Who will teach them social networking safety?

October 27, 2008 in Policies, Social Networking, Technology | 6 comments

Will Richardson expressed exasperation with a school leader in a recent post as he tried to blame parents for student misbehavior on FaceBook or MySpace. He proposed the schools need to play a big role:

There is a solution to this, one that we all know, but one that for some reason few seem willing to implement other than in the guise of a “parent awareness night” or some type of scary Internet predator presentation by a state policeman. For the life of me, I can’t understand what is so hard about opening up the first and second and third grade curriculum and find ways to integrate these skills and literacies in a systemic way. If you want kids to be educated about these tools and environments, then maybe we should, um, educate them.

He suggests that we not just talk to them about the dangers of the Internet and social networking, rather we integrate these tools in an age appropriate way from an early age.

As I posted earlier, using social networking is valuable for teaching Internet safety. These new literacies are the reality of our kids’ world and future. They are not going to disappear. Like the books we read, they can be used for good or evil. We need to harness these technologies for learning and promote their use as positive forces.

While parents should play a role, many simply do not understand these technologies. Congress has just passed a bill mandating instruction of social networking safety and cyberbullying. Since we must do it, we should do it in a way that is real and relevant, and in a way that teaches new literacies while harnessing their potential.

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6 comments

  1. Mark Pearson’s avatar

    Mark Pearson on October 28, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    “Safety” in the context of K-12 education always seems to be a euphemism for control. Administrators want control, teachers want control. Perhaps it’s not surprising that when children break free from stultifying controls they behave recklessly. Especially online. It’s enlightening to hear one’s own kids pour scorn on well meaning but futile attempts at health education for example. “If you have sex, you WILL get STDs” being a classic example. Your comment about parents not understanding these technologies is perceptive, but the real issue is that most teachers and nearly all administrators have no clue. A mandate from congress to teach, sorry instruct, about social networking “safety” is likely to have as much effect as sex education does for teen pregnancy.

  2. Steve’s avatar

    Steve on October 28, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Don’t forget the tech people, they want control too. I would like to see some real statistics on Internet predators and compare it with statistics pertaining to dangers in the bathroom and riding bikes. Or, better yet, dangers posed by family, friends, and neighbors.

    Mark, I see a new government program. Use social networking and you WILL get sexually abused.There was a state police officer in the Midwest that had a presentation on MySpace that pretty much said that to the assembled students.

    You are right about teachers. They are, as a whole, clueless about these matters, and are likely to pass out worksheets sponsored by the government in nodded unthinking assent.

    On the positive side, I am making a little headway with our tech committee members on using Social Networking software using the argument that the best way to teach safe use of social networking is to set one up under more controlled circumstances.

  3. mark pearson’s avatar

    mark pearson on October 29, 2008 at 8:39 am

    “On the positive side, I am making a little headway with our tech committee members on using Social Networking software using the argument that the best way to teach safe use of social networking is to set one up under more controlled circumstances.”

    This is a great development. But the problem with walled-garden systems such as Moodle is that it’s very hard then to find good models, for example, of courses for Moodle, since most everything is behind authentication.

    You might find a presentation I did this summer for the Independent Colleges of Indiana useful since it has a real teacher talking about how useful blogging has been for her course : Social Learning for the Digital Native Generation :
    http://www.earlham.edu/markp/LSW/#ICI%20%3A%20Earlham%20Learning%20Spaces
    (click on [Slideshow] then go to bottom right corner for controls)

  4. Steve’s avatar

    Steve on October 29, 2008 at 10:58 am

    I blogged with my students last year with moderation. (That’s the way it will have to be. While I know unmoderated has many advantages, it just wouldn’t fly) They were open to the world and all was good. That’s when CONTROL (long story) became a factor, so I password protected them over the summer until we had a formal policy.

    I am advocating (and will probably succeed) for a system in which parents can chose open or closed blogging. Of course, open is better and I will press the case for it. As long as they are moderated, I’m sure most of my parents will go along with it.

    The social network is in addition to the blogs. I hope to set up a distance collaboration with another fifth grade. Unless I can moderate what the public can view, that’s the way it will probably remain. I will continue to push the envelope with time.

    Also, my students are in the fifth grade, not high school, so we need to take into account maturity and what is age appropriate.

    I look forward to seeing this presentation! I am constantly looking for information to bolster my case. Please direct me to anything you can!

    Thanks again for thoughtful response!

  5. mark pearson’s avatar

    mark pearson on October 30, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Did you use Elgg for your blogging tool? I like that you can set the default to ‘logged in users only’ but also have a ‘public’ face. I would have thought that this would be ideal for the school environment. I’m not sure how you could have parents choose the openness of blogging for their kid in the context of Elgg. Perhaps you could have parents register with the school Elgg system? Ditto for collaborating with another 5th grade class. Are you going to present at Educause about your work? You ought to.

  6. Steve’s avatar

    Steve on October 30, 2008 at 11:56 am

    I used WordPressMU. It has a few plugins that make it possible and pretty easy. In fact, it has five levels of access: public including search engines, public blocking search engines, closed-viewable to all members of the WPMU install, closed-viewable to subscribers to the individual blog, or blocked-viewable only to student and teacher.

    I am not going to offer all these options as it is too confusing. I’ll probably offer options 1 and 3.

    For my situation, I’d need to be able moderate what is viewable to the public in Elgg. I hope to find a way to do that. It would vastly simplify matters!

    I will be presenting some aspects of this at NYSCATE. When and where is educause?

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