Teaching in the Digital Classroom

Being a connected educator, I often get so wrapped up in thinking about ways that I can incorporate technology into my classes. As a high school teacher, I sometimes think that students are able to figure out a lot on their own. I am definitely guilty for assuming that I can just tell my students to use this tech or that tech, and they will be fine. Most times, this is pretty accurate, and the students are very capable. However, after listening to Mary Beth, I started thinking about how much I am missing in my classroom. At this point, I know that my goal as a teacher moving forward is to spend more time on all the aspects of digital citizenship.

I think that as an ELA teacher, research has become one of the things that has transformed immensely in the classroom, in both positive and negative ways. I am absolutely the type of teacher that encourages solid research, and one thing that I definitely do really well is the authentication of information. We certainly go through our lessons of how to tell if your source is reliable (see house hippos), and I even have a mini-unit analyzing bias in the media. However, I think that I almost kind of stop there and consider my work as digital literacy teacher to be done there.

Here’s the thing – I want to do better at some of the other aspects that Mary Beth talked about. If I expect my students to be using computers and the internet in my classroom, I think I need to be better at educating them about what they are actually doing. After thinking hard about it, I tried to recall a time when I taught my students about echo chambers and the filter bubble. And even though I know that these are important things for students to know about and to be aware of, I couldn’t think of a single lesson I have ever done in my classroom about them. To me, this is something that needs to change.

The internet is an amazing, diverse, and somewhat intimidating thing. Students should be aware of the data that gets collected on them. They should be aware of the way that companies like Google are exploiting them, and how they can be active in avoiding this exploitation. Most students are not going to learn this on their own. If we are going to teach our students how to be responsible global citizens, this absolutely needs to be a part of it.

As I said, I want to do a better job at preparing my students to be aware of how the internet manipulates them and I think that Mary Beth challenging us with her thoughts has spurred that. It starts with taking the time to explain all the aspects of the internet. It doesn’t end there. I could probably do more with understanding echo chambers and the filter bubble, but also copyright, online marketing, social media, representation, and all the issues that go with those.

So thank you, Mary Beth, for getting my brain going and giving me a goal to move towards!