Book Wesley Fryer for a presentation or workshop (either face-to-face or over video) by visiting his contact page on www.wesfryer.com/contact. Presentation / workshop handout links are available on wiki.wesfryer.com.
Think it was easy for anti-trust legislation to pass in the U.S. Congress in the late 1880s? Of course not! It passed, however, because of populist support for strong leaders with a vision for doing what is right for our nation, rather than simply what is in the interests of big business.
The recently released video, “RE: Cry of the Dolphins,” is a clever and thought-provoking anti-cyberbullying effort by Google/YouTube, the National Crime Prevention Council and Saatchi & Saatchi. Watch closely, you’ll probably be surprised what happens.
“Think before you comment” is a slogan many more web users need to take to heart. Circle of Respect is:
…the National Crime Prevention Council’s (NCPC) latest and most comprehensive campaign to protect youth from bullying and cyberbullying. Launching in October [2009], the campaign seeks to change the commonly held belief that bullying is a rite of passage, and teaches instead that such behavior is unacceptable through a positive, pro-social message that encourages respect and consideration for others. To succeed in its mission, the Circle of Respect will feature an education campaign, outreach materials including publications and public service advertising, and partnership efforts to reach a national audience.
This video (RE: Cry of the Dolphins) is one of the Circle of Respect project’s outreach videos. Kudos to the authors and producers.
H/T to Melodie Fulmer of the Oklahoma State Department of Education (21st Century Schools Program) for alerting me to this video.
My 9 year old, Sarah, led this session several weeks ago in Maine at the ACTEM09 Conference. Thanks to TWiT Podcast 218, I learned this week (in advance of the session in Tonganoxie) that Google Profiles now officially permit users to assertively take some control over the results displayed when others search for names on Google. This is how my Google profile is shown at the bottom of search results for my name:
What do people see when they find you online? You can control how you appear in Google by creating a personal profile…
Help people find the right information when they search for you on Google.
Create a personal page that links to your blog and other profiles.
Keep family and friends up to date with your contact info and photos.
Google Profiles joins claimid.com and friendfeed.com as free sites which can be used to “stake your virtual claim” in cyberspace for your own digital footprint, similar metaphorically to the ways 3rd graders in many Oklahoma schools “stake claims” as they re-enact the land runs of the late 1800s in the United States.
Both Google Profiles (of course) and Friendfeed are owned and operated by Google. ClaimID is a service catering to online reputation management, defined on WikiPedia as:
…the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as online reputation monitoring, maintaining the same acronym.
… online image management or online personal branding or personal reputation management (PRM) is a set of methods for generating a distinguished Web presence of a person on the Internet. That presence could be reflected in any kind of content that refers to the person, including news, participation in blogs and forums, personal web sites, social media presence, pictures, video, etc.
Another change from my presentation at ACTEM about “digital footprints” was the use of a video from EduTopia’s Digital Generation Project today. This fantastic video series includes ten videos about diverse youth around the United States who are using digital technologies for fun and learning. I heard Milton Chen talk about and share the Digital Generation Project last week in Hangzhou, China. Today I shared Virginia’s Story with our session participants. These videos are superb to use in sessions like this discussing Internet safety and digital citizenship. Virginia is a student of Vicki Davis in Camilla, Georgia.
The August 31, 2009, post “The Social Media Mullet” on Blogging 4 Jobs includes some interesting advice for the percentage of an adult’s digital footprint which should be allocated to professional posts and content relative to personal ones. H/T to MetroTech (OKC) for this link.
Resources from my keynote and both breakout sessions at TIC TAC are available from this link, which I shared via a free SMS business card using Contxts during our opening session in the morning. H/T to Karen Montgomery for sharing Contxts with me months ago. It’s a great way to provide others with a link to your presentation resources and handouts!
The days of photographic privacy are over. It is important for people of all ages, but especially teenagers who are most prone to rash behavior, to understand this and its implications. Chris Foresman’s November 2, 2009 article for ARS Technica, “Students suspended for racy slumber party pics, file lawsuit,” is the latest well-publicized case in point. Two sophomore girls at Churubusco High School in Churubusco, IN, , were punished at school as student athletes for photos taken at a sleepover with friends the previous summer. Chris wrote:
Obviously the two girls didn’t want everyone to see the pictures, so they posted them with the privacy controls set so only friends could see them. However, the photos were copied and eventually ended up on the desk of Austin Couch, the school’s principal.
Couch then punished the girls based on the school’s athletic code, which provides sanctions for student athletes that engage in behavior in or out of school that “creates a disruptive influence on the discipline, good order, moral or educational environment at Churubusco High School.” The two girls were barred from participating in any extracurricular activities, made to apologize for the photos to an all-male coaches board (which the complaint describes as “profoundly embarrassing”), and forced to undergo “humiliating” counseling.
Back in April 2009, a California court ruled photos posted to an online social networking website (MySpace in this situation) cannot be considered “private.” This latest case from Indiana will put this plea to the test again, but in slightly different circumstances since the posters DID share the images with privacy controls enabled.
