What does implementing digital citizenship look like for an entire country? If anyone does have the answer to that question, I suppose it may be me and my coauthor, Dr. Vanessa Monterosa, who scaled digital citizenship professional learning across the Los Angeles Unified School District. We wrote a book on that topic for ISTE, Deepening Digital Citizenship, but when I wrote that book, I never thought I’d be explaining the topic to an entire country.
Except there I was. This past July, I was in Hanoi at the Ministry of Education (MoET), explaining digital citizenship, trends, definitions, and standards in the United States to a room of country leaders.
You need to look back to 2010 to understand why I was there. According to Trần Ánh Ngân Sa, Academic Director with KDC Education, “The Ex-Prime Minister had approved and supported the national strategy of ‘developing VN into an advanced country of information technology.” Vietnam is rapidly digitizing, and the government is investing in startups and the digital economy. However, to reach those goals outlined in the National Digital Transformation Programme, a workforce with those digital skills must be needed. Teachers are essential to those skills, and part of the Programme means that teachers of all levels must be able to use and apply technology in their teaching.
Sa says that “under such circumstances, MoET has decided that digital skills are the very need for students who will be the main force in years to come. That has led MoET to build digital competence, digital Literacy, and digital citizenship education.”
How do you implement digital citizenship for an entire country? It’s hard to say since it’s never been done, but I told MoET what I’ve told other schools and teachers—start with standards and skills.
The national curriculum in Vietnam, from primary through high school, is competency-based. The Ministry of Education sets the standards, and they are building new digital citizenship standards referencing multiple sources, including the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). UNESCO’s Digital Competencies and Skills has student and teacher standards and OER Resources for countries to share and collaborate. ISTE has also aligned how its standards interconnect with that framework.
Countries can take UNESCO’s framework and, just like states in the U.S., adapt the framework to their own needs. In Vietnam’s national curriculum, they have a specific “information technology competency” that, along with other items, lists “Behave appropriately in the digital environment” and “Have communication and collaboration in the digital environment.” “As you see,” says Sa, “these competencies are closely related to our digital citizenship content. We build out a digital citizenship curriculum to meet these competency standards.”
Standards or competencies provide the foundation, but it’s teachers who put them into practice. Those practices can vary from country to country, city to city and classroom to classroom. In Vietnam, KDC Education has an initiative where students create posters about their understanding of digital citizenship.
Having shared standards/competencies/frameworks helps with implementation. If there are no shared definitions, values and goals, well-meaning initiatives around digital citizenship will stay siloed or not even get off the ground. In my book Deepening Digital Citizenship, I wrote, “Digital citizenship is everyone’s responsibility, but no one’s authority.” Taking authority means prioritization, funding, staff training and advocacy. Implementation is hard, long-term work. It’s not just an event but a daily practice by teachers.
