Digital Citizneship - Internet Safety

At first, the concept of Digital Citizenship was confusing to me. The words digital and citizenship on there own are self-explanatory; however, together have a much larger meaning that required me to research to understand. I started at the Technology Toolbox for Educators Digital Citizenship webpage and went from there with links that were provided on the page.

The most helpful description of digital citizenship that I found was by one Mike Ribble (2014), who defined it as simply "the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use". There were various other definitions on the website that helped me to fully understand the concept, however, I thought that this example used by Mike Ribble was straight forward and covered digital citizenship in a concise manner.

I also found looking at various other posters on digital citizenship helped me to learn and understand the concept and the depths that it extends to. A few I found useful for the topic that I feel quite strongly about are listed below:

• Digital Citizenship (MacMeekin, n.d.)
• Cyber rules: stay safe and have fun on the internet (cyber(smart:), n.d.)
• The Learning and Thinking Skills of the 21st Century students (Kharback, 2014)

There are so many aspects of digital citizenship within the safe, responsible and ethical areas. I was personally drawn to representing safe internet use in my digital poster and too often I see young people of whom I do and do not know posting explicit images on the likes of facebook. Not only this, but the number of cases on the news and in newspapers about missing people through social media mishaps.

I believe that as access to social media and the broader internet is so readily available to people of such a young age, such information should be presented in schools with much more urgency and importance. A picture on the internet spreads so fast and I do not believe young people of today have any idea of the true capabilities of the internet.

This you tube video clip is very powerful and sums up the entire idea and point of my digital citizenship poster on internet safety. I think it should be played in conjunction with my poster to have a greater impact.