I agree with John Palfrey’s point about online privacy on social networking sites in the article. Palfrey is a Harvard University law professor and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Polfrey, quoted in the article,
…said that the idea of privacy on social networking websites is merely an illusion, even with added privacy controls. He also believes that schools have a right to regulate a student’s online activities, but the court will have to determine if the two girls in this case had their First Amendment right violated.” The fact that it took place in cyberspace instead of in a classroom doesn’t mean you don’t enforce the rule,” he told the AP.
I do not agree that schools should have an unrestricted right to “regulate a student’s online activities,” however, and will watch this case with interest. We definitely have situations in some of our Oklahoma schools where officials have stepped over the line and ignored the fact that students in schools still do possess constitutional rights, including limited free speech. In this Churubusco High School case, it appears the school officials took an overly broad interpretation of what constitutes a “disruption in the school environment.” Since the photos were taken the previous summer, made no reference to school, and were not brought into the school by the students in question, it seems highly doubtful the school administration can make a disruption case following the Tinker precedent. Of course, I’m also not a school lawyer, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Whatever the court rules in this case, the fact is that these photos have gone public and the girls in question are understandably embarrassed. This supports my primary point in this post: Photographic privacy is over. Whether or not you post a photo online or someone else does, it can end up on the desk of your school principal, your boss at work, or your mother. We may not like it, we can gripe about it, but this is the reality of the online, networked world in which we live.
In contexts like this, it certainly seems wonderful NOT to be growing up as a teen today. With all your friends armed with digital cameras and camcorders on their cell phones, how many different incidents from your youth could have landed you in the principal’s office if the school district took the same posture towards those photos as school officials in Fort Wayne, Indiana have in this case?
Since writers started publishing (long before anyone thought of “blogging”) the need for transparency and disclosure has been important. People should be able to reasonably identify bias in someone’s writing, particularly a “reporter,” when that person is being paid or compensated in a way which could influence their shared ideas. The English Wiktionary currently defines “full disclosure” in the context of journalism as:
The disclosure of any connection between a reporter (or publisher) and the subject of an article that may bias the article.
In the case of blogs which cater to specific audiences, like Mommy-blogs, the line between objective evaluations of commercial products and paid-for product placement posts has often been blurred. The NPR story from July 2009, “Mom Bloggers Debate Ethics Of ‘Blog-Ola’” highlights some of these issues. According to the story:
“Blog-ola” is the free goodies, products, trips and other perks many marketers are giving to bloggers in hopes of getting favorable publicity or positive reviews. It’s a hot topic among “mommy-bloggers” in particular, who are proving to be quite influential with their readers.
The main issue is this: If a person or company gives a blogger something for free, and the blogger later writes something about that product, company, or individual, the background gift should be disclosed openly so the reading audience is not deceived into thinking the opinions they are reading are reasonably objective. In the left sidebar of my blog, I have a clear link to my own disclosure policy, and I always provide a “full disclosure” statement on any posts in which a conflict of interest might be perceived or real.
The Federal Trade Commission will try to regulate blogging for the first time, requiring writers on the Web to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.
The FTC said Monday its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final Web guidelines, which had been expected. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could bring fines up to $11,000 per violation. Bloggers or advertisers also could face injunctions and be ordered to reimburse consumers for financial losses stemming from inappropriate product reviews.
The guidelines from Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s advertising practices division, are that:
…disclosure must be ”clear and conspicuous,” no matter what form it will take.
The new rules don’t take effect for a couple months, but it’s never been too early to create a disclosure policy.
Blog With Integrity is a site setup this past July to promote ethical blogging, including full disclosure. If you don’t have a disclosure policy on your blog, consider using and modifying one created with disclosurepolicy.org.
[Disclosure: Andrew is a Berkman Fellow. And Euan, Stowe, and Andrew are all friends of mine. And, while I'm at it, Euan's post positively cites something I once said.]
The FCC isn’t requiring that we go to these lengths of disclosure, but U.S. bloggers WILL need to do more than many have done to date to meet the new FCC edict effective December 1st.
For other blog disclosure policy examples, check out the bottom of Will Richardson’s about page, Doug Johnson’s endorsement policy page, and Kevin Jarrett’s disclosure policy. (Also don’t miss Miguel Guhlin’s, which I previously mentioned.) It was harder than I thought it would be to find sample disclosure polices on Edublogger sites. I’m expecting that will be changing in the next couple months!
Here’s a collaborative wiki idea for someone to start, or something which could be added to the “Support Blogging” wiki: Start a list of sample edublog disclosure policy links!
The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.
These are my notes from Robyn Treyvaud’s keynote, “Our 21st Century Challenge: Developing Responsible, Ethical and Resilient Digital Citizens.” at the 21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong Conference on 18 September 2009. MY COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Robyn is the author and owner of www.cybersafeworld.com. Her wiki on digital citizenship (created with WetPaint) is http://digicitizen-wiki.com. On delicious, Robyn is rtreyvaud.
