Creating Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship in the classroom

We all want to see the Internet as a place to go for learning but as this technology quickly became more accessible to everyone problems and conflicts started to emerge. People who thought they were just sharing music with friends (on the internet) became Pirates and were committing theft and as we were trying to figure out how to regulate information or whether it’s right to suppress free speech the overwhelming safety issues and deviant behavior issues jumped to the top of the list of priorities. It seems new issues come up faster than we can solve the present ones. We as Educators need to discuss these topics openly with students that are using technology on a daily basis. They are often times warned about talking to strangers on chatlines but don’t see the threat because they are not in the presence of the stranger. This can have frightening outcomes as the show “Dateline” documented in an online sting to catch child sex predators. These issues are serious and they won’t just go away, we all need to be diligent in finding ways to make the Internet a safe place for our children to learn and communicate. Using a safe and private intranet site for the students to use for online discussions about class topics or sites where they can work in groups on projects would be a good way to model safety precautions. Advising students not to share too much on sites like Facebook is important. In the first chapter of “The Digital Diet” it is addressed that the students should ask themselves if anything they put on the web may be a risk to their safety. Showing the students examples of information shared on a make believe site and explaining how that information can be used by predators would be one way to show them how important it is to be careful what they share. We want to shield our children but educating them can give them the tools they need to not become victims while using the Internet. These are important topics and issues that are being dealt with globally and the students are the technology enriched generation that will be important in dealing with these problems in the future, so they should be involved today.

Viewing, using, gathering information along with sharing and presenting information on the Internet comes with responsibilities. With the increasing amount of interactive spaces now in use the information is now like on overload and many of the resources may not be accurate. As discussed in chapter 7 of Larry Rosen’s book “Rewired” some sites like Wikipedia are frequently visited and the information is trusted as if it were from the “Webster Dictionary”. These sites are useful only if the user understands where the information is coming from. Young users of the internet need guidance in searching tools and how to use them to find what they really want in all this sea of information. We also need to guide them in how they should use the Internet when they are participating in interactive sites. They may not understand how many people can see what they post and that they can’t just erase it. The basic rules of behavior that we should teach our students are outlined in Chapter 1 of “The Digital Diet” to include: Respect yourself, protect yourself, respect others, protect others, respect intellectual property and protect intellectual property. These behavior ideas may seem simple enough but classes need to discuss them before using technology in a lesson. Then of course there are some that just live for the shock factor and they could get themselves in trouble and I wouldn’t want to be the teacher that was responsible for giving them a dangerous avenue for their extreme behavior. We’ve all heard of crazy shows like “Jack xxx” where dangerous stunts are performed so adult guidance and supervision should be included. When adding posts to a blog or web site the teacher should filter what’s permanently posted so issues can be addressed and changed to be appropriate before they are viewed by the public. Technology as everything else in this world can be wrongly used but we need a new generation who won’t put up with using their internet for wrong and will rally the world together for good when they need to - because they can.

 Visual Media is used to sell us ideas and shape our ideas to sell us a product.  It objectifies us and tells us what we need and want so we can be “perfect’, but what we really need is to embrace our differences and appreciate what we have. Advertisements that depict beauty as being tall and thin has caused many sensitive teenagers to have low self images and even eating and psychological problems so why do they keep using ads like that – well I guess they still sell! We’ve started to see improvement as we are becoming more focused on being healthy but even that has become a big business. You have to get that diet plan because a celebrity used it and it worked for them! So as we share information with millions on the web our thinking should broaden but as we stretch out our arms across the world making friends we seem to want to still own objects that mean we are in the accepted crowd or popular.  Name brand clothes are more prevalent than ever, instead of trying to create unique products companies would rather copy the popular brands in some way. So is advertising bad? Not really, or our society that evolves around commerce and the sale of goods wouldn’t really work. We need to be able to compare and see what’s available for us to purchase and with the Internet as a tool we can be more discerning consumers. If the product we’re searching doesn’t give the technical specs then they must have something to hide. Or if they don’t live up to what they promise we again shouldn’t put up with it and return the item for refund and chose not to buy something from that company again. So, the advertisers need to keep a balance between swaying the way the consumers think with appealing to their sensibilities and the ability we have to investigate their claims.

Perhaps I’m being idealistic thinking that our new generation is going to demand honesty and integrity on the Web but if we start teaching and modeling these behaviors early we can have an impact on shaping the future uses of technology. When teachers let the students create their own class rules they are more involved and engaged in following them and enforcing them. When our young students understand why they need to respect themselves and others on the internet they will be more careful about what they do. They wouldn’t put an embaracing picture of someone on a school wall for everyone to see because they know the person and their friends would probably want to kill them, so they need to understand when they put something on the web it can be seen by everyone – not just at school. Adolescents still may not always see the ramifications of their action on the internet so adult supervision should always be there. I don’t know if it’s as prevalent is it should be with the different gadgets that students are using to access the web, but the parents are paying the bill and should be supervising the use. They may think their kids know better but unfortunately media can pull them in and fool them into false trust so even with as much teaching and guidance as we can give them we still need to watch out for them.

Let’s all work together to make the World Wide Web the awesome tool it can be without being dangerous or threatening to our safety. The Golden Rule is even more important than ever because when something hurtful is put on the web the amount of people that could be hurt is a million times greater. We all need to be global, responsible, caring technology users.

Resources:

Brooks-Young, S. (2010). “Teaching with the tools kids really use: Learning with web and mobile technologies”. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Churches, A., Crocket, L., & Jukes, I. (2010). “The digital diet: Today’s digital tools in small bytes.” Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Rosen, L. (2010). “Rewired: Understanding the net generation and how they learn.” New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.