DigIQ Module 4: Literacy, self-regulation, safety, and the digital
Focus
Whereas current approaches often focus solely on digital restriction and removal – that is, regulation of digital activity by adult others – we believe in the importance of fostering knowledge, skills and strategies to increasingly self-regulate digital activities to be safe, discerning, productive and beneficial.
It is unlikely that we can leave these outcomes to chance, trusting that children acquire these abilities with age or other experiences. We need to create places, spaces and opportunities for digital engagement to build ethical, safe and productive digital citizenship. Key ideas in this module include:
- Children will increasingly need to make good decisions about how they use digital technologies as they grow older. Having these conversations now, starting at when they first experience digital technologies, are important opportunities for learning, practice and conversation that will support children into their future.
- Adults have a critical role in supporting children to make good digital decisions.
- We want children to have the knowledge and skills to make the most of their digital opportunities and experiences, and navigate the risks associated with using digital technologies.
Listen
Lisa and Steven focus on how educators can leverage digital interactions with our children to support them in their digital decisions, behaviours and critical digital literacy skills.
Listen to Lisa and Steven in the Digital Interactions podcast episode Literacy, self regulation, safety, and the digital.
View a practice example
Much of what we talk about with regard to the digital is abstract. This poses implications for our youngest children who while exposed to digital environments may not have the developmental capabilities to actually understand how the ‘digital’ works, is produced and disseminated.
This practice example from a workshop repeated in the UOW’s Children’s Technology Play Space. In this example, we connect to a familiar story and engage the children in processes to help them understand that images can be changed and manipulated.
Consider:
- Where are the attempts to make the intangible (digital) more tangible, to support understanding?
- What opportunities are there to foster children’s digital self-regulation strategies and practice these (e.g., our intentions and aspirations for the experience, how we will use the technologies and for what will be pursue things non-digitally, how can we understand that what is captured digitally can be changed and manipulated)?
- What opportunities are there to discuss digital citizenship, safety, consent and ethics (e.g., consent to photograph, where and how products are shared, if that differs for products that identify versus do not identify the child)?
Watch the video, Wild Things.
Action
Create and agree to a ‘digital pact’
A ‘digital pact’ is the rules and guidelines that children and their adults agree will be boundaries and guardrails for their digital activity to enable them to be safe and productive digital citizens. This may include:
- Building digital literacy skills to understand online texts: Ask questions such as: Who created the text (to identify the author)? How do you know (what information can you get from the URL)? Why was this text created (what is the purpose of the text)? What does the creator want me to do? If I do that, is it safe (what happens to information I provide)?
- Discussions (and modelling) of safe and productive digital choices: Which are beneficial activities, for what and why? When is it (not) appropriate? When is it too much, and how do we know? How can we identify those moments ourselves? What can we do to disengage, even if we don’t really want to? How will we ensure sharing, turn-taking and collaboration?
- Consider where and how digital technologies are used: Where and when might using digital technologies be useful, what would they be useful for, and why? Where are our best opportunities for collaboration, active engagement and production? What do we want to be careful not to displace in the day?
- Discussions (and modelling) of consent: Ask questions such as “May I take your photo?” “Are you ok with this photo?” and “May I print this for the wall?” or “Can I share this with your family?”. Physical manifestations of a connected classroom, as in the real-life example below, led to conversations about where our digital data go, ethics around sharing (e.g., the content of an e-mail) and consent, (e.g., a picture of someone else), and starting to think about the quality of online content.
For younger children, education needs to start by building early thinking about the networked nature of digital technologies. Because children learn best through play and social interactions, educators can design play activities that help build young children’s understanding of how digital technologies are interconnected, or networked. For example, children could send ‘emails’ as messages in an envelope attached to a series of pretend computers or touchscreens that have been ‘networked’ with each other in the home-corner using string. This can help children visualise how digital networks are created and used to ‘send’ emails as a way of sharing information. Using the internet with young children in early childhood education and care settings also creates real-life learning opportunities for cyber-safety education. Educators can explain how information is created and shared by people on the network. Educators and children can consider the quality of the content and information they access on the internet and the extent to which it meets their purposes. (ECA, 2018, p. 17)
- We can also look at some risks of digital activities, even if they aren’t framed that way. You can show how digital content can be changed and altered. An associated activity could be to have children take and draw over their photographs (taken with consent) using the camera and drawing apps they are familiar with. Discussions might focus on how the images are changed and if the children would still consent to those being shared. Discussions could also focus on who they would or would not be ok sharing this with (parents, grandparents, siblings, parents’ friends, other children’s parents), and expectations of what is ok to (or should not) be shared once something is shared with you.
Explore
Some more reading on this area.
Websites:
Blog posts:
View
- You might like to view this UOW Luminaries address where panellists discuss the need for children to be able to critically engage with technologies to enable them to react, respond and participate in the digital culture within which they operate. The panel comprises interdisciplinary perspectives as they discuss digital literacy to empower children.
Reflect
Reflect on your own practice and self-assess: to what extent you use digital technologies in the following ways?
Digital technologies are used flexibly across child groupings to support learning and play. While we agree that high-quality practice can and does exist without need for digital technologies, we do not believe it is a viable or productive solution to never use digital technologies within and to support children’s learning and play. Instead, digital technologies should be used flexibly – in whole groups, smaller groups or individuals – with educator oversight to ensure progress toward learning/play intentions yet does not hinder the learning or play.
Digital technologies are flexibly used across times and spaces, to support children’s learning and play. Related to the above principle, there must be flexibility in when, where and for what purposes digital technologies are made available to children – aligned with the learning intentions and principles of high-quality interaction and practice. This contrasts a common mode of restricting digital technologies to just one or two windows, inflexible limits on time (e.g., screen time concerns), narrow types of use and a prescribed place in early childhood settings.
Educators as digital learners and citizens. Modeling is a powerful source of learning for young children, and they are more observant than we sometimes give them credit for. Consider, then, the implications of educators appearing negatively inclined or indifferent to learning about digital technologies. Worse, imagine if this was in the context of a child’s excitement to teach the educator, occupying the all-too-rare opportunity to be the expert other in the learning and play experience. Instead, we support educators modeling an active interest, seeking and engagement with new information about digital devices and/or affordances, and modeling this positive interest and thinking. Consider, for example, discovering new functionality that allows you to point the iPad camera at a plant and, at the tap of a button, bring up the plant’s name, family, characteristics, care and optimal climate.
Educators foster digital self-regulation skills and strategies to promote safe and productive digital citizens. Children too rarely encounter explicit modeling and learning about safe and productive use of digital technologies. However, as with all issues that are central to children’s healthy development (e.g., nutrition, road safety, …), children benefit from explicit, active experiences that promote knowledge, skills and strategies for safe, productive and appropriate navigation. In the context of digital technologies, this includes considerations of digital self-regulation, consent, data sharing, safety, ethics, and critical digital literacy (e.g., understanding not only how to navigate devices, but begin to discern the quality of content and how to exert choice in our digital activity rather than our actions being persuaded by the digital technologies).