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A digital citizenship curriculum can help students and educators better understand the teaching and learning opportunities afforded through social media.
In March 2013, the Los Angeles Unified School District launched the district's first Digital Citizenship Week in partnership with Common Sense Education, the leading national nonprofit focused on media and technology. This initiative was kicked off at Western Avenue Elementary School, where district dignitaries, civic leaders, educators, students, and a special celebrity guest from Disney convened to highlight the importance of digital citizenship for today's students.
During the event, students took ownership of their digital learning and engagement, from using tablets to conduct interviews to showcasing digital projects that taught other students how to be safe and responsible online. The kick-off event was a success, and everyone who attended left with a great awareness of and appreciation for digital citizenship. However, one question remained: How could we get the entire district to participate and begin talking about digital citizenship?
The Los Angeles Unified School District recently launched the Common Core Technology Project, which aims to transform education through a 1:1 initiative and embrace the power of technology to enhance teaching and learning. As the second largest district in the nation, our goal is to bridge the digital divide within the next few years, providing approximately 600,000 students with a device that can access the Internet, which poses both challenges and benefits alike.
Lessons learned
All students in LAUSD will have the opportunity to develop their digital literacy skills, which is an increasingly sought-after skill set in today's workforce. However, by giving each student the ability and access to be online, our team was tasked with providing greater clarity around the purpose and instructional use of social media. So, for our second annual Digital Citizenship Week in October 2014, we took lessons learned from organizing our first event in order to provide a more robust and engaging foundation to have critical conversations about digital citizenship.
In this article we will provide tips for starting a conversation about online engagement in your district, and provide guidelines on how to develop greater awareness and support for a digital citizenship curriculum.
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