0 What is digital citizenship ?

The concept of Digital Citizenship appear along with the enormity of the development of information technology and the Internet which is supported by the presence of various networking sites, either in the form of macroblog or microblog. Today, hundreds of millions of people from around the world have taken advantage of the presence of networking sites as a platform for mutual interaction between one individual to another individual digitally. They merge to form specific communities to share information and utilize various distributed content, either in the form of videos, e-books, images, and others.

The use of networking sites in Indonesia seemed to show significant progress and has penetrated almost all the layers, ranging from presidents, politicians, celebrities, academics, to the general public, including our children. Until the year 2012, seen from the user growth rate, Indonesia is the largest country Keduang, after India, and is estimated to reach approximately 51.6% growth rate. (popsurvey.net).

Facebook seems to still be the favorite choice and ranks first as a networking site that many people use, followed by Twitter at second. Based on the data owned by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, a total of approximately 43.06 million people who use the social networking site Facebook (AntaraNews.com). Those who take advantage and join in a range of networking sites that later formed the present conception of Digital Citizenship.

So, what actually was Digital Citizenship? Teachthought.com provide a formulation of the Digital Citizenship as "the quality of an individual's response to membership in a community". Meanwhile, digitalcitizenship.net provide an understanding of Digital Citizenship as "the norms of NAMAs, responsible behavior with regard to technology use". Formulation of Teachthought.com more to do with the use of social networks, while giving the sense digitalcitizenship.net Digital Citizenship in the context of the wider use of technology. From both these formulations appears that Digital Citizenship refers to the quality of individual behavior in interacting in the virtual world, especially in social networking, with demonstrated responsible behavior, in accordance with the norms and ethics.

Digital Citizenship in touch with the ability to manage and monitor the behavior of the use of technology, in which there are safety, ethics, norms, and culture.

• How should we use information technology safely, do not cause any harm and endanger the safety of themselves and others.
• How should we communicate in social networks while maintaining ethics, referring to the norms prevailing in the internal environment, national and universal.
• How should we transact information in cyberspace, especially in upload / download content and transact through the online shop.

Seeing the development of the Internet and the use of networking sites in Indonesia so rapidly, on the one hand can be regarded as an advance,-at least people have learned to know the technology, but on the other hand raises its own concerns, especially when it is associated with Digital Citizenship. Boediono Darsono, Editor in Chief Detikcom, mentions the use of social networking sites in Indonesia has many challenges that still uses to less productive things. (Kompas.com).

Networking sites used most often suspected person or entity to revile and defame others. If you had followed the comments in various online media , especially those connected to social networking sites , you can find dozens or hundreds of comments that describe how they need to improve understanding and awareness of the Digital Citizenship.

To be a digital citizen ( Digital Citizen ) healthy and dignified course is required education itself. At school , students need to be taught in accessing a variety of information via the internet correctly and able to communicate in a civilized networking sites that follow . " Digital Citizenship Must Become part of our school culture - not just a class or lesson but the way we do business in education" , so suggestions from Mike S. Ribble and Gerald D. Bailey. On the other hand , Agus Sampurno in a blog that manages to remind us about the importance of educators to keep students on internet safety .

compiled from various sources

0 Those Selfish PhD Candidates

One of the most stunning moments in the recent Ed Talks Wisconsin came towards the end of a Friday night discussion about MOOCs. The room was heavily populated with graduate students, many of whom were asking about the implications of these online courses for their employment prospects.  With the decoupling of teaching from their future responsibilities, many were (rightly) worried about how they'd be trained, funded, and what they'd do post degree.

As one student put it,"What's the incentive for the next generation of scholars to pursue a PhD?"
 
In response to that question, the Chancellor of the UW Colleges, Ray Cross, responded this way:
"Is your goal to get a PhD, or is your goal to change education?"

Many in the room looked up, confused about whether he was serious.

Well, an email that just arrived from UW-Madison suggests he was.  The newsletter it included contained the following key blurb:

"New program trains students to create online courses.  With the advent of online courses and degrees, a new program will teach students how to provide online course support. Student Online Course Support (SOCS) will help students find campus tech-related jobs, expose them to new career paths, and save the University funds by hiring student support. Tell your students about this opportunity."

Got that? It's full-speed ahead in support of the Flex Degree and the MOOCs here at Madison; above I linked to the course description that explicitly references these programs. Want a campus job? Get on board. And be sure, of course, to save the university money!

Will this next become a mandated part of our graduate training? Or will we no longer need those folks, as our younger Badger are trained and ready to serve?


ps. The video of Cross starts around the 1:32 minute mark.

0 Struggle at CUNY

Readers of this blog ought to be interested in changes at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York affecting the pay and resources of their graduate students.

In a nutshell, the same market-based approaches to education inflicted on k-12 schooling and more recently undergraduate education are now being brought to bear on graduate education.  Characteristics of that sector that some find undesirable-- for example longer times to degree--are being attributed to student laziness and treated with new rejiggered incentives.  The President of the CUNY Grad Center recently equated his students with roaches, who check into a model and never check out.

The pushback on the part of many CUNY grad students is merited and admirable-- while some of the so-called reforms are good on their face (who doesn't like fellowships?) their roll out and implementation suggest deeper problems.  It seems that too-little consideration has been given to the effects on access likely to occur with such a completion agenda, and this is especially problematic at an institution with such a long history of opening doors (and admittedly, then often slamming them).

I'm eager to learn more about these events, and encourage those of you in New York to share what you know with us.