Digital Citizenship and Digital Access

Earlier in this unit we looked at the Digital Divide, separating it into two dimensions: Physical Access and Cognitive Access (level of skill). However, it has been proposed with the evolving nature that the divide has far reaching aspects. Read this well-researched article and complete the following tasks:

1. Create a Thinglink (www.thinglink.com) artefact based on the obstacles noted in the article.

 2. Research the elements; note their relevance to social capital (in the context of social connectivity), knowledge capital (in the context of education and business) and human capital (in the business context). It is important to clarify the role of data, information and knowledge before you expand on the topic of the different gaps.

3. Ensure that within the image you create a summary of your findings and how they relate to the South African context. Each obstacle noted should be substantiated and referenced to South Africa, and any possible solutions you think could be devised to solve this. You can draw reference to the findings from the surveys conducted in the previous activity, bearing in mind the socio-economic groups that attend a private tertiary institute.

 4. Note the impediments these obstacles represent to the success of an individual in today’s digital divide.

Digital Rights and Responsibilities

We communicate daily in order to be social,complete work for business as well as for academic tasks the way in which we communicate for the different tasks is very different, as when communicating in a social environment the language and tone of voice will be very informal and relaxed where as in the business environment it will be formal style of talking.

That is why a standard code of conduct needs to be created in order to not have a miss communication especially when communicating over the Internet or digitally as it is very easy to misinterpret a message due to the lack of face to face contact and being able to hear the persons tone of voice as well as take ques from the persons facial expression. an AUP (Acceptable USE Policy) is often put in place as a guidelines for employees as they not only represent the company during working ours but outside as well. Employees in breach of these guidelines are often without a job as it is normally stated within the contract that they need to keep within these guidelines and keep the company in a good light with the public and other companies in the work environment. Some examples of these AUP guidelines that a company could put in place are;

• Remember to be Human, the sender of a message must not forget that it is also a person who is receiving the message on the other end, that is why never say something that could hurt the person reading the email or message. A good guide line is to never say something to the person in a message that one would not say to the persons face.
•  Follow the same standards of etiquette that you follow offline in real life.
• 
  
• Keep a positive digital footprint online,do not post anything negative or that may harm another individual reading anything you have posted.
• Share knowledge with others.
• Respect others privacy. Do not give out a persons personal information.

These are just a few examples of an AUP which as in themselves basically the same rules that able to a good netiquette online. In Short, don't do anything online that would be frowned upon or seen as rude or unethical in real life.

References

Afrihost.com, (2015). Acceptable Use Policy. [online] Available at: http://www.afrihost.com/site/page/acceptable_use_policy [Accessed 21 May 2015].

Commonsensemedia.org, (2015). 1-to-1 Essentials - Acceptable Use Policies | Common Sense Media. [online] Available at: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/1to1/aups [Accessed 21 May 2015].

Graves, A. (2015). What is acceptable use policy (AUP)? - Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] WhatIs.com. Available at: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/acceptable-use-policy-AUP [Accessed 21 May 2015].

It.brown.edu, (2015). Acceptable Use Policy | Computing & Information Services. [online] Available at: https://it.brown.edu/computing-policies/acceptable-use-policy [Accessed 21 May 2015].

Sans.org, (2015). [online] Available at: https://www.sans.org/security-resources/policies/general/pdf/acceptable-use-policy [Accessed 21 May 2015].