digital citizenship – The Art of education

This week’s reading was some of the most fascinating so far for me. I definitely consider myself a heavy user of social media, with Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts. Working in the world of tech, it is almost a requirement to be engaged with social media to some degree. My social media accounts are important for family, friendships, my professional learning network, news, and many other functions. What I found so engaging this week, were the eye opening experiences I read about, which really shifted my understanding of how teens engage with social media.

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

When I think about the way I communicated with my friends as a teenager, compared to how students communicate today, I would honestly say the only difference is that the speed of the communication has changed. Friendships are paramount to teens, just like they were to me, and maintaining those friendships just as important. Additionally, being in the know was part of the friendship experience for me; who was dating who, when was the next party, and many other topics as outlined in the articles that we read. With the addition of smartphones, teens are able to always be in touch, and I believe have more friendships that are far reaching. As an adult, growing into social media use, I have seen the way I interact with my friends change, and remain the same. Being able to connect with family and friends from afar is a huge benefit as an international teacher, but I also value being able to sit down, face to face, and catch up with family and friends, unplugged, unwired.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

I would like to think that I was pretty up to speed on how students used social media. Having taught teenagers most of my career and having had good relationships with kids I could ask them questions about how they interact with social media and get a pretty honest response. However, when I read Like. Flirt Ghost: A Journey Into the Social Media Lives of Teens and 13 Right Now I definitely had my eyes opened even more. Some of the new learning for me was how dependent teens were on getting “likes” and “emojis” from their peers or crushes. Also, the fact that they combed through their social media profiles deleting pics if they were older, or if they did not garner enough attention. Additionally, I was surprised that there were so many unwritten rules about how one interacted with others through social media, or maintained their own account. I had the chance to talk to some junior and senior level students at my school, and in terms of Instagram, they were indeed able to confirm some of these unwritten rules. Although, these students did not spend so much time deleting posts that did not have a certain amount of likes, they definitely spent time “cleaning out” their Instagram accounts, so that only the best of the best photos survived. Specifically, in the article 13 Right Now, the father Dave, spoke about the fact that his daughter, Katherine, has never had some of her very best friends over to their home. I recall having friends over all the time as teenagers, in fact one of my best friends practically lived with us for a while. I could not imagine growing up and not visiting my friend’s houses. Part of me wants to question the authenticity of the friendships that form solely digitally, but another part of me thinks that I need to also understand that norms change, ways of human interaction change, and paradigm shifts happen.

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

The pace of communication has changed drastically, and so has access to information. This has affected the way in which social interactions take place. Teens can spend time nurturing those relationships that are important to them. While this is important, teens can literally be connected with their friends 24 hours a day, and they are in some cases. Statistics tell us that teens are indeed sleeping less, from 2012 to 2015 the number of teens sleeping less than 7 hours per night jumped 22 percent according to two US National Surveys (Analysis: Teens are sleeping less. Why? Smartphones). From the teens I spoke with at my school, all of them keep their smartphones with them at night, and only a few power down the device. This is why even older teens need guidance and support from parents when managing their social media and smartphone usage.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Recently, there was a great article from the Washington Post, entitled: New report: Most teens say social media makes them feel better, not worse, about themselves. This article has lots of informative statistics on teen use of social media, but the key takeaway is that, overall, teens are much happier on social media than we would expect. And I think this makes a lot of sense. As discussed above, their relationships have shifted to the digital space, and so, if there interactions are taking place in this space, then of course they are going to be much happier here. They have grown up in this space and with relationships in this space, so putting our adult lens on it does not make sense, because we cannot truly understand it, as our experiences were much different. The other point that I would like to comment on is that there are those segments of teens who are vulnerable and do experience cyber-bullying, or those that might come across inappropriate content. This is where parents still need to be involved and have conversations with their kids about what they are doing in a digital space, even when parents think their kids are old enough to manage, they still need to keep dialogue open.

