The evolution of digital safety to digital leadership

Over the past few years, we have witnessed the shift from teaching about digital or online safety to teaching digital citizenship.

When teaching about online safety, we talked about WHAT NOT TO DO to keep ourselves safe online:

Source Mini Matisse

When talking about digital citizenship, we shifted the the conversation to a more positive emphasis on WHAT WE WILL DO to be responsible and appropriate contributors to the online world:

Source Lessons By Sandy

Even more recently, thanks to the work of educators like George Couros, Kristen Mattson and others, the conversation has evolved to talk about fostering and encouraging digital leadership as outlined in this video produced by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).



This doesn't mean that digital safety and digital citizenship are no longer important. Quite the opposite in fact.  The evolution of these concepts have just laid the ground work for this current conversation about "empowering proactive digital learners".

Source: ISTE

In this era of "fake news", cyberbullying and increasing concern and uncertainty about the impact of social networks and technology on the lives of our students, the need to lay a solid foundation of "respect - educate - protect" that Dr. Mike Ribble has advocated for over so many years needs to create digital citizens needs has never been more important. But we need to go one step further. We put that ever evolving understanding of citizenship into action - to make a difference.  

Our students need to understand that their digital presence can play a positive role in making our world a better place and that their ideas and talents can be used to create a positive change in their communities. But what does this look like in practice? How can we foster this idea to build digital leaders in our classrooms?

I would love to hear what you think about this topic. As educators, we need to figure out together what this looks like in our classrooms. How do we ensure our students are learning the skills they need to be able to live, learn and work in an ever changing digital world?

Please contribute your views to this Flipgrid. Having a growing collection of voices discussing this topic will be valuable in moving this discussion forward.