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Queensland University of Technology recognises the important role social media technologies play in enabling people not only to communicate and collaborate with each other, but also to create, share and consume content. The uptake of social media has opened up new ways of learning and teaching for educational communities to experience new ways of communicating. The rapid growth in Web 2.0 tools and other emerging technologies, often located outside university managed environments, has occurred alongside the steady growth in blended learning in higher education, with students becoming increasingly active communicators, collaborators and creators of content in a virtual community. Learning and teaching activities now take place both in physical and virtual spaces with a range of tools, including learning management systems, other university supported applications and tools, and, increasingly, a variety of public domain social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, mashups, video-sharing sites, etc.). These guidelines aim to provide guidance to QUT teaching staff and students in the use of social media that adds value to the educational experience, whilst being mindful of the University's duty of care and legal obligations.

Your students may be able to update their Facebook status in a heartbeat, but can they also write a thoughtful letter to the editor, voice their opinion on a call-in radio show, or access local media to advocate for community action? How well would parents or teachers in your community do at those tasks? In Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action, media literacy expert Renee Hobbs makes a strong case for deepening digital literacy -- not only for youth but for Americans of all ages. Improving our digital and media literacy will require nothing less than a national community education effort, Hobbs argues in a position paper recently published by the Aspen Institute and Knight Foundation. Sorting through the flood of information most of us encounter daily requires new knowledge and critical-thinking skills, she says.

Some interesting research going on in the EU on how social media can be used to inform policy: Social networking technology provides major new opportunities for policy makers (eGovernment) to engage with the community (eSociety). We will develop a toolset that allows full advantage to be taken of a wide range of existing and well established social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, WordPress etc.) to engage citizens in two-way dialogs as part of governance and policymaking processes. The tools will make it possible to detect, track and mine opinions and discussions on policy oriented topics. The tools will allow discussions to be seeded and stimulated through injection of policy discussion points into relevant communities in a secure and managed way. The tools will allow the origins, bias and evolution of opinions to be tracked to provide auditable records of provenance, guard against misuse, and ensure trust and privacy for all involved. A key feature of our approach is to allow policy makers to move away from the limitations inherent in the current practice of using bespoke and dedicated platforms (e.g. specific opinion soliciting websites hosted by government) and instead make full use of the high levels of participation and rich discussions that already take place in existing social networking communities. In this way, WeGov will develop the tools and techniques for closing the loop between policy makers and the citizens.

As upstanding "Citizens," we need to be contributing participants of our physical communities - our schools, neighborhoods, cities, states, countries and the world. Likewise, as exemplary "Digital Citizens," we must learn how to navigate a variety of digital/cyber/online communities. It is only by developing a clear sense of both our rights and our responsibilities that we can become fully engaged and contributing "Citizens" of all the communities in which we find ourselves. ~Natalie Bernasconi & Gail Desler We've created the Digital ID wiki to provide students, teachers, and administrators with a toolkit of reliable information, resources, and guidelines to help all of us learn how to be upstanding Digital Citizens who maintain a healthy Digital Identity (ID) in the 21st Century.

"This leads to an intriguing thought: that the young cyber-activists in Cairo are showing the rest of the world what it means to be a digital citizen. We, in the online safety community, have been promoting the idea and ideals of 21st century citizenship for a number of years. Simply put, we ask: How can we move the rights and responsibilities we take for granted in the offline world and move them into the online space? How can we encourage the equivalent of rushing to the scene of an accident or reporting a crime or getting involved in your local community when it comes to the online communities we increasingly inhabit? How can we promote new social norms of behavior in a seemingly rule-free, anything goes environment that much of the web seems to exhibit?"

"Social media and online communication opportunities are important and can have a positive impact on all elements of the teaching and learning process, the school and learning community. We see teachers and other professionals creating networks to share ideas and resources, children and young people crowd source ideas and information. They seek and receive feedback on their work while parents engage more fully with teachers, their children and the school. Furthermore, even if we feel too old or too busy to engage with social media ourselves then we, as teachers, must still be able to model appropriate, safe and positive use of social technology for our learners and the wider learning community."

"East Noble expects digital citizenship to be taught specifically during academic lab in the high school and middle school. In the elementary schools teachers will take teachable moments and short instructional times when it fits best in their day to present information. Also elementary schools may take some time in the beginning of the year to target some specific areas of digital citizenship to lay some ground rules. Digital citizenship will not be in place of social studies or any other content area. The core curriculum will continue to include math, science, reading, writing, social studies. None of that will change. All staff members will reinforce the proper use of digital media, and the citizenship to use information responsibly. Students will need to learn online ethics. They will need to learn when to communicate, how to communicate, and when not to respond or initiate communication on a public platform such as Facebook or other social network."

Interdependence of people and cultures in the global society of the twenty-first century means all citizens of the world must pay greater attention to intercultural communication and the challenges it brings. Intercultural communication is the communication between people from different cultures.

"Thanks to the continuing wave of school district communicators and administrators seeking ways to reach their communities, a common question gets asked: How do you set up a Facebook page for a school district? "

The use of WeChat as a tool to build a community of learning is featured in this post via an interview with Head of Elementary at Beijing BISS International School.

