Learning and Leading - December 2012/January 2013

Recognizing Good Citizenship

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Jason Ohler’s quotation below gets at what digital citizenship means to me. At its core, it is about comprehending what a huge responsibility it is to participate online.

Though teaching digital citizenship separately has its merits (see page 6), embedding it within other lessons will make it, as writer Malcolm Gladwell says, sticky.

In Sue Anderson’s article
“Learning without Borders”
(page 12), we see how a
Pennsylvania school in-
cluded digital citizenship in
a cultural exchange project
with a school in China. And
in their “Design Creativity”
article on page 16, Phyllis
Newbill and Liesl Baum
combine tech integration
with critical-thinking skills
to help teachers better pre-
pare their students for a
brave new world.

But perhaps the best ex-
ample in this issue of good
citizenship is Traci House’s
“After the Storm” on page
20. Not because it drills into
the NETS for Students Stan-
dard 5 on digital citizen-
ship (which states: students
will “understand human,
cultural, and societal issues
related to technology and
practice legal and ethical
behavior”), but because the
enormous effort to recover
from a 2011 tornado while
implementing a one-to-one
program exemplifies what
it truly means to be good
citizens. Those folks did the
right thing for their stu-
dents and community even
though it was the hardest
time to do it. The Joplin
(Missouri, USA) School
District did not shirk its
responsibility. In fact, the
staff embraced it, and their
students saw firsthand what
good citizenship is.

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❝The core of our efforts should consist of helping students understand the implications of living side by side with immensely powerful machines of our own creation ...

—Jason Ohler

❞See page 6 to read the full article.

Jason Ohler: jasonohler.com Kate Conley enjoyed Ohler's site. What do you think of his Point/Counterpoint on page 6?

Coalition for Health Funding: publichealth funding.org/index.php/ndd_united1 Paul Wurster learned about nondefense discretionary programs. You can too on page 10.

IdeaStudio: www.ideas.soe.vt.edu Tamara Kidd thinks developing critical-thinking skills to enhance creativity is a good idea. Read about it on page 16.

Joplin Tornado: youtube.com/watch?v=64 covicCcIY Andra Brichacek was blown away by tornado footage from this Missouri school. Read the story of recovery on page 20.