11.5 Thing # 11

Digital citizenship is a great topic and one I am glad is a part of 11.5 things. A few years ago at TLA I attended a session given by Alan November. He discussed how many websites are deceiving. He showed the audience a Martin Luther King web site which was really set up by the KKK and was propaganda. Site evaluation is one of our students' least favorite things to do and one that few teachers enforce. Every year during Freshmen orientation I mention the MLK website in an attempt to teach the students not to take everything on the web at its face value. Stephen Downes on Cool Cat teacher says that a person who reads a website and believes it to be true no matter what is illiterate. How true is that? Etti quite is another important lesson which I stress during orientation. This is extremely important to me. I tell my students that cyber bullying is wrong, if you won't say something directly to someone why is it okay to post it on the Internet? In this technology driven world we live in we need to learn to be good "citizens".