# 5-6 Exploring the Vision of and Promotional Strategies for Digital Citizenship Literacy

## 1. Digital citizenship education should be provided to all age groups with different backgrounds as a part of digital inclusion

Governments and private organizations in Taiwan, like many other countries, focus on citizens aged 7 to 18 as the target audience for digital citizenship education. However, the Japanese and German governments have extended digital citizenship education to all age groups and designed tailored materials. Raising digital literacy across various age groups and communities can foster mutual support and collaboration, creating a more comprehensive digital citizenship learning network. Moreover, today, civic tech communities serve as digital citizenship literacy learning environments for adults. As these communities mature, their outreach can be extended downward to younger generations and upward to older demographics. For instance, initiatives like g0v and Code for Japan began focusing on youth participation in 2020 by developing projects that nurture digital citizenship among students. These efforts enhance community diversity and foster intergenerational and interdisciplinary learning networks for digital citizenship education.

## 2. An Interconnected ecosystem: The essential roles of government, society, schools, and families in digital citizenship education

The advancement of technology is so rapid that it is hard to keep up with it, and digital citizenship education is in development and subject to continuous updates. It is common for governments, society, schools, and families to evolve at different speeds with limited interaction. Therefore, an “education ecosystem” is crucial, leveraging collective power to achieve a more significant impact. For instance, government can invite practitioners from the private sector to participate in the definition and formulation of policies for digital citizenship education, enhance teacher training programs to incorporate digital citizenship education and project-based learning, and provide more flexibility and channels to promote collaboration between the private sector, schools, and other institutions; schools may actively collaborate with external resources, design mechanisms and a culture that encourage teachers to take further training, and increase resources and courses for students to try out projects on their own, on a flexible basis; in addition to upskilling industries, society can offer resources such as knowledge, technology, funding, consulting, job/internship opportunities, and foster recognition of civic tech experience, thereby offering more career opportunities to civic tech contributors; “parents” should not only improve their knowledge and skills related to digital citizenship literacy but also set an example by participating in civic actions. They can encourage and accompany their children in these activities, learning through participation and transforming educational perspectives. This provides children more space for self-directed learning and helps them develop four key digital citizenship competencies: problem-solving skills, human-machine collaboration, interdisciplinary collaboration, and public participation.

## 3. Digital citizenship literacy: “Citizenship > Digital”

Digital citizenship literacy should first focus on continuing the core goals of civic education: awareness of society, a sense of responsibility, and civic engagement. Then, we should consider the emerging needs of the digital age and make adjustments, including the increasing importance of media literacy, one’s digital rights and freedoms, and digital inclusion. Furthermore, in an era of rapid technological development, society prioritizes technology over the humanities. However, technology originates from human needs and cannot be separated from the humanities and social sciences. Therefore, cultivating humanities-related abilities remains crucial, which is why digital learning must integrate the concept of “citizenship.”

## 4. Practice and action emphasized in digital citizenship literacy

Unlike the traditional approach of learning in digital or civic studies, which focuses on memorization and exams to accumulate knowledge and skills, modern digital citizenship education emphasizes practice and action. Students learn by doing and apply their knowledge to address real-world social issues. Self-directed learning and PBL (project/problem-based learning) will be increasingly critical learning methodologies in the AI era. If teachers can integrate digital citizenship education, which emphasizes awareness of social issues, into self-directed learning and PBL, students can quickly learn how to use digital technologies to engage in civic participation, and teachers can more effectively incorporate self-directed learning and PBL into their instruction by using social issues as context or scenario. However, many educators lack prior training in self-directed learning or PBL, and few have experience conducting projects themselves. Their limited experience and capabilities make guiding students through projects a daunting task. Therefore, it depends upon experienced practitioners to provide guiding frameworks and relevant resources. For instance, g0v’s School 001 invites seasoned contributors from the g0v community to turn their civic tech experiences into course materials and project templates while offering consultation on student projects.

## 5. Integrate the current educational mechanisms to increase student participation

Currently, most civil society organizations organize activities to attract students to participate in digital citizenship projects, such as project competitions and guided workshops, and most of the time, students with high learning motivation are drawn. However, students with lower learning motivation or from financially disadvantaged backgrounds often need more access to information or resources to develop projects. Therefore, we need to ensure that our educational programs are accessible to everyone. On the other hand, to inspire students’ motivation to learn, starting with issues that students personally care about in digital citizenship projects will work better. Therefore, focusing on guiding students to explore issues they care about before starting project development is crucial. If these efforts can be integrated into the existing educational system, collaborating directly with schools and teachers to incorporate such projects into the curriculum would provide students who initially lack relevant information or interest with more opportunities. Moreover, because the society in Taiwan still prioritizes academic achievement, students under academic pressure can only devote limited time to developing projects. Integrating these projects with school curricula would offer students more space to work on them.

## 6. Enhance international collaboration to learn from one another, share resources, and improve altogether

Driven by AI, many countries have become more proactive in promoting digital citizenship education. When developing such education, experience sharing, exchange, and collaboration between countries will contribute to overall progress. Also, implementing the open-source concept, making educational resources from various institutions publicly available, and organizing international exchange events to share experiences and explore collaboration possibilities will be helpful. For instance, g0v has collaborated with Code for Japan on the Youth Civic Tech Project for over four years. They have jointly hosted project demo days and taken students to participate in civic tech activities in one another’s countries. This has fostered student exchange and promoted their respective approaches to promoting digital citizenship education. Beyond experience exchange and collaboration, a more advanced method is to invite students from different countries to develop projects together, such as proposing civic tech solutions for global issues. Global issues can serve as common topics for student collaboration while enhancing their international perspectives and language skills.