Citizenship through Online Communication

Young writers acquire online writing skills as they instant message a friend, text message, or keep up a blog. However, students need to be engaged in educational online writing beyond a small circle of individuals on a buddy list. The web has become a "read/write web," in the sense that students are using it to develop reading and writing skills. (1) Web-based communication has made its way into the elementary classroom, and researchers are beginning to report that young writers benefit from online writing. In a comparison of traditional writing and web-based compositions, Englert, Manalo, and Zhao found first and second grade students "wrote more, incorporated more genre specific characteristics and demonstrated conventional writing skills" on the web-based assignment. (2) In one first grade classroom, students wrote e-mails to workers asking them about their jobs in the community. The students developed authentic reading, responding, and communication skills as they corresponded online with community workers. (3) Students are inspired to write in online discussion boards with classroom peers because the teacher is not the only audience. (4) Gardener, noting that online writing allows more people to share their writing than at any other time in history, states that online writing improved her students writing skills. (5) Discussion groups, chat rooms, and e-mail are forums for writing experiences in writer's workshops. (6) Web-based communication is a tool to broaden opportunities for students to write. While online writing is an appropriate literacy skill, social studies content, such as citizenship, is used to drive the subject matter for online communication. Students become civically engaged by promoting the welfare of the online community or by using technology to take action for the common good. Sample goals for online writing activities include letter writing to political leaders, sharing personal or local insights on current issues, addressing civil rights, contributing to opinion polls, consulting an expert, or demonstrating support for a global or local environmental issue. Online voting and advocacy, online political information, and online civic activism are three major developments related to the internet in educating students for citizenship. (7) Teachers select the appropriate context for writing activities that correlate with the social studies curriculum, whether it involves a local, state, national, or global focus. Teachers select the technology tools to accomplish online writing and civics activities. The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-S) for students in grades three through five guides the use of technology tools to communicate, access information, publish work, and problem-solve inside and outside of the classroom. (8) Some technology tools to achieve these goals include discussion groups, e-mail, digital video, telecommunication, student web pages, multimedia presentation software, and global online projects. The selection of the online environment and the technology tools depends on the objective of the online writing and civics activity. Julie Fessenden, a fourth grade teacher in Missouri and co-author of this article, uses technology for online communication. While teaching in Hannibal, Missouri, and in Nixa, Missouri, she used online news sources and various online communication platforms for students to communicate with others inside and outside of the classroom. She has extensive technology support and professional development as an Enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies (eMINTS) teacher. Her training and classroom experiences helped her infuse technology into her civics instruction. Julie uses four news websites with fourth graders for reading and writing. During independent reading time, students have one day a week where they can read the news at the computer. She believes that reading the news and other information off the internet is a literacy skill relevant to today's world. …