators could help search the exact information, exact site, or exclude words from search. They could be taught about the google scholar and how to find authentic articles or papers online. Students can be given activities where they practice acknowledging the work of others and learn how to cite the work of others in appropriate ways. 

Example ISTE Standard 1.2d this standard focuses on keeping data safe in a digital world using strong passwords, data encryption techniques and being aware of the fact that while working online there are apps and sites that download and save data. Many times people are not aware of the fact that various companies online save your data. Students need to be guided about what sort of data is saved online. A good exercise would be to ask students to skim through privacy policies of companies online for example Zoom, Duolingo and Google. Students could then share key points in the form of a blog or podcast. Students could also be asked to explore their own devices and discuss how much data is saved ? Which companies are saving data, how to enable or disable this ? Usually when we sign up for a new account for a service online, they ask you to create a strong password, this has to be 8 characters long with a blend of special characters, numbers and alphabets. 

Students should create strong passwords specifically in case of shared devices. Usually google accounts can be accessed on multiple devices making it easy for users to access information anywhere anytime, but then one needs to be cautious and aware too. I found an interesting lesson idea online about teaching students about tracking data online. Students learn about tracking and how cookies and viruses are used to track their data online, this could be the number of likes, the different searches, comments, track location, IP address, contact list, facial recognition etc. Companies can also hack data using algorithms, encryption techniques , web stats and GPS systems on shared devices.

Some companies might use data against you while others may use it to provide you with personalized or tailored content.For example when you're watching movies on Netflix it recommends you video based on your watch list. Similarly YouTube also suggests content based on what you watched. Similarly I shop online using a website and they give suggestions based on my purchases. Students could also have a debate about whether it's good for companies to save data about their users or it is a bad practice followed by teacher explanations with examples. I got the idea while exploring a lesson on common sense media. Another interesting idea was about introducing the concept of clickbait to students which uses the curiosity gap, which means students click on an advertisement to look for the missing information. This might land them in trouble , accounts being hacked, data being hacked, infected by a virus etc. You can give students some images online and ask them to fill in the given template , which asks two things: how does the image link to something you know & what knowledge will you gain after clicking on the image. At times these can be good and at times harm your system. I used an advertising campaign to promote my book online on Amazon to earn more book sales, at times it works and at times it does not. 

I really liked the idea of digcitcommit about redefining digital citizenship. It focuses on empowering learners. It does not talk about dos and don'ts. The new definition says that a digital citizen is a person who is inclusive (accepts different opinions, empaths), informed (aware of the safety of data online), engaged (using technology as a force to do good), balanced (keep a balance between online and real life activities) and alert (creating safe place online for self and others). 

Enjoy reading till my next blog post soon innshaaAlah exploring the rest of the ISTE Standards for educators. 

Regards and prayers

Sheeba Ajmal