Cultivating Proactive and Responsible Digital Citizens

Cultivating Proactive and Responsible Digital Citizens

By Veronica Bonilla, Instructional Technology Facilitator

 

We live, work, and learn in this interconnected digital world, and today more than ever, technology impacts us all. Participating in the digital community is part of the lives of students. They share, post, develop, create, and collaborate; therefore, Digital Citizenship instruction has taken center stage at schools across the district, and one of those schools is Telfair Elementary.

Principal Eduardo Carrillo and his staff, who are beginning the second year as a Practitioner School with the Instructional Technology Initiative (ITI), believe Digital Citizenship must be embedded into student learning from day one.

Located in the San Fernando Valley, in Local District Northeast, Telfair has been paving the way toward school-wide implementation of Digital Citizenship since school began. Cultivating proactive and responsible Digital Citizens is at the core of Telfair’s vision for technology integration into classroom instruction.

Telfair launched its annual Positive Behavior Fair the first week of school and, for the first time, Digital Citizenship instruction was embedded in the fair’s activities. Students had the opportunity to learn about the physical and digital world as it pertains to Digital Citizenship.

Students learned how responsibility, safety, respect, and Habits of Mind apply to the digital world, which served as a springboard for the Digital Citizenship lessons that the teachers delivered in the classrooms. With the help of Common Sense Education, Telfair’s teachers were able to deliver a minimum of three hands-on interactive lessons to their students. The lessons included such topics as “Your Rings of Responsibility,” “We the Digital Citizens,” and “Pause and Think Online.”

“Digital Citizenship education was a priority when the leadership team created the Leadership, Technology, and STEAM plans,” said Telfair’s Problem Solving Data Coordinator, Juan Magdaleno.

At that time, the school’s Instructional Leadership Team developed a scope and sequence for teaching Digital Citizenship. Teachers agree that Common Sense Education is a great starting point for Digital Citizenship instruction because the curriculum is easy to follow and all the materials are in one location. Patricia Bautista, third-grade teacher, said, “It was very helpful having lessons at the tip of our fingers!”

Teachers also embedded language acquisition strategies into their Digital Citizen lessons to make them accessible to English learner students. Arlet Neri, a fourth-grade teacher, scaffold Digital Citizenship instruction by incorporating Constructive Conversation strategies around the theme. She said her students felt the lessons were meaningful and purposeful.

“I am especially proud that 99 percent of our teachers are Digital Citizenship Certified Educators and our school is a Digital Citizenship Certified Schools from Common Sense Education’s Recognition Program” said Principal Carrillo. Telfair has 36 teachers.

Telfair teachers are especially proud to be able to display their Educator Certification Badges. First-grade dual language teacher Rosa Rubalcava said she is “committed to explicitly teaching, reinforcing, and integrating the Digital Citizenship concepts throughout the leadership and STEAM curriculums.”       

October will be a busy month for Telfair as it is National Bullying Prevention Month and Digital Citizenship week from October 14 through October 18. Teachers will be reinforcing the Digital Citizenship lessons taught at the beginning of the year with conversations and added learning about cyberbullying.

Because Principal Carrillo believes parent engagement plays an integral role in his community of learners, parents are included in this learning, too. There will be Digital Citizenship workshops for parents to build their understanding and provide them with information about the digital footprint their children can create and how college admissions representatives often look at an applicant’s social media accounts.

Although much of Digital Citizenship education is about safety and responsibility, going forward, Telfair students will also learn about the endless possibilities they can explore in this digital age.

 

 

As we continued our Practitioner School journey on its third iteration focusing on the ISTE Student Standard Innovative Designer School, we honed in on our vision statement with the word “empowerment.” Using Innovative Design, our students began collaborating as grade level teams and used the Engineering Design Cycle to identify a community problem that they could find a solution for. Each grade level chose a local issue that was of concern and then used the Engineering Cycle to create solutions. Students then presented their solutions to their grade level peers, cross-grade level peers, staff, and parents. One of the problems that our 3rd graders took on was to redesign our Reading Garden that had become dilapidated and depleted. Our students brought up the concern of an uninviting place that needed to be fixed in order to make it useful. They researched prices for new seating as well as books and advocated for the improvement of the pavement. Thanks to their voice, our school has added new seating, replanted the flower beds, and has been able to get the surface leveled and repaved. Through the Innovative Design challenge, our students used their voice to advocate and solve an issue that they felt was important. Once again, the Practitioner School program allowed us to support student voice and choice.

As we look ahead to Rosemont’s future as a Practitioner School 4.0: Global Collaborator, we are excited and committed to continue the work around empowerment and student voice. We look forward to collaborating at a local, national, and global level to bring forth solutions to some of our current issues. Being a Practitioner School has allowed the Rosemont community to enhance not only the academic experience of our children but also empowered the community as a whole to close the social equity gap that currently exists in our communities.