A Place is NOT a THING
showing a graphic of MySpace contacts
- your friends
– your friends’ friends
— your friends’ friends’ friends
Story of a student using YouTube, after using the software “Guitarmaster Pro Net,” simply titled: Guitar
Quite a community has grown up around this video
From “Circuits of Cool / Digital Playground” study in 2007
- average person connected to digital technology has:
– 94 phone numbers
– 78 people on instant messenger list
– 86 people in his/her social networking community
Many students today observe those statistics and note
technology is an enabler
almost all young people are using technology to ENHANCE rather than replace face-to-face interaction
2007 DEMOS report “Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation”
- found use of digital technology has been completely normalized by this generation of young people
- majority of young people use new media to make their lives easier
This generation is capable of self-regulation when kept informed about issues
THIS IS A HUGE AND IMPORTANT POINT
bedroom culture
- many methods in use by kids to keep their online activities shield from parent awareness and involvement
Just like in the offline world, no amount of effort to reduce potential risks to children will eliminate those risks completely. We cannot make the internet completely safe. Because of this, we must also build children’s resilience to the material to which they may be exposed so that they have the confidence and skills to navigate these new media waters more safely.
- point 13:
Through the right combination of successes against these three objectives – reducing availability, restricting access and increasing resilience to harmful and inappropriate material online – we can adequately manage the risks to children online. A number of efforts are already being made in pursuit of these objectives, and the strengths and weaknesses of these are explored in Chapter 3. But we need a more strategic approach if industry, families, government and others in the public and third sectors are going to work effectively together to help keep children safe.
Gap between generations should be closed
- need to engage students in the educational process
- leverage youth’s knowledge about the online environment and safety
Australia in 2007 study: compared concerns of parents vs concerns of kids
Whose Myth? Whose Reality?
- many parents concerned about Internet addiction
Contrary to popular assumptions, posting personally identifying information does not appear to increase risk in and of itself. Rather, risk is associated with interactive behavior. Further, youth who engage in a high number of different potentially risky online behaviors (e.g., having unknown people on a buddy list, seeking pornography online, using the Internet to harass others) are also more at risk (Wolak et al. 2008b; Ybarra et al. 2007c).
Dana Boyd was chair of the lit review committee of this study
Help young people learn to do what is right, regardless of the potential of detection and punishment. To do this, we must enhance their reliance on their own internalized personal moral code. We must shift our focus away from rules and threats of punishments. Threats of punishment are simply an ineffective approach when the likelihood of detection and punishment is so remote. The message: “Don’t do this because it is against the rules” has limited impact if you believe that you are invisible and that your actions cannot and will not be detected and punished.
Instead, we must focus the attention of young people on the reasons for the rules. Rules are generally enacted because actions that violate the rules can cause harm to someone else. So our focus must be on the potential harm, not the rule. In a world where we are invisible, a much more powerful message is: “Don’t do this because if you do you will harm someone by (describe the possible harmful impact of the action) “
We used to believe before we had research, that the third level (friends of friends of friends) would be where most of the online offending takes place (strangers)
- now because of research we know it happens at the first level, FRIENDS
From study
Online bullying begins in year 2, it can be exclusion on Club Penguin
Sending and receiving of sexual content is experiencing by primary age students
Article “10 Things I Wish Adults Knew About the Online World” (MS WORD – HTML)
1. Teens Are Doing The Same Things Teens Have Always Done—Just Digitally.
2. The Predator Issue Has Been Sensationalized By The Media
3. Teens Won’t Talk About Cyber-Bullying Out Of Fear That You’ll“Take The Internet Away
4. Preteens Will Lie About Their Age Inorder To Join A Social-Networking Site
5. Teens Have A Different Perception Of Privacy Than You Do
6. Multitasking Makes Concentrating Hard—Even For Teens.
7. They Spend More Time Online For School Than You Think.
8. Teens Are Creating Media.
9. Blocking, Filtering, And Monitoring May Work For Young Children, But Notfor Teens.
10. There Are No Easy Answers.
THESE ARE GREAT RESOURCES AND I’M GOING TO USE THEM IN UPCOMING SESSIONS OF DIGITAL DIALOG
We have common naivete among youth that they are NOT publishing in “myspace” – it is a public space
research shows multi-tasking can lead to homework taking 2 or 3 times as long to complete
Advice for parents on home internet filtering: consider those filters just 1 level of protection, there must be communication about these issues regularly
Challenges of ethical behavior in these digital environments
Law in Australia: kids need to understand long term impacts and ramification
- in Victoria there is no statute of limitations
- kids lose control over the ownership of that image
now discussing number of illegally downloaded songs on student mp3 players
What happens to your personal data?
- MySpace’s privacy policy indicates that their data/information is transmitted to the US where laws may be different than those in their country
That video really resonates with kids, it is an excellent resource to use with them
At the heart of what we need to do to address these issues is student voice
- if students are not involved, none of these approaches are going to be effective and real
In your school, do AUPs reflect our current conditions?
