Citizenship (Digital and otherwise)
In my last post, I questioned the "digital" part of digital citizenship. Let's look at the "citizenship" part now.
(Be aware: The graphic from ISTE at the end summarizes what was really supposed to the point of this blog. What lies between here and there is a record of my journey down a rabbit hole. )
First, a look behind the scenes at my research process:
1. Ask the question: "What does it mean to be a good citizen?"
2. Decide the "good' makes the question too subjective -- who gets to decide that anyway...
3. Realize that an even more fundamental question is to determine what is a citizen.
4. Actually, who gets to define that anyway?
5. Start somewhere...
6. Spend 45 minutes looking at the Indiana Academic Standards for Social Studies for grades K-8 to see where citizenship education is addressed.
7. Find and organize the 24 indicators related to citizenship. Oooh, a definition of citizen: "someone with rights and responsibilities in a particular community, city, state or country" (Indicator 2.4 in Grade 1 and 2.5 in Grade 2 and 3).
8. See that Grade 4 standards introduce civic values "behaviors that contribute to the healthy functioning of a democracy." Realize this answers in part the question of "who decides" and gives some objectivity to the subjective qualifier of "good."
9. Stop myself from looking at the social studies standards for the other 49 states to compare with Indiana -- but I now am curious.
10. Look for a short-cut to a national set of standards for civics. Find that the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) includes a civics component every four years. nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/whatmeasure.aspx
11. Find a database that I can explore: nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/dataset.aspx
12. Start looking for trends. Turns out that parent education levels are related to student achievement on the civic assessment:
(Be aware: The graphic from ISTE at the end summarizes what was really supposed to the point of this blog. What lies between here and there is a record of my journey down a rabbit hole. )
First, a look behind the scenes at my research process:
1. Ask the question: "What does it mean to be a good citizen?"
2. Decide the "good' makes the question too subjective -- who gets to decide that anyway...
3. Realize that an even more fundamental question is to determine what is a citizen.
4. Actually, who gets to define that anyway?
5. Start somewhere...
6. Spend 45 minutes looking at the Indiana Academic Standards for Social Studies for grades K-8 to see where citizenship education is addressed.
7. Find and organize the 24 indicators related to citizenship. Oooh, a definition of citizen: "someone with rights and responsibilities in a particular community, city, state or country" (Indicator 2.4 in Grade 1 and 2.5 in Grade 2 and 3).
8. See that Grade 4 standards introduce civic values "behaviors that contribute to the healthy functioning of a democracy." Realize this answers in part the question of "who decides" and gives some objectivity to the subjective qualifier of "good."
9. Stop myself from looking at the social studies standards for the other 49 states to compare with Indiana -- but I now am curious.
10. Look for a short-cut to a national set of standards for civics. Find that the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) includes a civics component every four years. nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/whatmeasure.aspx
11. Find a database that I can explore: nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/dataset.aspx
12. Start looking for trends. Turns out that parent education levels are related to student achievement on the civic assessment:
13. Realize how far off track I am from the initial intent of this blog which was to relate good citizenship to good digital citizenship, and how much time I have invested in writing this blog post already.
14. Walk away and have a conversation with a colleague about how much difficulty I am having getting this blog post written.
15. Get a well-timed email from that colleague (thank you Kim Hendrick!) with a link to a graphic that she saw on Twitter (see below).
15. Realize for the thousandth time that research almost never leads me to answer a question, but rather just to find a hundred more questions.
14. Walk away and have a conversation with a colleague about how much difficulty I am having getting this blog post written.
15. Get a well-timed email from that colleague (thank you Kim Hendrick!) with a link to a graphic that she saw on Twitter (see below).
15. Realize for the thousandth time that research almost never leads me to answer a question, but rather just to find a hundred more questions.