Digital Citizen Advocate 

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

Artifact One: Get connected exhibit 

Indicator

4.7.a, Inspire and encourage educators and students to use technology for civic engagement and to address challenges to improve their communities

Description

This exhibit was created to help connect museum visitors to community organizations focusing on climate change. The wide touch screen format was chosen to be visually engaging and approachable while being easy to interact with. I helped with the design refresh of this exhibit. Aiding in choosing community resources, and informational layout.

Implementation

The exhibit is part of the “Powering Change” space within the museum. The larger exhibit space contains several different games, interactives, and informational screens and signs about climate change and the use of green energy initiatives. The goal of the installation was to allow guests to make a connection to what they saw in the exhibit hall and their local community. The interactive is organized by type of action, and then provides local organizations to be connected with that are working on legislation and other efforts here in California’s capital. The exhibit gives the guests the option to enter their email address and have a selected list of the organizations sent to them personally. 

Impact

Since the refresh we have seen a significant increase in use of the exhibit. Part of the refresh was the addition of signage making it clear that the museum does not retain the email address used so that was likely part of the increase. In general I felt like the exhibit attracted more people after the refresh of resources and engaged people with a greater sense of local engagement through ease of electronic access.

Artifact Two: Presentation on media literacy 

Indicator

4.7.c: Support educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media and identify underlying assumptions.

Description

This is a slide from a presentation I did for my highschool students every year as we began a research project. The presentation is about choosing quality sources, but I always liked this slide in particular. It shows some basic information about the fictitious Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and cites the library of congress as a source.

Implementation

The Pacific Tree Octopus is a longtime favorite of mine. It’s a great example of how easy it is to make a website that seems legitimate at first glance. It shows the old perspective that ‘.net’ and ‘.org’ addresses are somehow more valid is not accurate. I always asked students who the author was, if they had ever heard of the organization, and to try and stick to big name sources they knew could be trusted even if it didn’t give the best possible answer.

Impact

After this presentation my students and even my paras always took an extra step back to think about the resources they were using or repeating information from. The ease with which people were able to be fooled was always shocking. The discussion about how to properly analyze and cite sources was always much more productive after this example.

Reflection

The use of digital tools to create a deeper understanding and engagement of digital connection to information, communities, and each other is a broad concept. I think that by aiding in the refresh of the materials presented in the Get Connected exhibit I was able to achieve standard 4.7.a by using the exhibit to inspire and encourage educators and students to use technology for civic engagement. I also think that through my presentation on digital resources, misinformation, and citations I achieved standard 4.7.c by supporting educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media.

Moving forward I would like to beagle to do more work with digital citizenship with students and educators to hopefully achieve standard 4.7.b by partnering with educators, leaders, students and families to foster a culture of respectful online interactions and a healthy balance in their use of technology and 4.7.d to empower educators, leaders and students to make informed decisions to protect their personal data and curate the digital profile they intend to reflect.