- do you have incident response procedures
- what about your curriculum: how can you embed digital citizenship?
- wonderful opportunities for peer education and mentoring
- more….
Finding quality resources: Google results are overwhelming (showing examples of different queries)
- my wiki has some of these resources and more: http://digicitizen-wiki.com
New Australian cybersmart site, includes units of work students and teachers can utilize: http://cybersmart.gov.au
I will continue to remain optimistic as long as we continue to involve young people in the decisions which affect their lives
These are my notes from Robyn Treyvaud’s workshop, “The Natives are Getting Restless: Growing Up and Learning in a Web 2.0 World” at the 21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong Conference on 18 September 2009. MY COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Robyn is the author and owner of www.cybersafeworld.com. Her wiki on digital citizenship (created with WetPaint) is http://digicitizen-wiki.com.
Why do you think I titled this session “the natives are restless?”
Much of my background was in the government sector in Melbourne, Australia. I left to work on a laptop project with David Loder at Wellsley College. My greatest challenge: I had been in leadership positions and wanted to go back to the classroom to see how the laptop could transform my learning and my teaching. This was well over 10 years ago. At the time, I noticed the girls were using the technology very differently from the boys. Girls perceived there was not anything “for them” on the Internet and the laptop. Asked girls what you want to use the laptop for, and they said we just want to be able to communicate with each other, to create websites, and to work together / collaborate.
In those days it was Netscape Navigator, started all-girl computer club called “Geek is Chic”
- was going to be 1 lunch per week, girls really wanted to come in much more
- communication and creation really empowered the girls
- girls created a flash-based website
Taught me it’s all about meeting the needs of individual students
Then I became a PYP leader
All through these times, I became very aware of the ethical / digital citizenship side of this
On delicious, Robyn is rtreyvaud
- I used to find the biggest time wasting took place when kids used Google going to the library and doing their own research
- we used to create a website hotlist
- now using a site like delicious we don’t have to even do that
- most of the resources for today are on this account
aspect we’ll focus on 2nd: the 21st century literacies
- how to we teach and scaffold these to help students become critical, discerning users of these resources
“Digital media is a broad term youth use loosely to define a wide range of information and communications technologies, entertainment and news sources”
- kids navigate: internet, social networks, news media that deliver content digitally, video game consoles, mp3 players, mobile phones and other mobile devices
- digital media is ubiquitous: youth describe themselves as “always connected” and not always in front of a computer
digital media connects issues with people
- youth not overly interested in tech/media for its own sake: they are interested in social aspects, opportunities to use info/communication tools to connect with others
- connects with isues and people
- embedded in social contexts, shape relationships and extends communication
video games: youth don’t tend to see them as isolated experiences able to promote their learning on their own
Time magazine article from 2006: “In this media drenched era of blogs and podcasts, Google searches and Instant Messages young people need to acquire a new set of literacy skills that allow them…”
Example video of student voice: Learning to Change/ Changing to Learn: Student Voices
- we will discuss:
– are these students sitting in your class?
– do you know what technologies they use?
– how will you find out?
– what does this mean for schools?
THIS MAKES ME THINK THAT I SHOULD OFFER MYSELF UP AS A FREE LEARNING CONSULTANT FOR STUDENT RESEARCH IN MY CHILDREN’S OWN SCHOOLS, TO HELP TEACHERS AS WELL AS STUDENTS DISCUSS AND DEVELOP THESE CRITICAL LITERACIES FOR INFORMATION ACCESS / RESEARCH.
Discussion questions:
- do these videos reflect contemporary teaching and learning challenges?
- If so, what are they?
- Do you agree or disagree with the ‘messages?”
- What are they?
Teacher response:
- I’m aware of students’ other world / digital world, but really I’m not able to smoothly integrate those things into what we are doing and learning in the classroom
- there are pockets of people who try to integrate those worlds
categories of sites from Slideshare, WEb 2.0 Student Teachers, 14-9-09
- Blog: post (text, audio, video, photo), read, comment, feed
- social bookmarking: web sites, bookmark, tag, share
- podcast / vodcast: audio and video, feed, podcatcher, media player
- wiki: content (text in web pages), collaborate, edit, save
Discussion questions
- Do you block sites at your school? Why or why not?
- Do you use blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and podcasts?
- How are you using them?
- What other web 2.0 applications are used at your school?
Response: the blocks at school don’t stop me from doing what I want to do, but it does prevent the teachable moment, “what do you do when you encounter this?”
reasons for blocking
- legal liability
- parental fear
Conundrum: how can we transform learning if we are not current with the technologies
Some teachers using
- wikis
- Google docs
In one school, Google Docs and the immediacy with which students can comment and respond to comments has really enhanced student writing quality
- tough part is balancing a traditional
Moral Compass: What do YOU do when no one is watching?!
