DigCitPLN Annual Award Nominations
The DigCit PLN Award is awarded annually at the ISTE conference.
We are looking for educators who exemplify what it means to be a digital citizen and leader. Successful nominees will be those who consistently model and promote excellent digital citizenship, and who mentor and lead others to be more active digital citizens.
Do you know an awesome digital citizenship advocate?
CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE SOMONE
​
Are you an awesome digital citizenship advocate?
CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE YOURSELF
**Note: The links above will prompt you to create a new account (not your ISTE login) to access the nomination form.
Amy Eakin
2019 Digital Citizenship Network Award Winner
Despite the remoteness of these communities, or rather because of it, the Northwest Arctic Borough embraces and uses technology to create opportunity for these rural/remote schools to provide an excellent education for its students. Amy Eakin is the Technology Director who leads this critical work. From instructional design, to infrastructure builds, Amy is the education leader who makes technology work for schools in this remote region of arctic Alaska.
​
Only in recent years has cellular technology has come to the NW Arctic villages. This has meant that a whole world of social media and media access has arrived to students and families for the first time. Recognizing that families were in need of help navigating this new technology, Amy embraced digital citizenship as an embedded part of her work. She instituted a professional development requirement for her staff, and then worked to provide opportunities for sustained digital citizenship in all 14 remote schools.When the Alaska Department of Education began to sponsor a week long digital citizenship focus in September of 2017, Amy saw that as an opportunity to create a week of intense focus in her schools, and importantly to better include parents in the process of defining how technology can/should be used in their families. In 2018 Amy brought in the film 'Screenagers' to every village school, inviting parents, students, teachers and community member, including elders, to watch and discuss the ways in which cell phones and technology can be used for good. Also during that week, she created a theme for each day of Digital Citizenship Week and had students across every village dress up in colors of the day and share out the learning they were doing around the principles of digital citizenship. It was an incredibly successful celebration of digital citizenship and of communities coming together to have a broader conversation about how they wanted to help youth and families manage the growth of technology in their unique region. Her work on digital citizenship from a community perspective is inspiring and impactful in her unique Alaskan, arctic context.