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Digital Community, Digital Citizen
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Digital Community, Digital Citizen



August 2010 | 256 pages | Corwin

"From Plato to 'Leave it to Beaver,' Jason Ohler places our struggles with digital citizenship in the context of humanity's ongoing quest to develop good, productive, responsible citizens."
—Joe Brennan, Instructor, Discovery Education, Wilkes University, Arlington Heights, IL

"Jason Ohler excels at showing how digital connections affect almost every aspect of school life. This is an important read for anyone wanting to understand technology's impact on education."
—Will Richardson, Author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms

An all-inclusive roadmap to citizenship in the 21st Century

Best-selling author, educator, and futurist Jason Ohler challenges all readers to redefine our roles as citizens in today's globally connected infosphere. In exploring the various aspects of digital citizenship, he aligns its pedagogy with the ISTE standards definition. The book uses an "ideal school board" device to address fears, opportunities, and the critical issues of character education. These issues include

  • Cyberbullying, "sexting," and other safety concerns
  • Students' ability to creatively access and critically assess information
  • Respect and ethics regarding copyrighted information
  • Communicating appropriately in an expanded and public realm

Rich with examples, professional development and classroom exercises, resources, and policy perspectives, this book will resonate with educators, parents, and anyone interested in the merging of education with technology and its impact on our children.


 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Author
 
Introduction - Remembering My High School Library
 
Preamble: Our Choice for Our Children: Two Lives or One?
 
Part I. The Call to Digital Citizenship
 
1. Becoming Digital: The Road to Digital Citizenship
A Short History of Educational Technology

 
A Short History of ISTE Standards

 
 
2. Perspectives on Citizenship and Community
Listening to the Ancient Human

 
An Extremely Short History of Citizenship

 
The Evolutuion of Community: From Farmland to Facebook

 
Three Levels of Community in ISTE Standards

 
You: Where Local, Global, and Digital Communities Intersect

 
 
3. Gathering Digitally
Changing Minds: The Altered Self

 
Perspectives on Organizational Communication in Digital Community

 
Edward T. Hall and the Proxemics of Virtual Space

 
Guidlines for Virtual Behavior

 
Guidelines for Creative Online Learning Communities

 
Some Closing Notes on Reorganizing Ourselves

 
 
Part II. Seeing Technology
 
4. What Bothers Us About Technology
Fear Is the Mind Killer

 
Facing Our Fears

 
Ubiquity

 
Invasiveness

 
Vulnerability

 
Amplification

 
Reducation

 
Misreality

 
Ephemeralness

 
Permanence

 
Indisconnectability

 
Overwhelment

 
Resocialization

 
Sovereignty

 
Dehumanization

 
Obsolescence

 
 
5. Seeing Technology: A Primer
Noticing Technology

 
Seeing Exercises

 
Seeing by Getting Philosophical

 
What's Your Technology Mantra?

 
What's Your School's Philosophy?

 
 
6. Becoming a "De-Tech-Tive": Helping Students Understand Technology's Impacts
A Matter of Balance

 
Becoming De-Tech-Tives

 
Technology Connects and Disconnects

 
Essential Questions of the De-Tec-Tive Process

 
The De-Tech-Tive Process

 
A Case Study of Conditional Acceptance: The Case of Digitally Retouching Photos

 
Issues Are Everywhere

 
A Favorite Project: The Energy Self-Study

 
Using Stories

 
McLuhan's Tetrad

 
 
Part III. Character Education in the Digital Age
 
7. Imagining the Ideal School Board
Party-Cipation: Setting the Stage

 
What Concerns Us: The Extreme Edge of Freedom

 
From Issues to Programs

 
Lessons From the Past

 
The Ideal School Board

 
Background Materials for Creating an Agenda

 
The Ideal School Board's First Agenda

 
 
8. Agenda Item 1: Helping Teachers Understand Their Own Ethical Framework
What Is Your Ethical Core?

 
Consider an Infosphere Issue

 
Stirring the Muddy Waters

 
An Ethical Framework: Categorical vs. Consequentialist

 
Discussing Ethical Issues With Students

 
 
9. Agenda Item 2: A Crash Course About Kids
Agenda Item 2, Topic A: What’s Different About Digital Community

 
Agenda Item 2, Topic B: Moral Development in Kids

 
Agenda Item 2, Topic C: Brain Development, Kids, and Moral Thinking

 
The Future of Neuro-Morality Research

 
Helping Students Develop Character

 
 
10. Agenda Item 3: Character Education for the Digital Age
Connecting Digital Citizenship And Character Education

 
The Essence Of Character Education

 
A Short History Of Character Education

 
Character Education Begins With Values

 
Character Education Standards and Evaluation

 
 
11. Agenda Item 4: Literacy in the Digital Age
Shift From Text-Centrism To Media Collage

 
Value Writing, Now More Than Ever

 
Adopt Art as the Next R

 
Blend Traditional And Emerging Literacies: Practice the DAOW

 
Harness Both Report and Story

 
Practice Private and Participatory Social Literacy

 
Develop Literacy Not Just With Digital Tools, but Also About Digital Tools

 
Pursue Fluency Rather Than Just Literacy

 
 
12. Agenda Item 5: What Role for IT?
Retuning Your IT Department

 
Taking the Next Step

 
ISTE Standards for IT Personnel?

 
 
Epilogue: Advice? Of Course!
 
References
 
Index

"The rationale for the importance of developing critical thinkers with a conscience for the rights of others was evident throughout the text. This book could easily become a field guide for administrators, school boards, and technology educators."

Roxie R. Ahlbrecht, Second Grade Math Teacher Leader
Robert Frost Elementary, Sioux Falls Public Schools 49-5, SD

"This timely and highly relevant title examines the impact technology has in the life of educators and their students. The book includes practical examples infused with infectious wit, helps educators appreciate the impact of technology in the world and the classroom."

Jamie Campbell
Library Media Connection magazine, March/April 2011 (Vol. 29, No. 5)
  •  
Key features

1. Organized around and aligned to the common areas of interest about digital citizenship from the various standards groups, including ISTE and the 21st Century Skills.

2. Addresses the four primary areas implicit in digital citizenship:

  • Perspectives about living, learning, working and playing in the digital age; about living, learning, working and playing in the digital age
  • Literacies, including visual, media, and spatial literacy. , including visual, media, and spatial literacies
  • Issues such as safety, ethics, lifelong learning, personal learning networks, such as safety, ethics, lifelong learning, personal learning networks
  • Engagement in shaping the world in ways that reflect what we want as a community, both locally and globally in shaping the world in ways that reflect what we want as a community, both locally and globally. 

3. Provides practical, standards-based ways to incorporate the issues of digital citizenship into the reality of classroom instruction;

4. Draws upon the work of a number of thinkers and writers, from Cuban, McLuhan and Neil Postman, to more current writers, like Tapscott, Friedman, Richardson, Shirky, Lessig and others.

For instructors

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