Rethinking What Districts’ Digital Citizenship Should Be

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Type: Article

Topics: District & School Operations, School Administrator Magazine, Technology & AI

May 01, 2022

Appears in May 2022: School Administrator.

Shaping a set of living practices for employees and students through policies, partnerships and professional learning

In summer 2014, Los Angeles Unified School District was embarking on an ambitious endeavor: Provide a personalized learning experience to all students via a 1:1 technology initiative. This meant that more than 500,000 students and nearly 25,000 educators across the district would receive a device and, along with it, instruction in the responsible use of technology.

As our district considered what responsible use meant, we knew we would have to move beyond the conversations about safety, privacy and security and explore what it means to be empowered, responsible, proactive digital citizens. This would be no small feat.

With a background in edtech research and filling the role of program and policy development specialist, I was selected to shape and develop districtwide policies that would support this instructional vision. As I scoured scholarly journals, connected with education leaders in other school districts and consulted with national nonprofits specializing in digital citizenship, I found many resources designed to support classroom teachers around digital citizenship, yet nothing about opportunities, resources and research relating to digital citizenship at the school system level.

From board of education members to our department heads, leaders at all levels needed to understand their role in supporting the implementation of digital citizenship. This was the gap I aimed to fill.

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Vanessa Monterosa

Senior associate partner

New Schools Venture Fund in Los Angeles, Calif.

About the Author

Vanessa Monterosa is co-author of the forthcoming book Deepening Digital Citizenship: A Guide to Systemwide Policy and Practice (ISTE).

Additional Resources

She recommends these resources for school districts interested in establishing a responsible use policy:

Los Angeles Unified School District’s Responsible Use Policy for District Computer and Network Systems

Los Angeles Unified School District’s Social Media Policy for Students

“Social Media Access in K-12 Schools: Intractable Policy Controversies in an Evolving World” by June Ahn, Lauren Bivona and Jeffrey DiScala in Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, January 2011.

Designing a Responsible Use Policy

School districts that want to transform their acceptable use policy into a responsible use policy to reflect their emphasis on responsible digital citizenship might consider the following:

Include students in the policy formulation process. Although the policy most impacts students, they are rarely invited to participate in its formulation.

Include input from IT and instructional leaders regarding the continuum of responsible use behaviors, ranging from safety, privacy and security to engagement, inclusivity and collaboration.

Discuss the values the district wants to reflect in the policy. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, we discussed what it means to be a responsible digital citizen and why this differentiation is important to include.

Design the policy as an instructional tool. To ensure the district policy plays a central role in reflecting the district’s aspirations, design it as a resource that teachers can leverage across digital citizenship discussions. As such, it becomes less of a document requiring a signature and more of a living agreement on how to engage as a responsible digital citizen in your school community.

Revisit and update your key policies annually. As the world changes, so does our definition of digital citizenship.