- copyright and intellectual property issues play in this space
In many cases we are not scaffolding how you research and make sense of what you find when you research
Ethics in the digital age
- ethical questions are about right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust
They matter because what we do affects us individually, affects our community, and can even affect epople we do not know or see
- Australian group is now sharing videos with musical artists, talking about their creation process and the impact of not receiving money from their work
The vast majority of districts prohibit:
- online chatting
- instant messaging
- sending or receiving email during school
- posting on bulletin boards or blogs
- using social networking sites
Almost all use software to block certain sites and require parents or students to sign an internet use policy
Do you like to surf Myspace? How about Bebo? Are you at school or work, and bored, and want to access Myspace or Bebo from school or from work but those sites are blocked? Well you came to the right place. SneakySir Proxy is your answer to blocked websites like Myspace. All you have to do is enter the site you want to visit (www.myspace.com) for example, hit the “Begin Browsing” icon, and SneakySir sneaks your right through to your favorite website! Sneakysir fully supports Myspace logins, Bebo logins, Flash Arcade logins, and many more websites, all for free! You can edit your Myspace profile, view other people’s Myspace profiles, and more, all from work, home or school! Have fun browsing!
ethical dilemmas with copying digital content, file sharing, etc.
Book recommendation: Media: New Ways and Meanings by Burton, Lee
I’VE GOT TO LEAVE THIS SESSION UNFORTUNATELY TO GO SHARE MY OWN ON PODCASTING! END OF NOTES….
The YouTube Online Safety Center provides an excellent set of tips and steps users as well as content creators can take if they find a video which has violated community guidelines and should be removed.
In the past six hours I’ve filed a copyright takedown request (via the YouTube copyright complaint webform) for a copied video of Sarah’s response to President Obama, which has advertising added to it, and have just flagged a response video because it includes profane and sexually explicit attacks on my daughter. I am not linking to those videos because I do not want to amplify them. Wonderfully, I can report that the attack video which I flagged was taken down by YouTube staff within 15 minutes of me flagging it.
Way to go YouTube!
Hopefully YouTube staff will respond to my copyright takedown request soon. It sounds like those requests take longer to investigate and therefore remove.
I’m following the lead of my wife and son this past summer, who both read 4+ eBooks on their iPhone / iTouch devices using the free Kindle for iPhone app.
So far, Klein’s book “No Logo” is both informative and thought provoking as well. Here’s a paragraph from my reading tonight that conveys well why I find these topics so important and compelling as an educator interested in media literacy as well as an avid blogger and social media user.
Rather than merely bankrolling someone else’s content, all over the Net, corporations are experimenting with the much-coveted role of being “content providers”: Gap’s site offers travel tips, Volkswagen provides free music samples, Pepsi urges visitors to download video games, and Starbucks offers an on-line version of its magazine, Joe. Every brand with a Web site has its own virtual, branded media outlet– a beachhead from which to expand into other non-virtual media. What has become clear is that corporations aren’t just selling their products on-line, they’re selling an new model for the media’s relationship with corporate sponsors and backers. The Internet, because of its anarchic nature, has created the space for this model to be realized swiftly, but the results are clearly made for off-line export.
I really don’t like to use the word “hate” at all, so I hesitate to say “I hate advertising.” It is definitely accurate to say I STRONGLY dislike advertising. I’m convinced we all should strive to live our lives with digital discipline, and part of disciplining ourselves digitally means taking assertive control of the images and messages we allow into our eyes, ears, and brains. DVRs are a wonderful invention for digital discipline. I personally watch very little television, but when I do (or our children do) I think its wonderful to watch recorded shows so TV advertisements can be skipped. The only exception to this, of course, is live sports– but other than that I think television is best consumed via DVR.
My strong dislike for advertising has, to date, influenced me to NOT run any type of ads on my blog. I’ve been paying $100 per month for a virtual private server to host my blog for 10 months now, since facing a situation which felt like extortion, and I’ve definitely wished more than once that my blog directly generated income which would offset those costs. I think the value and benefit of my blog still outweighs these increased hosting costs, but I admit this perception is based on more than a little faith and hope. Relevancy on the radar screens of others in our attention economy is a compliment, an honor, a responsibility, and a tangibly valuable thing. At this point, I’m still content to proudly run and freely offer my ideas via this blog sans advertisements.
Naomi Klein’s words in the above paragraph highlight important changes which have and continue to take place in the world of marketing / advertising as well as branding. I’m very concerned about schools and other organizations making deals for corporate sponsorship. I want to be and I want my children to be media literate and media saavy, so we can avoid (to the degree it is possible today) being manipulated and subconsciously influenced by phenomenally wealthy corporations and individuals who have the means to craft and share media messages in places where our eyes travel.
