What is digital citizenship? To put it simply, it is the ability to be an active and respectful member of the digital landscape. A good digital citizen also uses digital technologies in a safe and responsible manner.

Growing up in the "internet era", I have a good understanding of digital citizenship and how to get the most out of digital tools. I completed my bachelors degree in Art Education almost six years ago. Ever since my undergraduate days I was encouraged to foster a professional online presence. It was very commonplace for most students in my upper-level classes to have their own professional websites or social media pages, which were usually made to sell artwork or create a digital portfolio. I have worked throughout the years to create a strong digital identity that best suits my desires as a professional as well as my personality.

I currently have a number of professional social media accounts including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Canva, and more. In the beginning of the fall of 2022 I began rebranding in order to create a more cohesive professional digital presence. As stated in the video Managing Your Digital Identity, uniformity of things such as profile pictures are very important for creating a recognizable digital presence. My goal is to create a digital library for myself and other art educators to use as a resource, as described in Design Principles for the Essential Digital Literacy Skills Qualification (pg. 77 - 78)

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Digital literacy is crucial to understand and learn more about as technology grows and expands. We are growing more and more connected to and reliant on the digital world each day. According to Digital Literacy and Why it Matters, 90% of new hiring jobs require ICT (Information and Communications Technology) skills. Even the way we educate now is almost totally reliant on technology. Understanding how to use technology and our digital identities to create opportunities for ourselves personally and professionally is the way forward.

Having a personal digital identity is almost impossible to avoid these days, but figuring out how to have your personal and professional identity co-exist is something everyone should reflect on. Just like how our personalities at work are different from our personalities at home, the same goes for our digital selves. What I find to be important though is a level of authenticity in our personal and professional selves. Finding that balance may be difficult, but our individual personalities are what may be our "selling point". How do we show our authentic selves while still being professional? This is something I consider often as I work towards finding my voice within my professional digital identity.

A concern that individuals seem to have with digital use is the issue of public vs. private information, as well as where the line is drawn in the digital world. Something that can seem private online may be gathering data in the background. How the site uses that information is also a cause for concern. Is it being used to advertise a product to you? Is the information being logged for future use? Is the information being sold to another company? When we sign up to make an account on a social media site we may assume that we can keep things as private as we want to. Social sites allow you to change your privacy settings, but does that really change how the site uses your information? I truly believe that it is almost impossible to have complete privacy in this day and age. The need for technology forces us to make decisions to trust electronics and digital companies. For example, I don’t know a single person who does not have an email address. There is too much of a need for one in today’s digital world. Email is the method that we await acceptance letters for jobs or school, how we reach out to customers about our business, and so much more.

When we're forced into the digital space we end up losing a bit of our privacy. Outweighing the pros and cons are the next thing we must do when choosing to trust a site. Is the site’s use of my data worthwhile? Does this app need to track my movement, or is it geolocating me for no reason? I don’t often allow apps to access my location information, but for sites such as Google Maps, choosing to share my location is what makes the app function. Unfortunately, “Many users are both busy and insufficiently proficient technically to watch out for themselves” (Camp, 2015) which can lead to one making poorly informed decisions on data sharing. I think it is impossible to live a totally private life, but thinking critically about how sites are using our data and if it is worth the benefit is something we must all assess before trusting a digital tool.

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A huge pro to digital citizenship is community and collaboration, especially in the online education space. In a digital learning environment collaboration makes education more engaging and less passive. Rutherford, S. (2014) said “collaborative activity between students is a key tool in enhancing engagement, a sense of partnership and a sense of ownership of their learning.” Collaborative work in a learning environment encourages students to evaluate not only the thoughts and product of their collaborators, but also their own. We review the work of others because we want to make sure that it conveys the message we wish to get across. When we review our own work in the same setting, we do so in order to make sure that our desired thoughts are being expressed to our collaborators and audience.

Working collaboratively allows us to work with a variety of different perspectives. Having different “voices” in the project allows us to feed off one another and provide richer content to the assignment. When I am working on a group project I feel more encouraged to give that assignment my all because my work not only affects me, but also those I am collaborating with. The driving factor for this feeling is the sense of community. When you are in a learning environment with others there is automatically a sense of comradery, especially if it is a more difficult or higher level course. This causes us to not want to disappoint or let down our group members and encourages us to work harder. Overall, building community and collaborating helps us to reflect on our own work more thoroughly, encourages us to give the assignment our best effort, and provides different perspectives of the assignment topic.

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Building a sense of community in an educational environment can be done in many ways. Asking questions is a great way to start. Opening that line of communication is a great way to show that you care about the thoughts of the audience or group members. For instance, posing a question in a blog post and making commenting available for the audience instantly makes them feel connected to you. This would also help the blogger feel more connected to their audience and possibly influence what the blogger does moving forward. Group folders or digital files are a simple method for sharing information and collaborating with others. For example, I have a group Google Drive folder that I share with the other elementary school art teacher in my district. This allows us to work together on lessons and resources instead of working individually. Dividing up the work in this way is a great help and huge time saver for us both.

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Resources

Rutherford, S. (2014). Collaborative Learning : Theory, Strategies, and Educational Benefits. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

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Katy Meyers Emery (2015). Managing Personal vs. Professional Identity

MSU Graduate School: YouTube

Department for Education and Skills, Welsh Government (2015). Design Principles for the Essential Digital Literacy Skills Qualification

Qualifications and Regulation Division

University of Derby (2014). Digital Literacy and Why it Matters

University of Derby: YouTube

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GPB Education (2021) Digital Citizenship | Things Explained

GPB Education - YouTube