"There are many ways that our kids can communicate now as the Internet continues to expand its collaborative/social applications. Many of us are encouraging the use of wikis, blogs, emails, discussion boards, and chats (text and video) for educational uses and are integrating them into our curriculum. But we know that the kids are also extensively using the Internet as a social meeting place. It's imperative that we are advocating acceptable manners for all communications. Commonly called "netiquette", there are a number of guidelines that we should be promoting in order to emphasize good online citizenship. "

"Words are powerful. We should use words with care. We need to help people of all ages understand the power of words, and the responsibilities we have as citizens in our face-to-face communities as well as online communities. These are conversations about citizenship, digital citizenship, ethics and respect. These are conversations we need to have in our homes, in our schools, in our churches, and in other contexts where we have opportunities to dialog and reflect about behavior."

Definetheline.ca: Clarifying the Blurred Lines between Cyber-bullying and Socially Responsible Digital Citizenship. Welcome to Definetheline.ca. The objective of our research team at McGill University is to share our expertise with policy-makers, teachers, parents, educators and youth (11 - 17) in user-friendly ways that help all stakeholders engage, learn from, and share resources on our website. We also have a fun section for children (ages 5 - 11) that will promote responsible, thoughtful and considerate digital citizens from an early age. Defining Digital Citizenship and Socially Responsible Online Communication: Social media and a range of digital technologies provide enormous opportunities for peaceful and supportive global interaction, international learning collaboration and fruitful educational partnerships. Every digital user has the potential to reach communities in all corners of the world through transformational online leadership and responsible digital citizenship by embracing the fundamental principles that underlie constitutional rights to free expression, privacy, safety, fair and equality.

Social networking communities are here to stay. Facebook has over 500 million users, while Twitter has over 200 million. That's not even counting blogs or YouTube video blogs. There's no doubt that students are actively engaged in online communities, but what kind of effects are these sites having and how can parents counteract the bad and bolster the positive?

"The online environment is an integral part of modern economic and social activities, and a vast resource of education, information, communication and entertainment. Further, the evolution of new technologies is diversifying the ways in which Australians connect with each other and the world. As part of the Government's comprehensive commitment to cyber-safety, the Australian Parliament established this Committee in March 2010. This report focuses on how young people can be empowered and connect to the Internet, and use new technologies with confidence, knowing that they can use them safely, ethically and with full awareness of risks and benefits. The facilitation of safer online environments requires government, industry and the broader community to work together to realise the benefits of the online environment while also protecting Australians from dangers and enabling them to use existing and emerging tools to mitigate risks.  

Found in Communication Research and Practice: Vol 6, No 1 Abstract: Around the world policymakers are exploring the kinds of skills and competencies that teenagers need to have to contribute to society as digital citizens. Based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child framework, and informed by critical analysis of discourses around digital citizenship, this paper explores the competencies already demonstrated by many adolescents and addresses the priorities identified by policymakers. It compares the top-down adult policymakers' blueprints for digital citizenship with the performances of citizenship by many young people, who mobilise digital resources to communicate with powerful others as a means of progressing their aims. Drawing upon examples of small-scale teenage activism, and linking these to some of the big questions of the age: climate change, gender equity and social justice, the paper moves beyond discussions of tech-addiction and online passivity to investigate adolescents' strategic engagement in digital spaces to achieve a more equitable future.

This paper will present the findings of the pilot studies on the use of online social network in Malaysia. A total of 40 questionnaires were distributed to active users of this social media to get an early indication on this activity. In addition, discussion about the global activities of online social networking is also undertaken as a comparison. The analysis shows that online social networking has been used as a new mode of communication especially for Internet active users to meet and interact with their friends. Early findings indicate that they spent quite many hours in this environment and log in into their accounts a few times a day. This shows that social interaction in cyberspace by using new media applications such as social networking has been adapted by more and more people and has changed human communication.

"All members of the school community should agree on a clear definition of cyberbullying and hostile online behaviour. This definition needs to be understood, accepted and shared within the whole school community, including identifying unacceptable online behaviours and the consequences of these behaviours. It should reflect the school's ethos that cyberbullying is unacceptable, harmful and will be acted upon."

This toolkit is the result of the collective efforts of the Global Citizenship Education Working Group (GCED-WG), a collegium of 90 organizations and experts co-convened by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, and the United Nations Secretary General's Global Education First Initiative's Youth Advocacy Group (GEFI-YAG). To gather the measurement tools in this collection, the working group surveyed GCED programs and initiatives that target youth (ages 15-24). For the purposes of this project, GCED was defined as any educational effort that aims to provide the skills, knowledge, and experiences and to encourage the behaviors, attitudes, and values that allow young persons to be agents of long-term, positive changes in their own lives and in the lives of people in their immediate and larger communities (with the community including the environment).

Many professional societies, including the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), provide standards and goals for the implementation of technology in learning. These standards include information literacy, collaboration, communication, and digital citizenship, among others. This article also focuses on digital citizenship. In additional to providing standards and behaviors, it provides a structure for addressing behaviors when they affect students and the school community.