Digital Citizenship

    Digital Citizenship is based off of three unspoken rules about social interaction in the digital world.  These are: respect yourself, respect intelectual property, and respect others.  I think that in todays technological world it its very easy for people to forget these rules.  People are so wrapped up in thier own life, they do not think about how their actions may be affecting others.  Part of the problem is that technology is changing so rapidly that as adults, parents, and teachers we forget to educate our youth about the rules of digital citizenship.  As a parent with pre-teens and teeagers I know how much their life is wrapped around social media.  The era of talking on the phone is over my teenager will sit for hours on his ipod or ipad texting his friends, girlfriend and going on facebook.  If I don't make an effort to connect with him he can sit in his room all night disconnected from our family.  Do I as a parent know what he is doing or saying during that time, no.  All I can do is try to be the best infuence I can and make sure he knows to respect himself, others, and the intelectual property involved.  As teachers we have no control of what happens after they leave our classrooms so I beleive that we need to do the best we can to teach them proper proceedures and etiquete when using technology.  We may be the only influence that these children get and hopefully we can make a difference.