Just like New Year’s resolutions, the goals teachers set for themselves throughout the year can sometimes become buried under a mountain of daily tasks.

At ISTE 2018, ISTE CEO Richard Culatta challenged every educator to commit to doing one thing to push digital citizenship to the forefront for every student and share their commitment with #DigCitCommit.

Many educators took up the challenge and shared their plans on social media. But in the months that followed, some of those goals have likely fallen by the wayside.

With Digital Citizenship Week approaching (Oct. 15-19), now is a good time to dust off those commitments because the importance of preparing our students to effectively navigate and participate in digital environments only continues to grow.

Digital Citizenship Week highlights the importance of building student and community capacity with skills like creatively collaborating with others across digital spaces, reflecting on digital habits, and curating a positive and effective digital footprint.

It’s a great opportunity to engage students, teachers, administrators and community members to demonstrate how essential it is for ongoing inclusion of digital citizenship instruction.

Whether your #DigCitCommit involves helping students to critically evaluate information, modeling positive digital habits or just moving the digital citizenship conversation forward in your community, below are some simple ways you can integrate digital citizenship activities during Digital Citizenship Week:

• Host a panel discussion where students share challenges and solutions for digital citizenship issues.

• Engage your staff in modeling digital citizenship practices and including #digcit tips in daily student announcements.

• Share with colleagues awesome digital citizenship resources, like the ISTE Digital Citizenship PLN or ISTE U Digital Citizenship in Action course, that have helped you integrate digital citizenship into your curriculum.

• Hold a scavenger hunt throughout the week where students complete tasks by demonstrating digital citizenship skills.

ISTE members can learn more about fueling their #DigCitCommit by watching the ISTE Expert Webinar, “Fueling Your #DigCitCommit with the Best Digital Citizenship Week Ever.”

You’ll learn about:  

• Common challenges of acting on your #DigCitCommit to integrate digital citizenship into the daily practice of every administrator, teacher and student.
• Addressing challenges by sharing compelling ideas.
• Engaging school communities in positive digital citizenship and fueling ongoing participation all year long.