Why Digital Citizenship?

About two weeks ago, my twelve-year-old son and I were browsing Netflix, looking for something to watch while we ate lunch. He asked for something funny, but there was nothing that we had not seen that was appropriate for him to watch that was “funny”. As I was scrolling, one of my favorite movies of all time came up, You’ve Got Mail (Ephron & Donner, 1998). I hesitated to put the movie on because I thought it would be too mushy for his enjoyment, but I played it anyway. It turns out, my son loved the movie! He is a romantic like his father. Sidenote: his favorite movies are Hidden Figures (Deniel et al & Melfi, 2016), A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992), and Pitch Perfect (Niemeyer & Moore, 2012), so he is a lot like his father…

You’ve Got Mail was one of the first modern romantic comedies (or RomComs) that I had watched with my son, but I found it was not the romance that I had to keep explaining to him. The first thing I had to explain (aside from the thousands of questions he always asks during movies) was what AOL Instant Messenger was. He thought the characters were emailing back and forth to each other, so I had to explain to him how messengers worked. I then had to explain what the noise was when they got onto their computers. It was the fax machine sounding noise that was made when starting dial-up internet (What’s a fax machine?). Then I had to explain what dial-up internet was. Other aspects of the movie that needed or might have needed explaining to these Zoomers are things like what an intercom system is. Now it is “Hey Alexa, drop-in on…” As I was writing this passage, I had to explain to my son that the bookstore that Kathleen Kelly owned was not a library, it was a small bookstore. When I asked him what a bookstore was, he said, “Yeah, Barnes & Noble…” Mind you, You’ve Got Mail was filmed over 20 years ago, BUT… the movie was ONLY filmed just over 20 years ago!

So much has changed in the last 20 years, and we can imagine that technology is going to change significantly over the next 20 years. In terms of Ribble’s (2015) nine elements of digital citizenship, in 20 years, just to keep up with literacy, communication, and access, there is likely going to be technology that we can not fathom will exist, and we will have to explain to our grandchildren what an iPhone was.

References

Daniel, J., Halloran, K., Lombardi, I., Shetterly, M.L., Valdez, M., & Witt, R. (Producers)., Melfi, T. (Director). (2016). Hidden Figures. [Motion Picture] USA: Fox

Ephron, N., & Donner, L.S. (Producers) Ephron, N. (Director). (1998). You’ve Got Mail [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros.

Marshall, P. (Producer & Director). (1992). A League of Their Own [Motion Picture]. US: Columbia Picture.

Niemeyer, S. (Producer), Moore, J. (Director). (2012). Pitch Perfect [Motion Picture]. US: Brownstone Productions.

Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools: Nine elements all students should know (3rd ed.). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education