According to Wikipedia ‘Social Citizenship’ was a term first coined by T. H. Marshall, who argued that the ideal citizenship experience entails access to political, civil, and social rights in a state.

But how do we bring good social citizenship into the classroom? Simply being a member of a community doesn’t automatically make you a good citizen, which is why teaching citizenship to elementary students is so important.  Citizenship is the quality of a person’s response to membership in a community. By teaching children different themes of citizenship, you can help them learn how to positively contribute to their community. Be sure to focus on empathy, respect, compassion, diversity, and inclusion as you explore themes of citizenship with your class. Relate these themes to your students’ lives to help them understand what being a good citizen means.  

What about the ‘social’ aspect? Being part of the community is to socialize with other individuals. Therefore we encourage students to work together and problem-solve together. The end result is that we can introduce some of the social-emotional learnings. Students collaborate and when they help each other they all become part of the group, the community. This can help with the expression of feelings and emotions. 

With the digitization of our lives, the concept of social citizenship isn’t exempt from this treatment either. Especially since the internet has allowed us to connect with others from across the world, digital communities have been formed. 

So what is the difference between Social and Digital Citizenship? Digital Citizenship is about teaching students to make appropriate decisions with technology and covers a wide range of topics including being safe online, cyberbullying, social media, identity theft, etc. 

Jodi Mahoney, the Technology Teacher at Carl Von Linne Elementary, uses the Common Sense Media curriculum to teach digital citizenship. Kainundrum.com fits in really well with Keeping Games Fun and Friendly, a lesson she is using with her 4th Grade Students. Students responded to questions from the video and designed their own game covers on Jamboard. She incorporated Kainundrum into the unit by introducing it as a game they can design and make it entertaining and friendly for their friends.

We also took the opportunity to ask the students for some feedback and their first impressions of Kainundrum.com. The majority of the response was that they are having fun while learning. 

As Kainundrum.com is primarily a multiplayer game, students have to work together to solve the maze or gather the cubes and protect the cubes from the opposing team. Those who were more competitive were racing, throwing obstacles in the opponent’s paths, and working as a team to collect the most cubes with their electromagnet sensor. Despite that, students who prefer single-player gaming were able to work their way through the maze at their own pace.

It’s not just the game itself that was popular. Most students love the personalization of their bot avatar because they can choose from the 30 emoji characters and add a hat, which also happens to make up their bot name. For example, you can be Owl King if you choose the owl and the king accessory.

Here are a few testimonials from the 4th-grade students we trailed. 

Elliot was saying that they are using Kainundrum as their assignment to learn about social citizenship, collaboration, and problem-solving. 

Maya was talking about how Kainundrum makes her think, she loves the competitiveness and that it is so much fun. We strongly believe that if students have fun and are engaged then the learning will naturally follow.