By Kris Coorde, primary computational thinking teacher
As someone who is old enough to remember dial-up internet and the old Nokia 3310 (the one that came with Snake), I remember the excitement of connecting with people who live on the other side of the world. Using a message board or chat app and having the possibility to download TV shows that weren’t available before in your country. Thinking back about it, I can’t help thinking how innocent (or naive) I was at the time. But it sure feels like the internet was more a place of endless opportunities back then and there was less to worry about.
'Digital natives'
Having grown up with the fast expansion of the digital world, we have become used to it always being there and it being what it is. I sometimes wonder how it must be to grow up in a world where the internet is a given, in the world of our children and students. They are called ‘Digital Natives’, because the internet has always been there for them. It’s as much part of their lives as sliced bread and because of that, it looks like they question it even less.
Flip side to the coin
I feel that in this world, where we are all accustomed to the internet, we have come to a crucial point. We are learning that it no longer just a world of endless possibilities, but that there is also a flip side to the coin. Addiction, negative self-image, over-reliance, … they are just some of the negative aspects of the digital age.
Digital citizenship curriculum
Three years ago, I started teaching Grade 4 students how the internet works because I realised our digital natives rarely questioned the internet. Since last year, I have been working with Grade 5 students on how to deal with some of issues of digital citizenship (the picture above shows an exercise that we did in Grade 5). This has been the start of creating a digital citizenship curriculum and we are working on our next steps.
With the ban of smart phones in schools, social media regulations in countries across the globe and more and more evidence that social media can be harmful, we are not just looking at what we teach and how we deal with these issues, but we will also involve our community. Ubuntu…. It takes a village to raise a child. In a world the internet is both a necessity and a possible problem, we need to work together to raise our children and students as good global and digital citizens. More news will follow soon!