Recent experiences co-chairing another task force and participating in a huge education technology conference over here indicate to me that a phrase we’re now using in online-safety circles over here – “digital citizenship” (are you seeing it much where you are?) – may be taking root. We called for the teaching of it from early childhood as a national priority in our report to Congress last month. And it was the subject of at least four sessions at the tech ed conference I mentioned above. Small signs in a big country, but progress, I think. My own blog post about the task force report explains why I believe online-safety education comes down to what you’re talking about. There are other things we need to model and teach, but not separate from children’s everyday lives and core curriculum, and nothing more important than how to treat one another online or offline. What makes the phrase “digital citizenship” work – for me, anyway (who knows yet if it’ll have any meaningfulness for youth) – is what artist and writer A.J. Patrick Liszkiewicz wrote, interestingly in a clever article about the social game Farmville: “The central task of citizenship is learning how to be good to one another.” Same goes for the digital kind. I am hoping against hope we can keep it that simple (but also hard, of course) and not turn “digital citizenship” into rocket science (yet another specialty course added to the curriculum). Would love to get thoughts from Ireland on this.

danah, gratz on getting that second lit review done!

Thanks for your draft literature review which I read today. I am a secondary school (High School) teacher here in Ireland and have come across some of the issues raised from the papers you both included.

I am reflecting on the whole are of character education (in a positive open sense) in encouraging students who use social-software to take responsibility for their online lives. I encourage my own school students to blog (as part of their history class), have taught netiquette, issues around safety, in particular tagging but am not convinced I am doing my best fot them.

You write in relation to the role of parents “In general, the authors found that empowerment strategies were met with support from both parents and children…”p36. danah, you wrote on page three …”we should be looking for solutions that have the highest potential of impact. Our collective goal must be to help youth and to empower them to help each other”.

Part of the “solution” resides around empowering students, helping them have agency over their actions – there is a huge contardiction in what we present as (digital) educators encouraging the use of social-software and the lack of education around values that also needs to be “taught”.

I am also not sure that programmes like I-SAFE, Missing and HAHASO (P37/8) are the only approach. They are part of the answer but not the whole story. There is need for more empahsis on personal responsibility to manage reputation and character in the online space.

The issue you are dealing with is much larger than schools as social-technologies evolve ever so quickly and creatively developed by people / companies who give little attention to their consequent use by teenagers – thanks for throwing some more light on the subject.