Merging the two lives of Digital Citizens

We have to prepare our children and our students to be fully engaged citizens in the digital world, but in order to do this we as teachers cannot shy away from working with technology and teaching it. We also have to understand that simply expecting our students to stay focused on boring lectures instead of engaging their interest by using tools that are of interest to them, is not going to prepare them for real world situations. After all what is our purpose for educational institutes, if not to prepare students for careers and citizenship in the world.

Digital citizenship means character education for the Digital Age. It is to balance the individual empowerment of digital technology with a sense of personal, community, and global responsibility. (Ohler, 2011).  Our children should not be taught that technology has no part in their academic lives,and only plays a role in their social lives.The challenges to this approach starts with the school  itself.  In our school, parents as well as administrators feel all internet access should be blocked and any other form of technology use is not allowed except in the computer lab or if teachers are using it in their presentation of their lessons. Their fear is that students will abuse it in inappropriate ways.  In fact that is exactly what is happening.  From my research it is clear that our problem is our fear, and that fear will not help our students if we don't educate ourselves and empower them with the proper knowledge.

Click on this link follow an action plan for education students to live safe digital lives.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82644766/Merging-Two-Lives-of-Digital-Citizens

In this power point presentation, I walk through the steps it will take to bring a community together to solve this problem.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/82126506