I haven’t read even half her book yet, and I can’t offer any definitive opinions on either her book or her thesis, but I can suggest that critically consuming media is an essential activity for teachers and students in the 21st century. My favorite parts of our 2.5 day Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshops are when we watch videos created by others and analyze / critique them. I firmly believe the best way to encourage a learner of any age to be a critical media consumer is to help that individual become a saavy media producer. That is a big reason I love and am passionate about Storychasers, and am increasingly convinced that we should have “Student Storychaser Teams” in every school.
I think I read a post by H. Songhai, a Philadelphia educator, some time ago in which he explained how he encourages his students to question the value of wearing corporate logoed shirts and other materials to school – Doing so for free, without being paid. I may be mistaken with this citation, and if so I apologize. I remember, none-the-less, wondering at the time just how big a deal this was and how important it is to help students think about their volitional transformations into walking corporate billboards. Klein’s book is helping me see the relevance and importance of these conversations with students with greater clarity.
The search for identity is an extremely important quest. The idea that corporations wealthy beyond the imaginations of most governments, much less individuals, are now spending billions to deliberately shape and influence the self-perceptions of individuals to embrace their brand as a lifestyle– and even their own identity, is both sobering and arresting.
Faced with an estimated $25 million budget deficit, the school’s [The City College of San Francisco] chancellor, Don Griffin, has proposed eliminating 800 of the school’s roughly 9,800 classes for this fall. Last month, however, he proposed a novel potential solution: saving the classes with corporate sponsorships of up to $6,000 per semester. So far, the reaction in San Francisco has been mixed. Some officials at the college view the proposal as unseemly, but acknowledge its potential practicality in the absence of sufficient government funding. “We have to go after private money, but in a thoughtful way that doesn’t compromise our values — or let the public sector off the hook,” says Milton Marks, president of the college’s board, which is expected to review a formal proposal later this month.
An institution of higher learning concerned with compromising values in our day of almost boundless pursuit of money in intercollegiate athletics?! Of course corporate sponsorship of an academic course would compromise values of academic integrity. It is naive and foolish to think it could not. I was not able to readily find a followup to this story about CCSF. If you have an update, please let me know. This is a sad case, but unfortunately we’re likely to see more of this sort of thing as the corporate drive to “brand” the world drives on almost unabated.
Thanks to companies that are desperate to reach consumers in the social-media crowd, it’s now possible to make a buck or two — or much more — on Twitter. A company called IZEA, which made its name connecting bloggers with companies willing to compensate them for plugs on their sites, has set up a similar service for the Twittersphere. At the appropriately named site Sponsored Tweets, Twitter users can sign in, set the price they want companies to pay them for the privilege of tweeting an ad on their behalf, and wait for the offers to come in.
I am all for entrepreneurship and innovative ways to make money, but schemes to fill the digital ether with yet MORE advertising and spam sounds like an idea as sound as a ocean liner made of tissue paper. Symantic reported this past May that over 90% of email is now spam. Does Sean Gregory think it would be great if we could say the same thing about Twitter? Lots of folks already think Twitter is filled with useless lifestream data. Should we supplement those posts, or even overwhelm them, with more advertisements? To this proposal, I offer an unequivocal NO.
We live in a regulated market economy, and I am a big fan as well as proponent of capitalism. I am decidedly not (even though I did work for a multinational telecommunications company for two years) a blind advocate for unregulated corporate power and corporate-influenced legislation, however. The twenty minute video, “The Story of Stuff,” has a lot to say about these themes. If you haven’t taken time to watch it yet, I highly recommend you do. The themes of the film (and forthcoming book) definitely go beyond corporate branding and advertising, but those issues are closely tied to the issues of overconsumption, environmental protection, governmental corruption, limiting corporate lobbying, etc.
I’m looking forward to continued reading with Naomi Klein in the weeks ahead related to these topics. Long live the eBook, and long live blogs!
This podcast features a recording of Ginger Lumen’s presentation with her students at the 2009 PodStock conference entitled, “Students as Self-Advocates: Why/How Learners Should Craft Their Own Digital Footprints.” The official conference description of the session was: When you last “Googled” your name, what did you find? All learners should ponder those results when considering potential colleges, scholarships, jobs, and even future mates. Is it better for the results to come up poorly or not at all? Come learn how we can help our children become more digitally literate and earn an A+ in Digital Citizenship. [END OF DESCRIPTION] The Podstock conference bio for Ginger Lumen stated: Ginger is the Director of the f2f Program at Turning Point Learning Center, a charter school in Emporia, KS. The f2f Program has been developing over the past 3 years with a PBL, 21st Century, global orientation for our 5th-8th graders. The result has been the Life Practice Model, where students are practicing skills and habits that will truly prepare them for the real world. Ginger graduated from Emporia State University with a BSE in Social Science and an MS in Psychology/Special Education: Gifted Education. She also serves as the KS Education Policy and Legislative Liaison for the Kansas Association for the Gifted, Talented, and Creative and serves as part of the Kansas Learning First Alliance. [END OF BIO] Please refer to the podcast shownotes for related links and resources.
