“#NotAboutThemWithoutThem” – Dr. Marialice B.F.X. Curran & her son, Curran Dee [DigCitSummit 2017]

#NotAboutThemWithoutThem: How can adults and children/youth work together to #UseTech4Good? – Marialice B.F.X. Curran & Curran Dee are a Mother/Son Team.

Dr. Marialice B.F.X. Curran is the Founder and CEO of the Digital Citizenship Institute. Her advanced graduate and doctoral studies on adolescent development at Boston College reinforced  her commitment to service learning as Dr. Curran leads by hand, heart and mind. As a mother and a connected educator, she has served as an associate professor, middle school teacher, principal and library media specialist.

As a pioneer in digital citizenship, she developed and created the first 3-credit digital citizenship course for teachers in the United States. She co-founded the digital citizenship chat in Twitter (2011) and the Digital Citizenship Summit (2015). She serves on the leadership team for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Digital Citizenship PLN and is a researcher, keynote, international speaker and TEDxYouth speaker.

An entrepreneur and puppeteer at the age of 11, Dr. Curran’s experiences include world travel with particular interest in the creative arts, middle level education, special education, teacher education and educational technology. Dr. Curran is committed to promoting social good using social media and technology. She believes in a community-driven approach to educating and empowering digital citizens to create solutions in local, global and digital communities. Her mission is to turn negatives into positives and help to transform participants into designers, creative thinkers, global collaborators, problem solvers and justice-oriented digital citizens.

She has partnered with her ten-year old son and the two are a recognized professionally as a mother/son digital citizenship team. The dynamic duo model best practices while working with parents, educators, students and community organizations.

Find out more at the Digital Citizenship Institute.

Follow  Marialice on Twitter at @mbfxc and @digcitinstitute, @digcitsummit and @digcitkids.

Curran Dee

At the age of nine, Curran Dee founded DigCitKids, digital citizenship for kids by kids.  As the & Chief Kid Officer (CKO), he is a fifth grader, a gamer and YouTuber, a hockey player and an international speaker (at DigCitSummitUK, Twitter Headquarters, DigCitSummitNG and DigCitSummitMX) and a student Ignite speaker at ISTE. He has presented at Minefaire and online at both EdChange Global and Global Maker Day. He is a student ambassador for Buncee, Flipgrid, Hoonuit, GoBubble and and Rosetta Stone. A regular student tweeter, he has moderated chats on digital citizenship and student choice and voice on Twitter and provides professional development for teachers and parents on digital citizenship and digital literacy.

Curran is also a TEDxYouth speaker and his talk has been used as part of professional development for educators as a way to encourage student voice, student choice and students as leaders, “If you want us to learn about the world, we need to learn with the world.”

By the first grade, Curran started blogging at home as a way to complete traditional assignments in school. Unfortunately, he only has digital access at home and this has inspired him to advocate for connected learning opportunities in all classrooms around the world. His wish is for digital access for all students everywhere and DigCitKids is a way to amplify student voice in K-12 classrooms.

Find out more at DigCitKids.

Follow Curran at @CurranCentral and @digcitkids.