The Best Time to Plant a Tree....

As the popular Chinese proverb goes, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

The new year brings with it an opportunity to take action, to reflect on where we've come and to look forward to where we're going, especially as we consider the cultural and societal shifts that our students have witnessed in the past 10 years.

To consider perspective, the math is pretty simple: This year's graduates were in 2nd grade in 2010. Today's 2nd graders will graduate in 2030.

In 2010, the iPad was first released. Facebook was visited more often than Google. Yahoo Mail and Yahoo search both had more visits than YouTube. MySpace was still a thing.

In 2010, the final season of Lost played out. The Simpsons was in its 21st season. eSports were just emerging.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2010:

• 75% of 12-17 year old students owned a cell phone (up from 45% in 2004)
• 54% of all teens regularly sent text messages (and unlimited texting prices were close to $20 extra per month, or 10-15 cents, per message)
• 1 in 3 teens sent more than 100 text messages each day (average of 3000 per month). 
• 1 in 5 teens sent fewer than 10 text messages each day. 
• 30% of all teens preferred to talk on a land line
• 33% of all teens preferred to talk face-to-face
• Calling was still the primary function of the cell phone.

And while some things change, others, like The Simpsons, remain a constant.... But when it comes to technology, plainly speaking, we're in the midst of a generational shift.

As we enter 2020:
- 95% of teens have a smartphone or have access to one.
- 45% of teens say they are "almost constantly" online
- 52% of all web traffic, worldwide, is generated through mobile phones.
- 66% of smartphone users are addicted to their phones.
- Female college students spend an average of 10 hours each day on their phone
- 88% of smartphone owners use their phone while driving (~3.5 minutes/hour, on average)
- 80% of shoppers use a mobile phone in a physical store.
- Parents spend more time on their phones than adults without children.

What will 2030 look like? What changes will it bring? 

2020 Graduates were in 2nd grade in 2010.

Kids are still kids.... Their curiosity commands our attention, but their world has dramatically shifted. Just consider the evolution we've all lived during the past 10 years because of increased access to technology. Communication is different. Connectivity is different. Commerce is different. Attention spans are different. Even Parenting is different.

So, is it worth dedicating a portion of our instructional day to deliver Digital Citizenship instruction to students? Absolutely.

If you're not already doing it, the best time to start is now!

The idea of Digital Citizenship focuses on a number of concepts – it is so much more than simply telling students how they should or should not act when operating online, interacting with others, or using their smartphones. We need to focus on empowering users -- not surprisingly, our students don't need a rule book, they need guidance and mentoring.

In short, it boils down to two parts:

1. Digital Literacy – understanding the digital world and knowing what tools (and rules) exist and the basics for how to use them.
2. Digital Fluency – knowing when, why, and how to use digital tools to our advantage; understanding the opportunities that digitally literate citizens have in the emerging world.

There is a huge difference between the two, and, as citizens of the modern world, students must be able to "recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical" (Thanks, ISTE!).

Remember, we're 20 years into the 21st century.

A truly fluent user (or a “digital citizen”) is able to move in and out of their communities or switch between the available tools seamlessly, and as educators, it’s part of our mission to help prepare our students for success, just as we, as educators, should model what it means to be a life-long learner in our pursuit to develop areas where we might have knowledge deficiencies.

How can we expect our students to embrace a challenging concept if we aren’t willing to attempt it ourselves? Just one example is a look at our lessons on Coding: Coding is the next tool our students will need to be able to wield, just like we expect them to be capable of typing on their computer or writing with their pencils. Certainly as teachers, it's a foreign concept, but, perhaps the most significant lesson we can take from a Digital Citizenship focused curriculum comes back to modeling the behaviors and attitudes we teach. Let’s use these opportunities to help them, and starting now will only benefit our students, whether they are in Kindergarten or 10th grade!

In essence, our definition of “Citizenship” should be applied across all mediums, as we now live in a Digital World, whether we want to believe it or not. Just as we might expect a citizen to understand the laws and workings of the “in-person” communities in which we interact (and we teach/preach this stuff in our courses) each day, we should recognize that those communities, increasingly, are universally present because so much of this world has moved online.

For another glimpse into how quickly the times have changed,
 consider Jenson Huang's CES speech about Moore's Law

Truly, we shouldn’t have to teach a formalized “Digital Citizenship” curriculum at all, as it’s our professional duty to prepare our students for success in the world they are currently living in, as opposed to preparing them for a world that no longer exists as we knew it to be when we were growing up. These are the conversations and activities we should be having with students each and every day.

But, one thing that our Digital Citizenship instruction allows us to do, that we sometimes don't do often enough in our content-focused classrooms is talk with our students about their thinking process, about their approach to solving difficult and uncertain problems, about understanding the communities in which they wander, about understanding others (empathy!), and about making good and evidence-based decisions. 

Simply put, Digital Citizenship instruction is much greater than just conveying rules of use to our students; it’s about understanding the digital world that surrounds us and understanding our role as members of it – the good, the ugly, the hindrances, the opportunities. If we are to thrive in a digital society (and if our students are going to thrive), we must know its nature and its mechanisms.

And it's never too late to start teaching these fundamental skills.