Digital citizenship is a topic that has become increasingly important in recent years as young people and adults alike negotiate what it means to be a participant in the largely public and searchable online world. Hardly a day goes by where we don't hear a story in the news about someone making a misstep in the digital realm that translates into consequences for them and those around them. These issues span a spectrum including cyberbullying, lack of professionalism leading to job loss, and online posts leading to indictment and incarceration.
What we don't hear enough about are the positive aspects of engaging online. Sharing ideas in areas of interest or expertise through blogging, creating a portfolio of our best work to show off to colleges and prospective employers, and coming together to raise awareness of a cause are just a few of the ways people of any age can leave a positive impression of themselves as citizens online.
Digital citizenship has been a huge interest of mine for several years now because I think we can never discuss it enough or continue to grapple with topics related to our online conduct. Which is why I'm excited to have been invited to become part of the Digital Citizenship Chat team! On the second and fourth Wednesday of each month, you can find #Digcit chat on Twitter.
I was going to take time here to tell you all about it, but one of the advantages of being on a team is no one has to do all of the work alone. Below is a Smore digital poster designed by one of our team members to tell you all about the first 2014 chat taking place January 8th at 8 Eastern / 7 Central as well as introduce you to all of the team members. I hope to see you at one or more of the #Digcit chats in 2014!
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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.