Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship is once again the topic of discussion as parents, teachers, administrators, and schools embrace the notion of teaching students about media literacy and safe and responsible internet use (Gleason & Gillern, 2018). Many educators are concluding that most of their students, if not all of them, are using all these technologies at home and in the classroom, but they do not know how to use them securely and appropriately. Younger individuals believe that because things are posted online, they cannot be tracked down or used against them in any way. The right to engage in society online is one definition of the concept of digital citizenship (Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2021). Digital users have the right to access, use, produce, and publish digital material under the internet paradigm. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which was established by Internet activists John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor, and John Gilmore, has become one of the most prominent organizations fighting for the protection of cyber rights. In 1996, in the article entitled A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Barlow highlighted the discrepancy between the fundamental rights enshrined in the US Constitution and the violation of citizens' rights on the Internet. For example, in the 1990s, the postal service was inviolable, but email was not. The EFF's work defending these cases in court laid the foundation for the international recognition of cyber rights (Corporativa, 2022). There are more than 120 countries in the world that have some kind of legislation protecting personal data and access to information on the Internet. In the United States, there is no underlying federal legislation that governs data protection; rather, individual states are responsible for enforcing their own data protection regulations, which can be varied depending on the individual person.

It is the responsibility of educators to instruct the students on how to make appropriate and secure use of the internet sources and gadgets available to them. ISTE Standard Number Three for Educators states that teachers should encourage their pupils to make a good contribution and responsibly participate in the digital world (ISTE Standards for Educators: Educators. ISTE (n.d.). Students gain the information, skills, and resources necessary to be successful learners when they participate in educational activities that promote digital citizenship. In addition to this, it teaches students how to engage in a digital setting with responsibility and self-assurance, which enables them to develop into leaders who will have a meaningful impact on the lives of others.

References

Gleason, B., & von Gillern, S. (2018). Digital Citizenship with Social Media: Participatory Practices of Teaching and Learning in Secondary Education. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 200–212. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26273880

ISTE standards: Educators. ISTE. (n.d.). Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-teachers

Pangrazio, L., & Sefton-Green, J. (2021). Digital Rights, Digital Citizenship and

Digital Literacy: What's the Difference? Journal of New Approaches in

Educational Research, 10(1), 15-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.7821/naer.2021.1.616