Carrie Rogers-Whitehead - Digital Citizenship: Teaching Strategies and Practice from the Field

Trying to teach a large group of elementary students is tough. Teaching them after lunch is harder. I was leading a discussion on positive things to do online and wasnt getting the engagement I wanted. I was working hard to steer the conversation in a positive way, but as often happens when talking about things online, it was going in the opposite direction.

Then I had an ideaI wouldnt have the students talk about the positive things, I would have them draw it. And I would turn that drawing into a game of Pictionary. Students would draw what makes them happy online and the other students would have to guess. There were no prizes, no scoreboard, but the students started sitting up and getting excited. Soon voices were piping up guessing the drawing and by the end we had a long list of positive things to do online.

Story from the author

Toddlers to seniors love games. We are born loving games. An infant who cannot walk or talk will enjoy a game of peekaboo. Throughout human history, games have been found across all cultures. Clark Aldrich, author and game designer said, Games are a more natural way to learn than traditional classrooms. Not only have humans been playing games since the beginning of our species, but intelligent animals as well. Why is it, then, that games are sometimes seen as trivial or not educational? And why do we not have more games in a classroom?

Games in classrooms are nothing new, but technology has added more opportunities and variety for games. However, technology is not required to gamify a lesson. Gamification refers to adding elements of gaming in a non-game context. Some of those elements may be dividing groups into teams, awarding a prize, showcasing winners on a board, adding levels to learning or increasingly hard challenges, or creating characters and narratives.

Tech companies are well versed about gamification in getting engagement. For example, Snapchat has Snapstreaks. Its a challenge to see how long you can keep snapping an individual. If youve snapped enough within twenty-four hours, you get a prize, an emoji fire next to your name. And if you havent snapped enough, a timer appears to let you know that your streak is ended. This gamification has paid off, with teens spending more hours trying to up their streaks.

Tech companies have also used gamification in more positive ways, like Googles Interland. This interactive adventure game, aimed at elementary school ages, teaches some digital citizenship principles to children such as being careful what you share online and being kind and respectful to others. Players steer a 3-D robot figure through challenges and games.

Like other subjects, gamification is a model that works with digital citizenship. Digital citizenship is about self-efficacy. Students need to choose who they want to be online. Gamification encourages autonomy by having the lesson not be a traditional top-down lesson, but one where the student takes an active role. Educators are more like facilitators in a gamified lesson rather than authority figures.

Gamification has its pros and cons. But even simple tweaks can change up a traditional lecture into an experience.

Table 4.1. Pros and Cons of Gamification

The second grader stood in front of the classroom grinning. She was a living robot, being programmed with directions from her classmates. Go left! shouted one boy. Wait,said another student, she cant go left, shes not looking that way. The instructor nodded to the students comment. Now what does she have to do before she goes left? Upon receiving the correct program, the girl turned and took a step left. She was one step closer to completing the robot maze and demonstrating basic computational thinking.

Story from the author

Computational thinking could be taught in a variety of wayslecture, video, a worksheetbut those means might not encourage a very important way humans learn: through doing. Experiential learning is doing something, then reflecting upon that action. The students in the living robot activity actively told the robot what to do, and then reflected on their methods. Instead of knowledge being transmitted from the top down, like from a teacher to a student, it bubbled up from the bottom. In experiential learning, the teacher is a guide or facilitator. They coax the students to the right answer instead of delivering it to them.

A vital part of experiential learning is reflection. Learners should contemplate what they did, why it happened one way, why it didnt happen another way, and to extrapolate that knowledge to other topics. In the living robot activity, a teacher can facilitate learning and self-reflection and introduce new concepts by such statements as these:

• How should the robot move first? Why?
• Does anyone see any mistakes? Where the commands dont match up with what the robot is supposed to do? Those mistakes are called bugs.
• Does anyone else notice something about our algorithm? There is a pattern of steps right here, where the robot goes up, turns left, and then turns right again. That pattern is called a loop.
• Was there a better way for the robot to go through that maze? Lets try it again and see if we can do it in less steps.
• Do you think a computer could improve on the steps for our living robot? Computers can learn by doing too. We call that machine learning.

The questions force the student to contemplate further on the activity and they introduce new concepts in a way thats more understandable. An instructor can provide the definition of an algorithm, but the student is more likely to remember that definition when its reinforced through doing and a real-life example.

The living robot activity taught one element of digital citizenship: digital literacy. Students were introduced to how computers think and new vocabulary. While this lesson was aimed at elementary students, it can be scaled for secondary ages. For example, older students might have the technical know-how to code a set of commands on a computer to complete a certain task. Free online software like Scratch could be used. A teacher could divide the class into teams, create a specific goal, and let the students experiment with different commands. This also uses the gamification model by having teams compete on who can get to the goal the fastest.

See for a sample lesson plan of the living robot activity.