Digital rights and responsibilities

In our digital world we should have the rights: To communicate and/or collaborate with others, on a personal and/or professional level. To be able to search out knowledge of various subjects, past, present, and future.
In our digital world we should also know our responsibilities when using technologies, to enable everyone to be safe. We should have privacy and free-speech, but we should act ethically, and have limits. For example, be kind, consider other opinions, don't steal or intrude.
Before we drive a vehicle, we must get a license and understand the rules and regulations of the road. We don't just get the keys handed to us and have someone say, "Good luck".  
In the video: What is Digital Citizenship?", Mike Ribble compared life in the U.S. western frontier days, to the current Internet Digital frontier. We need to be proactive with regard to keeping everyone safe online.   That is Digital Citizenship.

I too liked Mike Ribble’s comparison of the frontier days of exploration and conquest.  I see the digital world as that of exploration and conquest.  As a person who stepped out of the digital world to raise our three children, I left the digital world after I had learned how to write COBOL on paper with a little pen-like stylus and then we ran our coded papers through a machine; after I had mastered centering material on a typewriter by counting the lines and spaces; and after I had started using a computer with the “F” function keys.  I came back to computers and the digital world, such as I am using today.  My first question to one of the gals in the office was “How do I center this text on my computer screen?”  What a laugh I got out of that one!  Now, after working with computers, mastering an Android cell phone, and being able to create all sorts of digital documents, I feel that my “Internet Digital Frontier” has expanded so exponentially that it is hard to imagine what could come next.  I imagine the western frontier explorers felt the same sense of accomplishment when they finally “made it” to their land-of-plenty and their destination!  

In that same regards, staying safe and secure and having responsibilities in the digital world is such a vast undertaking.  I lost a very good friend due to my ineptness in understanding that just because you can post a picture on Facebook, does not mean that you should.  In the same regards, just because the frontier people could traverse this vast land, it did not make it right for all of the carnage and inappropriate transformations of the land.  We do have a rights in the digital world, but it also comes with a lot of responsibility too.  As in the frontier days, hindsight can be very disturbing, and with this course, I have learned that being a proactive and responsible teacher is definitely the way to help our students conquer this vast and unimaginable frontier called Digital Citizenship.