Digital: designating or o data, images, sounds, etc. . . . . that are stored, transmitted manipulated, or reproduced by a process using groups of electronic bits and stored on a magnetic or optical medium; the groups of bits are read electronically, as by a laser beam for reproduction; b) designating or of a type of radio or TV transmission and reception in which data, sounds, or images are sent or received as groups of electronic bits.
Citizenship: native or inhabitant of a denizen of any place.
Denizen: an inhabitant or occupant frequenter of a particular place.
A good digital citizen is a person who meets the characteristics of the combined definition listed above from Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th Ed). This past weekend I listened to a number of webinars regarding information received or taken from the internet and responsibilities as a digital citizen.
The presenter of one of webinars brought up the topic of digital citizenship and how she explains its importance to her students. In addition, that what is in the digital world should be cited in the same manner as the information that is retrieved from a library. Digital citizenship has become a topic of interest among scholars. The premise of the debate is that the information in the digital is not always factual. It is difficult to determine the authenticity of information because the research may be dated, old or it is just made up. However, there are trustworthy sites where the information is good, but this information is not free or original.
The internet or World Wide Web is the first place most of us go to when we are looking up information. People are so comfortable with the internet, that they often forget that someone else put this information on the site. As a result, people forget to cite the source in their paper or give credit if they reference the material in another manner. Citing a source is giving credit to the author or originator for the information that they use from this site in any manner. Not only should printed material be cited but also music, video and pictures (of any kind). When my children were in school and found “free” material they would get excited. I would remind them it, the material wasn’t free and someone created it. Although, it was a giveaway the material should be cited because the material has an author.
As a writer, I love it when I see that someone has cited me. But I don’t like it when someone copies me and doesn’t give me credit, I get upset. We all have egos, but a good digital citizen doesn’t just take information. A good digital citizen may forget to cite it happens, unfortunately it happens more and more now and that is why more information pass coded. Forgetting is not an option in the published world of scholars and writers.
The instructor told us that in one of my first writing courses in my PhD program. We were taught to write the title, author, publication, page number and other information related to the source. The instructor told us to write the page numbers as we took notes or quotes from the material. In this manner we are able to always have the source for the reference section. This style has saved me a number of times, especially now that all of my course work goes through a plagiarism program when I turn in my assignments.
The closer I get in attainning my PhD degree, I get more nervous about things like citing sources and using quality material. This is especially true since my specialization in education is in Educational Technology.
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