--> The Participation Gap
I was interested to read in the Jenkins whitepaper about US cities that plan to provide free wifi access to internet. Free! The reasoning is, that it will give families, who are at the limit of their financial resources access to connection, because if children in these families aren’t given the same access as their wealthier peers, then they will inevitably fall further behind.
I had an interesting conversation at the end of the term with a deputy at a school on the outskirts of Sydney. The school is quite isolated (not of course in the same sense as a school in the far west of the state), and they will have to pay for connection to Ethernet cabling to cater for the students. It will be expensive, but as they are planning to be a Bring Your Own Device school in the future, the correct hardware is essential. It is not something that can be skimped on. Other schools have tried to do it cheaply, and the result is that only a handful of students at a time can connect, the network slows to a crawl, and everyone is frustrated. In my own home the cries of “stop downloading, your hogging all the bandwidth” are frequent, and that’s with only 6 of us, a whole school worth of users trying for access with an inadequate connection is unthinkable.
Access is not the end of the conversation though. Getting connected has to be inextricably tied to education in the use of the available tools. In fact, it is even more important. Which makes sense. So in our teaching, once our children are connected, they must be equipped to use the available tools. We must be purposeful in our instruction, because, digital natives or not, these children need more than the device and the connection. Just as most of them would not learn to read without explicit instruction, so they won’t automatically know how to access creative commons items to embed in their work, or why it is important that they do.
Thoughts on Online Privacy
We seem to be moving towards more transparency online, Facebook is intended to be conducted under your own name, and while there are those who do have multiple accounts, or use a pseudonym, I think they are in the minority. Pearson says this is a good thing. That anonymity loosens our restraint, and we are more likely to behave badly, when we think it won’t have a consequence in our real lives.
I’ve seen that on forums. There is a pack mentality sometimes, and it can be brutal. One forum I belong to has 233 000 members. Of course we won’t all think the same thing about every issue that is discussed. For me, that’s ok, and if I see something that I don’t necessarily agree with, I won’t dive in and tell the person they are an idiot (I might, and sometimes do think it). There are those however who call their unkindness honesty - and honesty is a good thing, right? Hiding behind the screen, I have watched different posters pulverized by others. And they are real people, vulnerable and deeply wounded by what are essentially attacks on them. Just because you can’t see the crazies doesn’t make their criticism less hurtful. I think that if we were forced to use our real names, a lot of this kind of thing would stop, that users would think twice, and not go on the attack. Anonymity confers a degree of false bravado, and opinions can be wielded with less restraint.
On the other hand, there have been so many dire warnings about not giving too much away online, not allowing some predatory type to “find” you in real life, it’s hard to know what the right course of action is.
The issue of facebook and privacy is apparently very important to young people, Raynes-Goldie says it ranks higher than acts of terrorism. Which seems an extreme kind of comparison, but perhaps Facebook privacy is a more relatable issue, and one more likely to have an impact on them than a potential act of terror.
The relative newness of the technologies, and the social media sites means that as a society we haven’t developed the same kinds of rules of etiquette that constrain other behaviours, we are still finding out where the limits are. Getting our students to consider these things is important. Probably as time goes on, the expectations will become more defined, but now, when someone poses a “what do you think?” kind of question online, be it on a forum, a youtube video or a Facebook post, is it rude to say what you think? Even if you don’t agree? Even if what you think is unfavourable and you can't express your opinion without being offensive? Can we in text make our meaning clear enough, that we can respectfully disagree without being perceived as unkind?
I had thought prior to reading the article on teachers befriending students on Facebook that the boundary had been well defined. Looking at NSW DEC policy, the recommendation is no, don’t befriend students. Reading some of the policy in the article however, I can see how this line blurs, both when the wording becomes unclear, and when schools start adopting Facebook as a method of communication.
The solution seems to be, while a student is at school, they shouldn’t be on your friend list. Liking a school page however, is an acceptable compromise.
Pearson, J. (2009). Life as a dog: Personal identity and the internet. Meanjin, 68(2), 67-77. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=200906244;res=APAFT
Raynes-Goldie, K. (2010). Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook, First Monday, 15(1), 4 January. Available http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2775/2432
Harris, C. (2010). Friend me?: School policy may address friending students online, School Library Journal, 1 April. Available http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6724235.html
No comments:
Post a Comment