6)+Digital+Citizenship

__Digital Citizenship __ The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) explains in its National Educational Technology Standards (NETS.S) that digital citizenship requires that “students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.” (ISTE, 2007) Teacher-librarians model and teach digital citizenship through respecting intellectual property and by demonstrating proper ‘netiquette’. This is done by abiding copyright laws, citing sources correctly, and acting and speaking online in a socially responsible manner. Teacher-librarians are able to use the four-stage model from “Passport To Digital Citizenship” (Ribble, 2008-09) which involves awareness, guided practice, modeling and demonstration, and feedback and analysis.

As students move away from merely consuming information off the internet to creating online, teaching digital citizenship becomes more meaningful and relevant to students’ lives. Intellectual property includes original stories, poems, song lyrics, drawings, photographs, videos, and audio recordings. Students are taught by teacher-librarians that intellectual property belongs to someone and that it can only be used if the owners have given permission. Students learn how to identify copyright with intellectual property, including the use of creative commons. “Copyright laws were created before the computer, before online learning, and before social networking. These laws, however, are the ones we must use today.” (Miller, 2008) Plagiarism through the use of copy and paste features is addressed and students taught to take notes and to properly cite sources by teacher-librarians when exploring digital citizenship.

Digital citizenship also entails learning to identify cyber bullying and what students should do when confronted with it. The [|Media Awareness Network] has several lessons that teacher-librarians can access when discussing and teaching this issue. Cyber bullying requires that students transfer their social responsibility skills to their online activities. Further to these lessons, students can be involved in the creation of acceptable use policies that explicitly outlines their rights and responsibilities as digital citizens. 