Podcast328: Students as Self-Advocates: Why/How Learners Should Craft Their Own Digital Footprints (Ginger Lumen) [48:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1365)
In January of 2009, I recorded a webcast for the Oklahoma Technical Assistance Center (OTAC) focused on “Digital Citizenship in the Cyber Community.” This video webcast is 51 min 30 sec, and is available as a free download from the OTAC website. The webcast is in Windows Media Format. You will need to complete a short webform before accessing the download links. You can either download a 112 MB zip file, containing the entire presentation, or view a webpage version with the video embedded in it.
OTAC titled this session “Digital Citizenship in the Cyber Community.” I originally titled this “Internet Safety, Social Networking, and the Oklahoma School Security Act.” I presented this same session at our state “Safe and Healthy Schools Conference” in November 2008, and was asked to share it as a webcast over OTAC so more school personnel could access and benefit from these ideas. The webcast includes the video of me speaking as a “talking head” on one side of the browser screen, and my synchronized slides in a larger window.
Consider using this webcast for professional development with your school faculty in the upcoming school year. An extensive list of free webcasts on other topics is also available from OTAC. These are available free whether you are in Oklahoma or live elsewhere.
Several things seem pretty clear here, but apparently were not to the parties involved:
- People should never share their password with others. This includes students sharing their Facebook password with a teacher/coach. Never a good idea.
- People should never solicit someone else’s password from them. Passwords for individual user accounts should be treated as private and confidential.
Are school leaders in your district making plans to encourage campuses to create social media policies in the upcoming school year? While the situation highlighted in this article should have been avoided by common sense on the part of both the student and the teacher/coach, it wasn’t. We need to be having conversations about issues like these in our schools on a regular basis.
The 15 page filed court document is also available from the TV station’s website as a PDF file. This type of news event is yet another example of why we need to take our responsibility seriously as educators to amplify/showcase the constructive uses of digital and social media tools for students. This is a key focus of Storychasers and Celebrate Oklahoma Voices specifically.
The word blog is irrelevant.
What’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.”
If you can get beyond the unnecessary profane reference in the presentation’s title and references in several of the slides, there are some GREAT statistics and quotations included in this slide deck for current social media trends.
Here are few of the standouts.
Why care about social media?
Because 3 out of 4 Americans use social technology. (Forrester, The Growth of Social Technology Adoption, 2008.)
Because 2/3 of the global internet population visit social networks. (Nielsen, Global Faces and Networked Places, 2009.)
Because visiting social sites is now the 4th most popular online activity– ahead of personal email. (Nielsen, Global Faces and Networked Places, 2009.)
Too many of our school leaders are still dismissing the social web as a frivolous, irrelevant pursuit which must be banned during the school day and frowned upon after school. In many communities, adults continue to abdicate their responsibility to help prepare students to make good decisions on an unfiltered web. Hyperlinked writing is the MOST powerful form of writing yet invented on our planet. Yet a paltry number of our schools and educators today are regularly creating and sharing content on the social web, or guiding students as they create and share online. This must change.
13 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube EVERY MINUTE. It would take 412.3 YEARS to view every video on YouTube, today.
The people in charge of talking are in the marketing department. The people in charge of listening are in the research or service or sales department. They hardly ever talk to each other, let alone have full-duplex conversations with customers. (Josh Bernoff, Why marketers have trouble with full-duplex social technology, June 30, 2009.)
Who are “the people in charge of listening” in your school organization? Does this referenced communication disconnect sound like the teachers, the administrators, the IT department, and the curriculum department? To what degree are schools continuing to press forward as groups of individuals in isolated silos, largely disconnected from each other and from constituents? Where are the best examples of school leaders who embrace social media technologies to “tell their story” and allow both students and teachers to “tell their stories” to the community about their learning, their interests, their lives, and their meaningful work “at school?” We need to amplify those exemplars.
For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be. (BusinessWeek, February 19, 2009.)
Have you seen the number of schools in the United States which still have static websites that were designed in 1998 using Microsoft Frontpage 1.0?! Even in school districts which are using content management systems for their websites, how many directly empower BOTH teachers AND students to publish work directly to the web? How many IT directors are clinging to the fantasy that the interests of the school district are best served by them serving as a web 1.0 gatekeeper of all content published online by school constituents? Resistance may be futile, but there is sure a lot of it in educational IT as well as educational administration. The fear factor over issues of CONTROL is sky high, and not diminishing.
Social media for schools is not and should not be about buzzwords. It’s not fundamentally about technology. As David Jakes persuasively says quite often, it’s about communication and literacy.
If your product sucks, social media won’t fix it.
Technology is an amplifier. (Hat tip to Jeff Allen.) Who fears transparency the most? The people who are doing things they shouldn’t be doing, or don’t want to share/broadcast what they are doing. Are kids in your schools bored out of their gourds? Social media won’t fix that. It will amplify it. Afraid to give your students voice, because you’re scared of what they will say about your school, your teachers, your curriculum, or your culture of fear built around standardized testing? It’s time to change your product. It’s time to change your learning culture. Social media will empower others to uncover and reveal who and what your organization truly is, and as leaders we’re well advised to take a proactive rather than a reactive stance to this disruptive potential.
