Building a Digital Citizenship Team of Students

Teaching digital citizenship and responsibility should be at the forefront of every teacher's mind these days as we bring more and more technology into the classroom.  I strongly believe students will do the right thing and behave in the right way when they are made aware of what the right thing and the right behavior is exactly.  Do do this, our teachers are relying on the material made available for free from Common Sense Media.  And though the efforts are notable, I believe additional steps are necessary to truly move students from being skilled in the understanding of digital citizenship to becoming a fluent digital citizen.  That's why we're beginning to talk about ways we can develop a student task force to empower safe and ethical use of technology in each and every individual.

In an effort to use reverse mentoring, we're hoping to develop a team of students to reach out to each and every advisory class to be the student liaison to the teacher.  If a student is struggling with an issue related to digital citizenship, they can contact their digital citizenship "liaison" to assist them with the matter.  There would be one liaison per ~15 students.

These students would be resonsible for the following:

1. Understand the areas of awareness of enlightened digital citizenship as well as the rays of understanding that permeate each area
   It would be this understanding that would guide responses to crisis or questions other students are currently encountering


2. Monitor a group discussion area to foster communication/questions
   Student liaisons would be responsible for posting response to questions by students in their group and to pose questions causing the group members to think about scenarios they might someday encounter.  

This idea is in it's infancy.  I hope to grow it over the next few months so that our community becomes progressive in building digital citizens.