It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of teaching our students how to use technology appropriately and responsibly. And what’s just as important is making sure we’re helping all our students build these essential digital citizenship skills. The students in our classrooms are unique, each with their own individual learning needs. Just as we differentiate our core content instruction to meet these needs, our approach to digital citizenship should take student diversity into account. So how can you best think about teaching these critical skills to your students with learning and attention issues?
Identifying student challenges
I would start by considering common characteristics of kids with learning and attention issues, and think about which of these characteristics could present challenges when teaching digital citizenship. You can, of course, anticipate that students with reading issues will have difficulty with the reading. And students with ADHD may act impulsively online and will have difficulty sustaining attention.
But the biggest challenge may be cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility involves both flexible thinking and task switching. These skills let students think about problems in multiple ways—and abandon old approaches to try something new.…Read More
