Throughout history, people have always been able to live comfortably in knowing that the “default” of their lives was always set to private. They controlled what the general public knew about them and could be relieved that the only people who would comment on their work were those that they let in or privileged to see it. Enter the world of technology with specific emphasis on social networking and instant messaging.
To a large degree, our classrooms still perpetuate the fictitious default of privacy, and it has the potential to cause a huge problem when students leave the friendly confines of school “x”. Most student work is only seen by the individuals the students wants to see it. This includes her or his classmates.
The default in life is public. Even in cases where you think it might be private (text messages, e-mails, direct messages), you can bet that there are people working right now to try and hack into your information or work. The old adage of “is that something you would say to your mother” has never been more relevant than today.
I told my kids today that they need to start thinking of everything in their lives as public knowledge. If they think this way, they will have an easier time adjusting in the future. We need to start making student work more public and finding more and more ways to show students the lasting impact of what they do on a daily basis.
This means that in addition to hanging projects in the hallways, schools should begin taking pictures of them and posting them on school websites. Creating a database and portfolio system that allows students to revisit work they made five years earlier AND allow them to do it from anywhere in the world. School districts that block social networking sites or don’t allow students to post information on wikis or websites are creating a generation of naive citizens that will ruin their reputation and public life if they aren’t educated the proper way.
With the increasing emphasis on public as the default, we are provided with the daunting task of teaching kids the implications of their actions. How well do your kids understand this concept?
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Well, my guy is 2, so we’re not really there yet, but this IS something I’ve been thinking about. From both my perspective and his. I often Facebook and/or Twitter (mostly FB) about funny things he’s done or the difficulties of parenting a strong-willed 2-year-old. I put photos of him on my FB. And it’s starting to dawn on me that this stuff will potentially be up forever. In light of that, I’m starting to rethink my practices. I can control (for the most part) who sees my awkwardly posed grade school photos because they’re sitting in boxes in my mother’s basement. His (if I post them), in addition to details, will be out there forever, for potential employers, friends and even girlfriends to see. That seems rather unfair. So, maybe we’ll skip the posting of future photos.
And of course, eventually, he’ll want his own FB/Twitter/whatever-is-next account. Not sure how to get across the aspect of future implications to someone who really won’t be able to think past the next 15 minutes. Research has shown that the parts of the brain that compute future consequences/implications is simply not developed in teenagers.
As for the “is that something you’d say in front of your mother” test, I went to Catholic school, so the nuns always asked us, “Is that something you’d say/do/read/listen to in front of Baby Jesus?” Either way it’s a good test, because if the answer is no, you shouldn’t put it online either.
an Ethic of Excellence by Ron Berger deals with this also for a different reason but also worth noting.
David
You make an interesting point, and I wonder how many teachers fully grasp the implications of personal information available on the Internet. I constantly struggle with what I choose to share about myself and navigating different aspects of my electronic identity. I think that this is in many ways a literacy issue as well as a social skill. I hope to see more schools and districts provide guidance and support to help teachers bring more new media into their classrooms and more classrooms into new media.
“It takes a community to raise a child.” I heard this many years ago. The statement gained meaning through the experience of raising children in very small villages and towns in southern Saskatchewan. There was certainly a degree of privacy in our lives, but if our son climbed the local grain elevator everyone knew it. If someone rolled their car in a ditch or was caught in some other sort of indiscretion it was known. My children grew up knowing they were watched. Children and adolescents are aware of this, yet despite our assumptions about their self consciousness, they largely behave oblivious of it. You don’t believe me? Drive a car load of adolescents one hundred kilometers to a volleyball game and listen to their candid conversations. I notice this supervising hallways as well. Our urban anonymity is relatively modern I think. Technology and its resulting globalization of community return us to something more primal perhaps.