Should We Teach Digital Citizenship?

Last week I had a conversation with a colleague of mine about the teaching of digital citizenship in school. This person asked me if I thought we NEEDED to teach digital citizenship and whether or not it was right for the state or federal government to FORCE local school districts to teach it.

I don't want to address the second issue at all (This blog isn't about politics and I don't want it to be), but as to the first question, whether or not we NEED to be teaching digital citizenship, the answer is absolutely!

And if you want proof that it's needed, I submit to you the following photograph, which I took while standing in line at a Subway sandwich shop:

We live in a world where people have to be TOLD to turn their cell phones off while placing an order! So yes, apparently we need to teach students the right way to act in the 21st century.

So that Subway Restaurants, Incorporated doesn't have to!

P.S. There's something ironic, though, to the fact that--while the Subway worker was standing behind the counter waiting for me to tell him what kind of cheese I wanted on my 6 inch Sub--I held up my hand and said, "Hang on! Let me get a picture of this!" and then proceeded to get out my phone and use it while placing my order so that I could write this blog post about how people had to be told not to use their phones while placing their orders.