Welcome
Welcome to the Digiteen project. We are so happy to have you join us and we hope that your experience will be a positive and fulfilling one. The Digiteen project is an exciting and unique experience that allows young people (and their teachers) to study and explore the ethics of our rapidly expanding digital community. This project is rarely easy for students or teachers, so please be prepared to be flexible, positive, and open. We have found that if we share our struggles, we can usually overcome them quickly. If you have questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact Julie Lindsay or Vicki Davis for assistance at digiteen@googlegroups.com.
Project overview and purpose
The Digiteen Project is a global hands-on project for middle and early high school students which was founded by Julie Lindsay (Qatar Academy, Qatar) and Vicki Davis (Camilla, GA USA) in 2008. This project studies digital citizenship with students researching current topics, writing a collaborative report on a wiki, and performing and documenting offline action educational projects to promote effective digital citizenship at their local schools. Topics of study include digital: access, communications, literacy, security and safety, etiquette, rights and responsibilities, law, health and wellness, and commerce.
The purpose of the project is to educate on and promote effective Digital Citizenship and responsible online choices. The framework of topics for this project is taken from
Digital Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey (published by ISTE). We recommend that you read this book before starting the project so that you have a good understanding of the nine topics that we use to organize this project. Depending on the size of the group, we study these topics in terms of tweens, teens, and adults. We study these topics by collaboratively researching, writing, and posting our work through two digital portals: the
digiteen social network (also called the Ning) and the
digiteen wiki . Next, students prepare an Action Project. Finally, students are evaluated by their home teacher.
Our topics include:
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Access
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Communication
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Literacy
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Security
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Etiquette
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Rights and responsibilities
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Commerce
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Law
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Health and wellness
You can find more information on these topics at the
Digital Citizenship for Schools website.
Project structure
The Digiteen project has three major online locations. As the teacher, you should be present and active in all three of them. You are a guide to your students in helping them understand digital citizenship. Lead and learn by example. These three online locations are:
Digiteen Google Group for teachers only digiteen@googlegroups.com
- This is where teachers get together and discuss the project and it's progress.
Digiteen Ning Social Network-
http://digiteen.ning.com
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This is where teachers and students join to collaborate about ideas, discuss project plans, and get to know each other
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Teachers should make a note to their students about appropriate conduct on the Ning. This is an academic resource and should be treated as such. It helps to differentiate between what we do on the Ning and what we do on Facebook (for example).
- It is worthwhile to take some time to read some of the discussion threads from previous projects so that you are familiar with some of the issues and challenges that have arisen in past projects and how they were resolved.
Digiteen Wiki on wikispaces- e.g.
http://digiteen2008.wikispaces.com
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This is where students collaboratively post their research and writing on their assigned topics
The action project
The action research project is a school based project in which the Digiteen participants take action to educate the rest of their school community about Digital Citizenship. Make sure to start discussing the Action Research Project at the beginning of the Digiteen Project.
In many ways this is the most important component of this project, and
it is definitely the easiest to grade. It is easy to get sidetracked
by the technical requirements of contributing to the Ning and Wiki and
lose sight of goal of raising awareness of Digital Citizenship.
Prerequisites
- Lead teacher must have a Gmail account in order to fully participate in teacher discussions and share documents
- Ideally, the participating class will have already had some introduction to RSS, Wikis, Blogs and Social Networking. Resources to help with this are included at the end of this Teacher Guide.
- Internet access in the classroom for all students. Depending on the school, teachers may need to take their students to a computer lab.
Timeline
The project is designed to take approximately six-eight weeks to complete. It is not necessary to commit your entire class time to this project, but we recommend that you allow for at least 3 hours of contact time per week.
Before the project begins
- Teachers create a Google account and join the Digiteen Google group
- Note: if you are already a Gmail user or if you already have a Google account, you do not need a new account
- Teachers join the Digiteen Ning and familiarize themselves with it
- Teacher joins the Digiteen wiki and familiarize themselves with it (each project has a new wiki)
Week one: Getting acquainted to the project
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Introduction to the project - Teacher explains the purpose of the project and how class will achieve its goals
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Students should create accounts in the Ning and the wiki (note that their account requests will have to be approved)
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Students should explore the Ning and the wiki to familiarize themselves with the sites
- Students should introduce themselves to the Ning community with a blog posting
- Students should join their school groups on the Ning
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Learn about Wikis (see resources below)
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Discuss possible obstacles and strategies related to working with people you don't know and will probably never meet
- Discuss appropriate Netiquette
- Think before you post - this is an academically focused, semi-public project
- Proof read your work
- Be kind
- Be sensitive
- Be flexible - we don't know what circumstances others are facing
- Be forgiving - remember that everyone in this project is learning
- Read and sign the Digiteen Code of Conduct
- Teacher assigns students to groups in a table in a Google document. The groups are organised according to the Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship AND the target audience for the information (tweens, teens or adults)
- Students 'find' team members on the Ning and make first contact via posting comments and adding as friends
Week two and three:Research and Collaboration
- Teachers should review research skills with their students. We recommend that teachers discuss the following with their students:
- Plagiarism - no copy paste, site all sources. Some resources to help with referencing sources are included below.
- Note-taking while researching
- Using effective key terms in Google and other search engines
- Students should conduct research on their assigned topics. They should take detailed notes on their findings and they should cite all their sources. Some resources to help with referencing sources are included below.
- Students should share their research and citations with their team members on the Ning.
- Students should discuss their findings with their team members on the Ning .
Week three and four:Writing and collaboration
- Final topic writing will take place on the wiki
- Teams should discuss how they plan to conduct the writing portion. This can be a brainstorm.
- Students should begin writing about their findings as directed by their teachers and in accordance with their team plan.
- Students should self-edit and peer edit their work before posting.
- Teams should read through all their posted writing and make changes as needed for final submission.
- Note: students should not make changes without informing their team first. It is discouraging for students who make the effort to write for their group only to have it changed. Teachers should guide and supervise changes. Teachers should also inform their students that their work may be edited and why. It is important that collaboration is understood and is practiced positively.
Week five: Action project
- Although we list the Action project in week 5 the reality is that the students need to be working on it throughout the Digiteen project in order to be able to complete it in week 5. Ultimately the way that teachers approach
the Action Research Project will depend on their individual
circumstances. There are however a number of stages and steps that
can help make the project less onerous and more successful. Below we list some suggested stages with their accompanying steps.
- Investigation stage
- Students learn about 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship by adding content to the Wiki and contributing to the Ning.
- Students
study exemplars of past projects and decide on their target audience
and an appropriate type of action project. See resources at the end of
this guide for links to past projects.
- Students decide on the criteria for a successful action research project.
- Design stage
- Students start posting ideas on their wiki pages for what their action project could look like.
- Students outline their action project on their wiki pages and assign roles and responsibilities.
- Planning Stage
- Students set interim deadlines for completing their action project.
- Creation Stage
- The creation of the action project can proceed in parallel with the student's Ning and Wiki contributions but will probably start in earnest in weeks 4 and 5.
- Evaluation Stage
- Once the action project is completed each group uploads their projects to their pages on the Digiteen Wiki along with their reflections.
Week six: Evaluation
- Students should evaluate and reflect on their work according to teacher direction.
- Teachers should evaluate their students (there is an evaluation sheet available in the the Google teacher group documents)
Proposed activities
Pre-teaching activities
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Go over pertinent vocabulary
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Show Growing up online videos (see resources below)
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Learn about wikis with what is a wiki video (see resources below)
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Review research skills (key terms, note-taking, citations)
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Discuss