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Thankfully this allows me to talk about integrating good global citizens into my lessons this week. We can talk about what responsibility means to us in a digital and natural world, and how often those things are connected. Most of my students know what it means to treat their classmates with respect, making that connection to posting pictures of others online makes sense to most of them. Making the extension that these actions (both positive and negative) last longer online then they do in the classroom can be a difficult concept, but we have looked up the first website, and that makes it possible to see how long things last online (even if they are no longer as relevant as they once were).
Responsibility to a community is something I feel we need to highlight in these lessons, and I can talk about our responsibility to the natural world as well. Citing sources is like where we get our resources from. We need to be aware of where these things come from and treat their origins with respect. Thinking about how we interact with others is extremely important in order to help our community reach its full potential.
When I think about permaculture principles (the ones we made for the kids, Earth care, People care, Fair Share) I think it is easy to put these ideas into our digital citizenship classes. I guess what I'm really wondering is how Digital citizenship is different from citizenship, any ideas?
In a sense they are both very similar. They of course build upon the same social system that we all are apart of. No matter if its digital or not, we want to be apart of groups, we want to be liked or at least seen. We talk more to people we find similarities with and less with those who we perceive are different. This is of course an obstacle but in the normal and digital world.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is the reach, the anonymity and the spread witch take place in the digital world. Let's say you like football, you are apart of a team and you feel a sense of connection to the people playing. You share the experience, talking and playing football connects you together. You would most likely feel a similar connection if you somehow where dropped in a Brazilian, Canadian or South African team. Of course this does not happen very often and hence or connection stays mostly local.
Let's think what happens if we do the same for an online team game, like DOTA for example. DOTA is a computer game where you play together in a team to achieve victory against a opposing team, much like football. But in this sport you are not restricted to geography, gender, skin colour or age. The globe become's like McLuhan said, into a global village. A small village where we all can be neighbours IF we play the same game.
So how does this affect us. Well it seems to me like the trend is that we get more and more connected to people around the world. I talk, laugh, cry and celebrate with people I have never met, who speaks languages that is unknown to me. We share culture and ideas and we feel connected. But I can't for the life of me name a single neighbours name in my apartment building.
Loved the last paragraph, and your comparisons... Hmm, I wonder how we can get people all on the same "team" or if we even need to.
DeleteThanks Jonas for some great thoughts!