Digital Citizenship Instruction is a Key Component of Equity

When you hear mention of the digital divide, you probably think of the people who don't have access to computers or broadband, either at home or at school. You probably think of the scramble that took place in an attempt to give children access to their education when the pandemic hit and our world went virtual.  You probably think of the discrepancy between those schools that are loaded with all the latest technology and those with very limited resources.  Though these differences in resources are a large part of the digital divide, it is only the first part of the inequity. You could provide equal technology to all schools and make sure that everyone has reliable broadband and you still would not solve the problem.  We also need to ensure that we are providing equal education around the use of technology, by providing all students with a solid digital citizenship curriculum. Giving students the technology and not providing them with instruction around how to use it safely and responsibly is a recipe for disaster. 

Children who are living in poverty most often attend schools with low test scores. These schools use their resources to target literacy and math skills and are less likely to devote time and energy to digital citizenship. They are also less likely to have staff who are trained and experienced with teaching digital citizenship.  They are more likely to hire math and literacy interventionists. 

When I became a librarian, I acknowledged that some part of my job should be teaching digital citizenship. For many years, I would pick out the digital citizenship lessons that I thought were part of the "librarian" responsibility. It seemed like teaching online research fell under my role so I did my best to teach my students how to find information, how to assess the accuracy of the information, and how to cite their sources. 

As time went on, I started to see the other aspects of digital citizenship as not only my job but potentially the job of all teachers. I realized how important it was for our students to know about safety and security online, understanding their digital footprint, healthy media choices and cyberbullying. I knew that all of these were remarkably important to the well-being of our children and I knew that classroom teachers were unlikely to have time to give them the attention that they required, if they found time to mention them at all.  The classroom teachers in our school were usually focused on improving math and literacy scores. Our school has also have not had a technology integrationist for the majority of the years that I have been at my school and generally has only one person in our school who works with technology at all. That person has been tasked with keeping devices functioning and has no training in education. My school has historically put all of our resources into math and literacy in an attempt to improve our test scores.

I don't consider myself any sort of expert in teaching Digital Citizenship. I rely heavily on Common Sense Media's free resources, and have adapted some resources from Canada's Civix News Literacy site. I wish my students had someone with a little more training and expertise in this important subject but I do my best to be the teacher that my students need because I think it is critically important in today's world to teach our students to be safe and responsible online. It truly is an equity issue. 

I loved this quote from How digital literacy can help close the digital divide:

Poor access to digital educational resources in racialized, religious minority and Indigenous communities leaves individuals, particularly youth, vulnerable to racism, hate and other online harms. Digital literacy resources can prepare, engage and empower youth to push back against hate online by incorporating strategies for how to respond to, and disengage in, situations of online prejudice.

My school is not very diverse. We have a large Abenaki population but very few students of color or minority religions. I can only hope that students in more diverse schools would be receiving the digital citizenship education that they need in order to be prepared to respond to online prejudice. However, I fear that their schools are also prioritizing math and literacy scores and neglecting all else.