our DigCitHistory

our story, our journey, our history
​iCitizen Project #FYS11 #iCitizenProject

How It All Began
Our Digital Citizenship Journey began on campus at the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) in West Hartford, Connecticut. It began very naturally and comes as no surprise that student voice is the impetus for launching this journey.  

School of Education associate professor,   Dr. Marialice B.F.X. Curran   designed and developed the first three-credit digital citizenship course at both the undergraduate and graduate level (2009) and the first digital citizenship (#digcit) chat on Twitter happened on campus as part of the courses she was teaching. She began to create digital citizenship courses as a direct result of her work with K-12 students and her undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates. 

It all began when   Tracy Mercier, a graduate student in Dr. Curran's course  hosted a student-led tech event at her elementary school. As the third graders worked on their netbooks, they Googled Dr. Curran to check if she was making socially responsible decisions online. It was at this moment that Dr. Curran knew she had to change her own teaching practice, as well as how teacher preparation. This experience plus sensational headlines around the world of students being cyberbullied is the why behind our journey. We admit that our story began as a reactive approach to understanding and trying to harness social media and technology.
 
By the fall of 2010, another tragic incident involving social media, homophobia, and invasion of privacy happened. Tyler Clementi, a college freshmen at Rutgers, took his own life after he found out that his roommate was posting videos of his personal encounters. In a blog post, Dinosaurs and Tiaras: Facing Intolerance, Dr. Curran shared:

I did not know Tyler, but his suicide made me determined to focus on a solution. Tyler Clementi could be my son, your son. He was a brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend and neighbor. This perspective launched me into uncharted territory. I am the mother of a son. What if this was my son? What can I do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?  How can I make a difference?
This was just the beginning of transitioning from being reactive to becoming more proactive. Creating the First Year Seminar Course,   Pleased to Tweet You: Are You a Socially Responsible Digital Citizen?  began as a way to create a student solution towards cyberbullying, but evolved into a collaborative learning experience, known as the   iCitizen Project  where college freshmen in Connecticut and high school juniors in Birmingham defined digital citizenship as being an active citizen not just a resident, an enabler of change not just a bystander. The iCitizen Project focused on empathy to help humanize the person next to us, around the world  and across the screen. 

Pleased to Tweet You: Are You a Socially Responsible Citizen? #FYS11

Although the inaugural DigCitSummit happened in October 2015 at USJ, the idea of planning the first all digital citizenship conference began years before on the university campus as   Dr. Curran continued to design and develop digital citizenship courses, workshops and events. It was the First Year Seminar, #FYS11 course, Pleased to Tweet You for incoming freshmen at USJ where Dr. Curran invited high school classrooms to collaborate with her incoming freshmen was the prologue to the DigCitSummit as the college freshmen in Connecticut connected and collaborated with Beth Sander’s high school juniors in Alabama. Geography was not an issue since the two classrooms used social media tools like Skype and Twitter to connect and learn together. The iCitizen Project defined citizenship in the 21st century as an active citizen instead of just a resident; an enabler of change and not just a bystander. The focus on local, global and digital communities emerged as the foundation for being an iCitizen.
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As a result of the #FYS11 course, USJ held the first digital citizenship livestreamed event in February 2012, the    iCitizenship Town Hall Meeting  for both a live and virtual audience. This was just the beginning of the planning for the DigCitSummit where digital citizenship was not just an add-on to an edtech or bullying conference, but was an opportunity to carve out both space and time to dedicate solely on digital citizenship.

The inaugural DigCitSummit was held at USJ in October 2015 and included a multi-stakeholder approach to digital citizenship as speakers came from around the country, as well as USJ undergraduates, graduates and alumni to be a part of changing the narrative from the reactive to the proactive. The DigCitSummit struck a nerve that day and was the number one trend on Twitter.
​Amplifying student voice has always been at the heart of the Digital Citizenship Institute, Digital Citizenship Summit and DigCitKids. As we have evolved into a proactive approach, talking with students not at them has always been at our core. 

our DigCitCommunity mindset

As our digital citizenship journey has continued to evolve, we have been guided by our focus on our DigCitCommunity around the world. Our foundation is built by creating an empathetic mindset where we lead with empathy by creating experiences to feel the emotions of another person in order to develop a sense of compassion where those feelings develop into action.

The next layer is an entrepreneurial mindset where we identify a need, any need and fill it. Entrepreneurial opportunities to be action driven and willing to collaborate deliberately and mindfully allow us to be critical thinkers and creative problem solvers who transform minds, hearts and attitudes by solving real problems in local, global and digital communities.

Our next layer is focused on an inclusive mindset where access for all, diversity and equity are at the heart of everything we do. Applying the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework provides all individuals equal opportunities to learn by promoting personalized learning where all learners and all abilities are recognized, included and valued.

​An innovative mindset highlights the need for us to continuously ask questions that haven't been asked yet. Our innovators are the makers, the dreamers, the doers, the futurists who are filled with an insatiable sense of curiosity, wonder and awe.

our iCitizenship town hall meeting through tweets

our iCitizen project through tweets