When COVID-19 emerged in late Winter 2020, humanity was put on hold. Organizations and businesses were forced to close, schools could no longer offer in-person classes and we were forced to conduct our daily lives from home, nearly overnight. In the blink of an eye, remote work was no longer a convenient perk, it was essential. And while many organizations around the world were not prepared for this new way to work, Legacy Traditional Schools took a holistic approach to online learning, starting with its littlest learners.
Today, many Legacy schools are back in-person, but online learning and digital-citizenship continue to permeate education talks, both at the school and state levels. Conversations tend to describe digital citizenship as a means of establishing appropriate user behavior. These conversations are worthwhile, too. Early this year, Legacy and schools across the globe saw an early string of video meeting mishaps, otherwise known as “Zoombombing.” These unfortunate instances, only days into the school year, focused our attention on technical security and an increased effort to control and protect digital communications. Now, security challenges continue to present themselves in online learning environments. Schools did not have the luxury to refine online learning options, let alone ensure a hiccup-free online learning experience.
The rush to ensure online learning delivery and security means schools can now shift their focus to
The key might be in where we put our emphasis. In her book Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap, sociologist Carrie James draws a distinction between moral and ethical thinking: While moral thinking considers those close to us, ethical thinking demands “the capacity to look beyond one’s own interests, feelings, and empathy for close relations in order to make decisions that are in the interests of a larger group, public, or society.”
To meet the needs of 2020, we need to move beyond a moralizing digital-citizenship education and toward an ecologically-minded one, one that not only asks students to deeply consider the many and varied implications of their own actions but also how the digital tools and platforms we use create an environment that encourages or discourages truly ethical and equitable participation. In other words, digital citizens must learn to not only be concerned with their own individual actions but also in how these actions fit together and interact within the larger ecosystem. Which means they also need to understand how that ecosystem works.
Of course, that is a more complicated conversation to have. But without this understanding of digital citizenship education, we are not preparing young people to navigate our increasingly digitally-mediated world.
The first step is simple: Let’s stop calling conversations about etiquette and appropriate behavior “digital citizenship,” because it’s not.
True digital citizenship must be developmentally scaffolded and dynamic because the environment online is ever-changing. It will also necessitate an interdisciplinary approach, as we help students participate in an information-abundant, data-rich, historically situated, creative, and emotionally challenging digital ecosystem.
It isn’t good enough to be simply well-intentioned within systems built on injustice and inequity. The same is true of our participation online. We can develop a digital-citizenship education that helps us face the limitations of good intentions and asks students to co-create a more ethical and just digital world.
Michelle Ciccone is a curriculum developer, researcher, and digital literacy, media literacy, and digital-citizenship educator. She is currently the technology-integration specialist at a Massachusetts high school and an affiliated faculty member at the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island.
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