… and Digital Citizenship

With the demise of print and the increasing reliance on digital storage and repositories what does it now mean to be literate? Are we required to be metaliterate? and what might that even mean?

Digital literacy, or metaliteracy, leads on to Digital Citizenship which is becoming a more serious topic with the increase in online and virtual activity, in both our professional and personal lives. Field trips to communities like Virtual Ability Island show that they have codes of behaviour by which residents are expected to abide. This protects the members of the community and helps visitors understand how to behave. How are such codes developed and enforced? Should there be penalties for breaching them and if so, what kind? Do residents have a responsibility to contribute to their communities, the virtual environment, the metaverse? How do we avoid virtual chaos? These questions have been debated from the early days of online engagement, but while communities were small, or controlled by corporations, they were largely implicit. As the metaverse expands and becomes more of a community environment there is a greater need to discuss and agree on approaches to regulation governing acceptable behaviour. Our field trip to The Digital Outpost in Second Life, led by its creator, Valibrarian, addresses these issues and encourages participants to become immersed as they learn through practice.

Preparation for this class

Please read the text (approx 21 minutes).
This must be completed before class where we will be discussing the following questions:

1. What is a digital citizen?
2. How might the move from reading to digital viewing change society?
3. Is too much information worse than too little?

Essential Reading

• Hill, V. J. (2020). Metaliteracy and our Metamodern Times [Blog post.]
  Here is a summary of each chapter https://docs.google.com/document/.
  (Reading time 10 minutes).
• Ribble, M. (2017). Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. In Digital Citizenship.
  The concept of a digital citizen is coming into focus and leading to the establishment of principles that outline the rights and responsibilities of 21st Century online citizens.
  (Reading time 8 minutes).

Additional reading

• Wikipedia contributors. (2018, November 29). Digital Citizen. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
  This entry gives a solid overview of the concept of Digital Citizenship.
  (Reading time 8 minutes).

Conclusion

By end of this presentation you should have a greater understanding of how rapidly digital transformation is progressing and the importance of metaliteracy in the twenty-first century. You will also appreciate the nature of digital citizenship in the natural world as well as the metaverse.

Guest speaker – Valibrarian

Valibrarian (Valerie Hill in the natural world) is a Library and Information Science researcher and Librarian currently living in Seattle, Washington. She is passionate about digital citizenship since the Internet and the Information Age transformed her profession. After nearly 20 years in virtual environments, she decided to create a 3D space for documenting her research journey and named it Digital Citizenship Outpost in Second Life. The region is open to visitors and is based on the four seasons which surround the landing point called Oscillation Atrium. Here can be found an archive of information, presentations and lessons promoting discussion.

Valerie’s interests range from traditional literacy to metaliteracy and new media formats (virtual reality, augmented reality and virtual worlds). Her most recent book is Metamodernism and Changing Literacy: Emerging Research and Opportunities, 2020. She also serves as the Director of the Community Virtual Library and sits on the Board of the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium. You can read her blog Valibrarian.