Here’s the full presentation on SlideShare. Again, I don’t endorse or approve of the profane references, I really think they detract rather than add to the credibility and effectiveness of this message, but if you can look past them there are good nuggets here.
Myth: Deleting a picture or video from your webpage deletes it forever.
Myth: Deleting a picture or video from your digital camera or phone deletes it forever.
Myth: Deleting a picture or video from your computer deletes it forever.
Myth: Nobody else can ever gain access to your private webpage.
Myth: Broadcasting from your webcam is always private and never being recorded.
Myth: Your actions while using the internet, cell phones and other digital technologies has no effect on anyone else including your friends and family.
These are very important myths to debunk related to the topics of digital citizenship, Internet safety, and online ethics. The institute defines “sextcasting” as:
… the process by which an individual(s) performs actions of a risqué or sexually explicit nature via a (live) webcam (or webcast), digital (image or video) camera, or other form of digital technology and sends and/or saves the content of their actions using digital technologies (i.e. a computer, camera card, email, social website, message board, etc).
Is a discussion of the dangers of sextcasting and the myths listed above part of your school’s health curriculum for the current school year? These are not likely topics most adults (including teachers) want to address with kids, but they are important and real none-the-less.
I don’t have any other information about this Institute beyond the contact info they provide and the info about organization co-founder and Executive Director, Richard Guerry, listed on his Ning page. The group is setup as a nonprofit soliciting contributions, and seeks to promote community alliances as well as other outreach methods. Unfortunately, to nominate your site to be listed with the organization’s “seal of approval,” you have to send them $21 US.
I agree we need to be talking about and addressing these issues in our homes, our churches, our schools, and our community organizations. I am quite reticent, however, to embrace the “our technology can give you complete peace of mind” approach reflected on the IROC2 and Meeville product page.
I definitely agree we need to promote perceptions of digital accountability and continuing conversations about these issues, but I disagree that any one product or combination of products can produce “complete peace of mind” when it comes to Internet dangers and temptations. See my posts on “OpenDNS” and Internet Safety more generally for more thoughts along these lines. My wiki curriculum for Internet Safety includes lots of other suggestions and links related to these topics.
The following five minute IROC2 public service announcement shares a vision with which I DO agree: Being proactive in our conversations about digital media and content. As the speaker says, we need to move beyond simply talking about the dangers of ACCESSING pornographic content online, and also discuss the dangers of people (including kids) CREATING and SHARING that content online.
My 8 year old daughter recently googled something like “cool games for girls” and came across the website GirlsGoGames.com. We had a discussion this morning about the site and this is something we need to talk about more at length, because of all the issues it raises. I asked Sarah to blog about this, but wanted her to include a screenshot of the site in her post. She practiced doing this last Wednesday when we presented about our family learning blog at Oklahoma City Public Schools’ annual Tech Day conference, but this isn’t something she could do by herself yet. Instead of using Skitch to post to my Flickr account, I asked her to create her own Flickr account, but that required her to create a new Yahoo account that I had to authorize as her parent. (COPPA compliance in action.)
This was the screenshot she took after getting her Flickr account setup, and Skitch configured to upload / post to her Flickr account.
There are a lot of things to discuss here. First of all, from a media literacy standpoint, Sarah needs to understand this website is ALL about advertising and marketing. Before playing any game, visitors are subjected to a short 30 second video advertisement.
The site reinforces some stereotypical sex-role ideas that I do not entirely agree with. This isn’t a site I’d want her spending hours and hours on each day. She showed me the model/runway game (really it is more of an interactive simulation with feedback) and the room makeover area. I can see where this is fun, in a KidPix click the stamps and fill-in the “color me” blackline master sort of way. This site doesn’t promote and support activities which I would regard as truly creative, however, or constructive from a developmental standpoint. I’m not saying everything we do online has to be developmentally constructive, but if this site is a waste of time similar to how watching a TV show is a waste of time, then there should be some limits and boundaries on how often and how long she uses this website.
This summer the girls have been playing both Club Penguin and Webkinz a LOT. Rachel, especially, has been playing lots of Club Penguin but also uses Starfall and other sites. She just earned her “brown belt” on Club Penguin last week, a feat she was very proud of.
I want Sarah to blog about this GirlsGoGames website to encourage her to think critically about the site and what she is learning and consuming, consciously as well as unconsciously, as she “plays” on the site. I am not going to overreact and tell her not to go there at all, because the site does not look “dangerous” from a predator standpoint, but there are lots of important conversations we need to have here about cultural messages embedded in the site, its games, its advertisements, etc.
We are what we eat, both physically and intellectually.
Wesley Fryer is the author of Moving at the Speed of Creativity. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer(s). See my disclosure policy for more info. I am wfryer on Diigo.
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