4.7a/b

Coaches model digital citizenship and support educators and students in recognizing the responsibilities and opportunities inherent in living in a digital world. Coaches:

A. Inspire and encourage educators and students to use technology for civic engagement and to address challenges to improve their communities.
B. Partner with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology.

The seventh and final ISTE Coach Standard is named Digital Citizen Advocate. This standard is all about coaches modeling digital citizenship for their educators so that they may in turn represent these components for their students while living in the digital world. This standard is so important because it creates the foundation for how students and educators should be not only interacting with the aspects of the digital world, but also the responsibilities that they now have if they are interested in participating in this digital world. The first two indicators in 4.7 revolve around civic engagement, and fostering a culture of respect online. These two go well together because as students and educators begin to see the opportunities they have to improve their communities through use of digital platforms, they will be encountering online interactions that should be respectful and fall within a healthy balance between their technological usage and their lives outside of the digital world. 

1. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about the term “advocate” is standing up for what you believe in. Throughout the DEL program, I was given opportunities to ponder digital citizenship and the power that technology had to bring about positive change. This often led me to researching social justice and how as an educator, I could promote civic engagement and personal responsibility for improvement or problem solving. This led me to my post Teaching Social Justice Through Computational Thinking. I believe that this learning experience gave me the opportunity to really dive into the first two indicators of the Digital Citizen Advocate standard. This project pushes students into the role of advocate for their local communities.
   
   
2. Relating to the improvement of communities through social justice, is the chance for students and educators to recognize the responsibility they have to live within a realm of respectful online interactions. This is shown in my previous post, but also reinforced in another learning opportunity, Community Engagement Through Understanding by Design. In this project, students are given the learning objectives to persuade people online to care about their cause while collaborating globally through positive interactions on Twitter. Both objectives represent the heart of indicator a and b.