My Digital Citizenship Musing - With an Educational Slant

This week’s topic in my tech class is Digital Citizenship. This topic really hits home for me. If you’ve read my first few topical posts, you probably have gotten the idea that I’m a bit wary of the openness of the digital world in general and social media in particular. I think my hang-ups fall in three main categories – people’s behavior, the usefulness of the information and the veracity of the information.

Personally, I’ve stressed over these assignments because of all three of these categories. From the behavior standpoint, I often enjoy the give and take of a spirited debate. While I try to keep the discussion light during these face-to-face exchanges, it’s obviously impossible to read facial and vocal cues online, so I have no reference as to when to change my tactics. This leaves me with the concern that I’m offending or insulting unknown people. Then they’re upset and I look like an ass. While I’m kinda used to looking like an ass and few people care about my opinion of them, the biggest problem is the learning and growth that comes from the exchange is then shut down.

Starting with this as my base, it certainly informs my thoughts about social media. It’s obvious that in far too many cases, people fall into the well-known anti-social behaviors of bullying and trolling. Perhaps this dark view of mine fueled my skepticism using the online world for learning and communication. If these online fora are properly moderated by a responsible adult, I can see how some students take to the format for learning. In Garth Holman’s presentation, he gave inspiring examples of how his students were excited to participate in the online resources connected to his class (link only available to UA students). To me, the key to enabling exchanges like this is the adult connection. This supervision allows educators to harness the excitement of the digital world while (hopefully) training kids on how to be a responsible digital citizen. The Framingham State University wikipage on digital citizenship gives a few good examples of some tips to help kids learn the basics of digital citizenship. I particularly like the quote from Ribble and Bailey and the excerpt from Virginia Shea’s book on the page. I’m not going to summarize them here, you can check them out by following the link. Even if we work on educating students on netiquette, moderation is still essential. Adolescents normally have adult supervision of some sort in the real world, that supervision should also be a part of the digital world. Educators provide this by diligently moderating the online society they create with their students and parents provide this by monitoring their kids’ SM usage. Lack of supervision online will enable problems just as lack of supervision enables problems in the physical world.

In an educational situation, my concern about usefulness is largely mitigated. Since the work needs to be topical, there shouldn’t be a worry about students posting selfies or pictures of their food. For the life of me, I can’t understand why these types of pics are so popular anyhow.

The veracity problem still exists, even in a properly moderated world. This is something that stuck out to me in Mr. Holman’s presentation. His stories of how his kids took to the building the online text were obviously mind-blowing. Kids engaged like that is the dream of educators, parents and society in general. But we need to ensure that form enhance function and that the facts are thoroughly researched. I don’t want to nitpick Mr. Holman, but during his presentation he talked about the production skills some of his kids picked while working on their pages. There is not arguing that those are impressive skills for any kid to add to their toolboxes. But we need to also remember that this was a Social Studies class. Did the time spent working on the presentation of the material take away from time available to understand the information? Does the production value overtake the academic value? Since Mr. Holman’s students text was not for a grade, this wouldn’t have come into play in this situation. But I think educators need to always remember that flashy doesn’t mean mastery, some kids can show their understanding in ways understated ways.

This leaves the heart of the veracity problem. Before students are turned loose to create content others are going to see, they need to be schooled on research and fact-checking. As the famous quote often attributed to Mark Twain goes, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” (It’s a good link that traces the history of the various versions of the quote from 1710 through the 21^st Century.) For an example of misinformation found online, just compare this page of Edison’s inventions to this that summarizes the inventions he took credit for because he was the boss or this that talks about how he some of his inventions were really improvement to existing technology. I’m all for kids putting together information in new ways, it’s just that the educators have a responsibility to ensure the information is correct before exposing others to it. (This is not such a problem in a format like my tech class. We are talking about our takes on the information presented, not really presenting anything as factual. Big difference.)

by goopy mart used with creative commons license 4.0

I have two more “HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!” moments. And again, I am in awe be the effort the kids in Mr. Holman’s class put into their work, so I hope I don’t sound like a complete naysayer.

We shouldn’t rely only on the online medium for kids to express their learning or to get information from. Part of education is giving the kids the skills they need to succeed as adults. When most of them get to the workplace, they will need to both take in and create documents without all the bells and whistles. While the world is changing, I think we’re going to be a while before the business world gets all in with the wikis and the sharing.

Sometimes we need to stay in the moment instead of worrying about sharing it. In Mr. Holman’s story about the kids reporting on the convention, they were obviously doing great things to share with others. But in doing so, they were missing out on a chance to share with and learn from those in the room with them. We’ve all seen parents that experience all their kids events only through a viewfinder. We have to remember sometimes to put down our new digital recording devices and to use the oldest recording device on the planet – our brains. 

Sorry about the change in font colors. I have no idea what happened and don't know how to fix it.