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Digital Equity, Digital Inclusion, + the Digital Divide

The digital divide, as described by Pazurek & Feyissa, is the gap between individuals that have access to Information and Communications Technology, and those who do not. In my own ways, I just would describe this as the gap between people that have access to technology and those who do not. As to digital equity, Lindsey Knerl describes it equal access to technology that allows someone to be a full member of society. In my own words I would just describe this as everyone have equal access to digital media.

In my opinion, these terms go hand in hand. Without digital equity, there is a digital divide. If there is digital equity, there is no digital divide. Digital equity is important this day in age because everything has moved into the online world. Especially being a student. For an example, there was someone in my class without a computer and she wasn't able to access any of the materials online. As Danica Radovanovic states, "We must tackle socio-cultural differences, we must focus on Internet skills, literacies and social media usage." These inequalities mostly affect people in poor or rural areas of the world. She states that nonprofit and profit organizations need to make it their key mission to focus on social and digital inclusion. In my opinion especially after COVID this digital divide has become even bigger because these kids that got left behind after COVID are going to be even further left behind without the access to technology.

Limited digital technology access in today's world will lead to social isolation. Teachers and students will be out of the loop that don't have access. The chances of finding a job will be reduced. According to the article Digital divide throughout the world and why it causes inequality, the author states "the digital divide negatively affects women more than men, which violates the principles of gender equality." I really don't know what I would do without technology. All my school work, my saved assignments, everything is online. It is how I communicate with friends and family. I am glad this class brought to my attention how important digital equity is.

Websites:

file:///Users/juliedebilzan/Downloads/Pazurek-Digital-Divide-2015.pdf

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What is digital citizenship?

What is digital citizenship? Common Sense Media describes it as meaning, "to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in our digital world" (Common Sense Media website, 2018).  Ribble, Bailey, and Ross, (2004) describe it as the continuously developing norms of appropriate, responsible, and empowered technology use. To me, digital citizenship means being aware of dangerous situations online and following the rules of internet safety. To explain it in simple terms, digital citizenship means acting responsibly online and knowing what’s right from wrong on the internet. While they sound similar, there are some differences. Digital literacy refers to the skills and knowledge required to engage critically and creatively with digital technologies, while digital citizenship refers to doing the same discerningly and safely. So this means digital literacy means you have the skills to navigate the internet, but digital citizenship refers to knowing how to use these skills.

Personally, I think that digital citizenship can be supportive for an adult learner like me by showing what could happen if you do NOT have digital citizenship. I remember a story I heard that really stuck with me. It was the story of Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was a 13 year old girl abducted by someone she met online. In the article, the parents go on to say that a part of their healing process as a family is educating other parents and families. And as an adult who wants to be an educator AND eventually a mother, this story was enough for me. If Alice would have been educated as a child on digital citizenship, she would have had the skills to avoid a dangerous encounter like this. This man lured her online, and this is my worst fear for a child or a student. As an educator, I want to make sure that I will offer a whole session of learning focused solely on internet safety and dangers. Just because I know the amount of kids with a device, it just shows what a real problem this is. Even for my mom, who is getting older. It would just break my heart to think that my mom could get scammed by a random creep online. I need to teach her the proper privacy settings and how to turn those on, because she loves sharing pictures of her younger nieces and nephews.

A different aspect that speaks out to me is the ‘digital law’ concept of digital citizenship. Freshman year of college, we had to break down an experiment that I didn’t understand. So when I did write the paper on the experiment, I ended up taking a lot of the words from the article word-for-word. I didn’t notice this, but I wanted a good grade on the paper so I wanted to make it as accurate as possible. My professor emailed me and let me know it was plagiarism, and I was so scared because I have heard that you can get failed from a class for plagiarism. Luckily, she was so understanding and let me retake it, but I learned a valuable lesson. Especially in university, it is such an important toolbelt of knowledge to have. In conclusion, I know in my future classroom I will for sure be fighting for my classroom to have a lesson on digital citizenship, and I would even teach it myself.

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Social Media & Participatory Culture

Participatory culture theory is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices (Jenkins, Puroshotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2009). This relates to social media because it creates a space for people to create these communities. I have been learning about reddit and discord and how those social media outlets create opportunities for people to connect with similar interests. I have actually really found myself getting involved into a community on reddit. Reddit to me is so interesting. I have found myself involved in this community of people that have interest in the podcast H3H3. I could absolutely scroll on the tag #h3h3 forever because I find everything so interesting and I love hearing other people's thoughts on what goes on in the podcast. When it comes to what I share online, I feel like I have a lot of interest in posting really genuine, happy, and cute moments of my friends and I. I even have put finding more interest in taking pictures of different nature things because I have been trying to practice appreciating the things around me.

Reading the quote, "However, social media has enabled and encouraged participation by making the production, distribution, and storage of content less challenging and in many cases, free." (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013) made my think about my mom. Social media to her growing up was non-existent, so to see her posting on Facebook, and now her new obsession, Instagram, is kind of heartwarming. They make it so easy for users to post, and to even use the cool features. Like my mom think it is so cool to post stories with music on instagram. But it also makes me kind of sad because I feel like my mom needs to learn digital literacy again, almost like my students do. I feel like she could fall victim to a lot of scamming things. But I am glad she is using it more as a way to connect to family. From the TedTalk, Jenkins (2010), showed a graph from the changing interweb and it really put into perspective for me how much the internet has changed. She was born in 1963, which he doesn't even show on the map. This also just reminds me of so much that my mom had to learn about the internet, and how far she has actually come, even though I am hard on her sometimes.

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Blog Post #1

The research from these two articles taught me a lot. I already knew we are a media-saturated generation, but to really look at infographics and hear from teens themselves really just emphasized it to me in a different way, instead of just articles. The relationships that teenagers have with social media is kind of like a girlfriend/boyfriend with a toxic partner. There are benefits and drawbacks. If habits are not corrected early with technology, the use will only get stronger and stronger. We learned that technology usage has gone up overtime. Some positives that teens shared is being able to stay connected with friends, at all time. It stuck out to me that a kid said he never feels alone, because he always has someone on social media to talk to. And these I can agree with, I love technology to be able to stay connected with my friends and especially family from far away. Also something else I love technology for is taking pictures. It's not that I always even need to share the pictures, I just love being able to have a way to save all my memories. A positive that seemed really meaningful was mentioned in Julie's article. She said that she was able to heal from racism through an online community. If this is the way that young kids can help work through their struggles and work through their problems then I totally support that. Being able to connect with others about deep-rooted issues is a part of healing. A disadvantage that was shared is the decrease in face-to-face communication. As a future educator, face-to-face is really important to me because I believe that is what helps develop children's social skills. After COVID, a lot of the students in my classroom are very underdeveloped and I believe a part of that has to do with lack of face-to-face communication with other children. Another disadvantage shared by an adult is the cyberbullying that happened to her when she was younger. It really shows how vicious some teenagers can be behind the screen and how it can negatively affect a person. And when you add in the aspect that they can stay anonymous, it just motivates these bullies even further. Something that I really liked reading about is what you should do with a child that wants to be involved in social media. I hope to be a really great parent one day, and I think it seems tricky to try to figure out how much social media and technology is right for a kid. I like how Julie described social media as currency for teenagers. I find this so true, figuratively and literally. In the literal sense, teenagers are getting famous off of social media and starting their careers on there. Maybe just for being good looking or being funny. But in the literal sense she talks about how we know social media is not going anywhere, so we can't pretend it doesn't exist to children. The article made me realize how important it is to be honest with my child so that they feel like they don't have to hide anything from me or make secret accounts (like I did when I was a kid).