Suddenly, Dual Citizenship

Did you wake up one morning in March and feel as if you had arrived in a foreign land on an overnight flight, lost your laptop on the way, were scheduled to be the speaker at some sort of event, and didn’t know the language? That’s how I’ve viewed my sudden travel to immersion in the digital world (Zoomtopia), learning a new way of working on that overnight flight. I’m likening it to having to acquire dual citizenship across two countries: one of the in-person and one of the digital. It is also not a temporary situation; every dimension that I work in will never be the same, whether it is teaching (how can I do virtual labs?), research (do we need to take separate cars to the field site?), convening scientists (how do we hold a virtual conference?), or even the day-to-day office environment (who gets to work from home, and how often?). The message is, I am now a dual citizen, permanently. So how can I be a good one?

A dual citizen is defined as citizenship of two countries concurrently, each to which you owe allegiance to its rules and culture, and so the first question might be if the two worlds have the same principles and values. I’m not aware of a clear list of citizenship rules for the in-person world, but the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) lists a set of five competencies for digital citizenship:
Inclusive:

I am open to hearing and respectfully recognizing multiple viewpoints, and I engage with others online with respect and empathy.

Informed:

I evaluate the accuracy, perspective, and validity of digital media and social posts

Engaged:

I use technology and digital channels for civic engagement, to solve problems and be a force for good in both physical and virtual communities.

Balanced:

I make informed decisions about how to prioritize my time and activities online and off.

Alert:

I am aware of my online actions and know how to be safe and create safe spaces for others online.

So substitute “in-person” for “on-line”, and I’d propose that these same competencies apply to the in-person world. In fact, both worlds have something to teach the other: recent experience has shown that a digital conference has much to teach us in terms of broadening our audience, but Zoom gloom makes respect and empathy difficult. So, the competencies of each country seem to be the same, but what about the culture? How do I need to feel about my two home countries? While pondering this, I consulted a graduate student of mine, a wonderful young woman from Iran with a passion for environmental education and whose heart and soul seem capable of graceful residence in both her native country and her newly adopted one. When I asked what her secret was, she said love. Love for both places, simultaneously, wholeheartedly, no zero-sum game for her. So my next step is this: growing a space to love the digital way of collaborating as much as I love the moments of co-creating a project while at lunch with a colleague, and learning to seamlessly go from one language to the other. Guess I’ll attend that webinar on “Owning the room with Zoom”.

On the theme of change and adaptation, we are pleased to announce that we are moving to a new format of the newsletter. Launched over a year ago, the newsletter has served as a valuable network-building and informational tool. Now that we have a large table with many voices, it is time to have some conversations, and so we will be building each newsletter around a question or theme that is central to the restoration effort (some examples are spatial targeting, behavior change, speciation of nutrients, and climate adaptation). We hope to provide a forum on which to have an informed discussion of the science needs around a particular issue, and to connect colleagues across the partnership in a more focused way, around an issue of common interest. Please let us know suggestions for topics that you’d like to see.

All the best,

Denice