Digital Citizneship: Encouraging Positivity to Progress

Hello all,

When I consider the new coaching role that I will take on next year, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard is speaking to me in new ways.  Yes, you read that right, no more classroom teaching for me next year, but I'll save that for another post.  On Friday we went through a data-meeting using the 5 Why's Protocol.  It was amazing to me after reading this chapter and noticing now how many people went to the negative observations first.  Rather than focusing our energy on the good, we focused on the bad.  

This observation reminds me that I want students to focus more on the "dos" then the "don'ts" as the Heath brothers and the ISTE standards for digital citizenship recommend. I want students (and teachers) to have a "solution focus" and not a problem focus.  How many of us have been guilty of going down the rabbit hole of negativity?  And how helpful has that been?  This growth mindset helps create problem solvers and positivity, not problem admirers and negativity.  

I really appreciated the sections in the Heath brother's text around directing the rider and being thoughtful about the path and destination goals that we set. The authors state that it's not enough to just say, "eat healthier" but we must more thoughtfully suggest how to get to the end goal and how we will get there and be specific like saying "drink 1 %". This relates so well to teaching the digital citizenship competencies because we need to tell students exactly how to be inclusive, informed, engaged, balanced and alert.  For example, rather than saying, "don't spend too much time on your devices" we can say, "to be balanced, be sure to spend at least an hour of physical activity a day.  It's specific, focusing on the positive, and gives our audience a clear path and end goal.  This is the innovative thinking and thoughtful planning we need to create digital citizens for today's world.

~Ashley

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