One of my favourite YouTube channels has always been Crash Course, by John Green. His videos are quick paced, informative and very witty. I used many snippets when I taught World History. He recently had a 10 part series on Digital Information, with the final episode dedicated to social media. It is definitely worth the watch:

“When we’re this reliant on a media ecosystem full of pollution, we have to take responsibility for what we read, post and share. And to do that we should fully understand how social media networks really function including the good stuff, and also the terrible stuff.” This quote from John Green is powerful, and speaks to why dialogue with parents and a good digital citizenship program are essential for kids. Our teens are spending a great deal of time on social media and as such are seeing all sorts of ideology, advertisements, and news. Teaching them how to decipher what is real from fake, and how to search laterally for information is a vital skill.

This week more than any, I am really curious about what my peers and others experiences were like in speaking with students around the topic of social media? What were your new insights? How did your thinking shift from what you thought before?

Looking through my course one blog posts, I did indeed cite every photo that I used. I also made sure that the photos were pulled from websites that allowed for photo use. The three websites that I used for most photos were Creative Commons, labeled for reuse photos from Google Image Search, and my favorite source Unsplash. Since beginning this course I have thought a great deal about my school, and what further work we need to do around copyright education, and of course my role in all of it. Being the Director of IT and Innovation, part of my portfolio is to work with staff to set direction around educating our students about these issues. Just today, I happened to be in our Learning Center while elementary students were working in Google Slides. All of them were pulling images from Google, without selecting images for reuse, nor were they citing their photos. Again, it had me very reflective about the work we have to do with both staff and students. Two resources from this week’s reading that have given me a great place to start are You can use a picture if, which is a great infographic on the circumstances in which you can actually use a picture, and this infographic, created by Tanya LeClair, which contains links to many great websites where students can legally pull photos.

Domenico Loia

I enjoyed the reading this week and the TedTalks. What I appreciated the most was that they represented a variety of viewpoints on the issue of copyright infringement. The MIT sponsored document; Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century contains many great points to think about. Specifically, the paper points to three areas of concern when it comes to educating youth around media: The Participation Gap, The Transparency Problem, and The Ethics Challenge. I would like to speak to The Ethics Challenge, as this area of concern relates to our current discussion. What I found fascinating after reading this section of the paper, was that there was no specific mention of teaching copyright laws or proper citation to young people. There was much mention of young people entering the digital space, whether it be through gaming, blogs, or myspace (yes I said myspace!). The paper also had many great suggestions of how to engage youth in this burgeoning space, while at the same time honouring their need for authenticity. One quote that I believe encompasses this topic from a broad perspective, is as follows:

“One important goal of media education should be to encourage young people to become more reflective about the ethical choices they make as participants and communicators and the impact they have on others.We may, in the short run, have to accept that cyberspace’s ethical norms are in flux: we are taking part in a prolonged experiment in what happens when one lowers the barriers of entry into a communication landscape. For the present moment, asking and working through questions of ethical practices may be more valuable than the answers produced because the process will help everyone to recognize and articulate the different assumptions that guide their behavior.” (pg 17) I believe that the last sentence is very true, many of the discussions around ethical practice will help to understand the variety of perspectives that exist, yet at the same time much work has been done recently (after this white paper) to protect artists and their work. But still, as the digital space continues to expand, and morph, there are many discussions to be had about copyright infringement, and this is why this topic needs to be part of a curriculum in schools.

J-Fish (https://www.flickr.com/photos/j-fish/10500417615)

The article entitled: Top Euro court: No, you can’t steal images from other websites (too bad a school had to be sued to confirm this little fact), provides a very poignant message for our schools today. What would seem like a straightforward situation, actually ended very poorly for the school involved. After reading the article I could logically see both sides of the argument. The picture was already out there in cyberspace, so why bother citing it. However, the artist should have say over what audience views the picture. Students need to be taught to properly cite information, and to always err on the side of caution. I believe that schools have the responsibility to not only teach about copyright laws and proper citations, but to have this learning as part of a broader context of learning, namely digital citizenship. I also believe that this curriculum needs to start early and happen on a recurring basis so that it is embedded deeply within our students; so that when they go looking for an image, it is without a second thought that they are looking for these images in places where they can legally use them. These days there are some great programs that exist, and teachers do not need to reinvent the wheel, one great starting place is Common Sense Media, where one can find resources from K-12. As I work towards building this type of curriculum and program at my school, I am wondering what others are doing at their schools, and if they have a program for teaching copyright laws and digital citizenship?

Tag: digital citizenship

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