Barbara Anna Zielonka
August's Digital Citizenship Champion, Barbara Anna Zielonka, is an English teacher and a teacher trainer at Nannestad High School, Norway. She is a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, co-author of Skills coursebook, winner of the " Gullepleprisen" 2017, the Great Global Project Challenge Grantee, and project coordinator of several multinational digitally-based projects.
"As a teacher who has designed a dozen of international projects online, I have been trying to show my students that digital citizenship is not about knowing how to deal with online criminals and cyberbullies. It is about building online communities, shaping their world in a creative way, managing their personal information and about being internet savvy. Hopefully, one day all the students regardless of their age and location will become ambassadors of positive digital citizenship.
"It is also my strong belief that we need to focus on digital leadership in our teaching. Jennifer Casa-Todd, the author of the excellent book entitled “Social Leadia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership”, emphasizes that it is high time we teach our students how to use social media to promote important causes, empower those who do not have any voice, address social inequality, learn and share and be a positive influence in the lives of others. If teachers become not only digital citizens, but also digital leaders we will be able to transform instruction and school culture today."
If you want to find out how Barbara Anna Zielonka implements a digital citizenship and leadership curriculum, visit the following websites:
Barbara was nominated by Paul Koczur.