Dr. Kristen Mattson

Dr. Kristen Mattson I am an educational consultant and adjunct professor sharing about curriculum and instruction, media literacy, digital citizenship and technology ethics.

Dr. Kristen Mattson serves as managing partner & dig cit doctor for Edvolve, which aims to help teachers and leaders transform digital citizenship education. She is a former middle school English teacher & high school library media specialist who has been supporting teachers, leaders, and learners with innovative curriculum and instruction for 17 years.
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In 2014, Kristen was in the early stages

of her doctoral program when she was asked to locate and analyze digital citizenship curriculum in an effort to find content worthy of district-wide adoption. During the process, she found it difficult to compare and contrast materials since each one defined the concept differently. Kristen was also incredibly frustrated by the negative underpinnings that described the internet as a dangerous place and positioned young people as careless victims or malevolent bullies. Digital citizenship curriculum became the focus of Kristen’s doctoral dissertation and her study earned the AATC Dissertation of the Year in 2017. Kristen’s passions for digital citizenship and her expertise in curriculum and instruction led to the publication of two books: Digital Citizenship In Action (ISTE, 2017) and Ethics in a Digital World (ISTE, 2021). She was also named an ISTE Emerging Leader in 2018. Kristen is a resident of Yorkville, IL and teaches graduate courses on media literacy and digital citizenship at the University of Illinois. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with her three teenaged children, dabbling in home renovation projects, working in her flower gardens, and sipping cocktails with friends.

06/09/2026

Special delivery from ISTE today!!

06/09/2026

I got a special delivery from ISTE today! 🥰

05/02/2026
05/02/2026

OpenAI recently gave its popular ChatGPT strict instructions: Stop talking about goblins.

Recent models of the artificial-intelligence chatbot have been bringing up the creatures in conversations with users seemingly out of the blue, as well as gremlins, trolls and ogres.

The goblin-speak caught the attention of programmers, who are often heavy users of the bot. Goblingate, as it was deemed by one X user, was born, with users posting their own encounters with the algorithmic tic.

This week, OpenAI offered the backstory.

Part of the explanation lies in ChatGPT’s “personality” feature, which allows users to select from a handful of prompt instructions that give the chatbot more distinct characteristics.

OpenAI said that for the bot’s “nerdy” personality, which was designed to dial up the playful language, mentions of goblins in its GPT-5.4 model increased 3,881% from a previous version.

To s***f out talk of goblins, OpenAI said it killed the “nerdy” personality in March. When the latest model, released last week, still showed a love for mentioning the mischievous creatures, Open AI published new instructions for its coding tool to limit goblin mentions.

“Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query,” reads an open source line in ChatGPT’s base instructions for its coding assistant.

🔗 Read more: https://on.wsj.com/49hb4Cb

04/22/2026

Allie Cornejo engages in a thoughtful conversation about how digital citizenship is changing in the age of AI. She reflects on the questions schools are wres...

04/12/2026

Students see news daily, but media literacy is often taught separately from real-time news. Most encounter hundreds of stories a week without ever being taught how to think critically about them.

This is why AllSides, in partnership with Look Sharp and with generous support from the Corporation of New York, is launching a national pilot to develop and test a new “Media Literacy Mode” on the AllSides platform — directly integrating critical thinking and media literacy into real-time news engagement.

Learn more and apply by April 24➡️https://bit.ly/4ml4Ruh

Why Join?
💵 $540 stipend per educator (2 per school)
⏲️ Up to 18 hours over one school year
🏫 Join a cohort of 10 schools nationwide
💪 Directly shape tools & curriculum for news literacy

Questions? Email [email protected]

03/17/2026

The three girls say that the nonconsensual n**e images were created by a perpetrator who used AI company xAI's image generation tools.

03/12/2026

We are introducing new awards to recognize faculty and staff for their contributions to teaching and outstanding service to the .

Faculty, staff, students, and alumni are invited to submit nominations. Each nomination should include a 300-word letter explaining how the nominee meets the award criteria.

🔸Teaching Award (Full-time teaching faculty)
🔹Adjunct Teaching Award (Non-full-time teaching faculty)
🔸Staff Excellence Award (Civil Service/Academic Professional)

Submit nominations by April 1 ▶️ bit.ly/410BqUA

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Yorkville, IL

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