The internet can be a dangerous place. "Shock" news makes headlines. Target credit card data is breached! Thirteen year old girl abducted by man she met in a chat room! Cyberbullying determined as the cause of a young man's suicide! There is an almost daily phishing scam in one of my e-mailboxes. How can we expect children to be safe, especially in school?
Even for young children, there are many ways members of a classroom experience being connected and using collaborative tools via the Inernet, without exposing student information to strangers. In a Google Classroom, one must be invited to participate and have a school-supplied account. Edmodo and Moodle learning platforms work in a similar fashion. Some of the sharing tools on school platforms are limited, but my personal school technology theory is, "If you make it complicated in school, the real world looks easy!"
In reality, most high school students act safely, if not always appropriately, on the internet. When my school had eight computers twelve years ago, the boys tried to watch football instead of doing school work. Today, with our BYOD policy, most students don't need the school computers in order to access entertainment, be it Angry Birds, or that next super-important text. Sometimes the wireless is too slow, so they try to "get around the system," but I usually catch that pretty quickly. Unless they are "being funny" or showing off, students are trying to get their work done so they don't have to bring it home.
Some of the old, somewhat paranoid, security is still intact in our building. A junior carpentry student was looking up wire strippers for a class assignment and was blocked for possible pornography. The only way around it was to give him an iPad to use on the wireless network.
Through their exposure to social media, children are warned about the kind of damage inappropriate posts can have on their reputation. I agree with William Ferriter that those at risk in other situations are the most likely to make poor choices on the Internet. A tiered approach, like SRBI, is a great tool to appropriately target the right kids. At the other end of the spectrum, holding up examples of young people in our classes or in the media who use the Internet as a place for learning new skills, from skateboarding tricks to guitar riffs, can reinforce the best possible uses of that medium.
References:
Ferriter, W. Digitally speaking / positive footprints. Educational Leadership, April 2011. Vol 68. No 7. p. 92-
93. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr11/vol68/num07/Positive-Digital-
Footprints.aspx
Richardson, W. A new generation of learners. TEDx NYED. 2011.YouTube video.
ICT = Information and communication technology
No comments:
Post a Comment