"7 take-aways from danah boyd’s work
As a teacher, here are some of my take-aways from boyd’s important book. We need to:- Acknowledge the role that networking spaces play in the social lives of teens and provide the framework for helping students understand the dynamics of those spaces as a means of connection and communication;
- Provide more time for shared learning experiences in their lives, tapping into the social spaces of students in ways that acknowledge the strengths of those connections;
- Come to learning from a positive position, not a negative one driven by fear of the world and fear of the unknown;
- Understand that social media sharing is in a context that we adults often don’t understand completely, avoid making judgements about a single image or tweet or post, and be open to how “posturing” in some spaces can be a survival technique for some students;
- Recognize how different online spaces can shape or nurture prejudices and access, so that when white/upper class students flock to Facebook and minority/lower class students remain in MySpace (a phenomenon that boyd noticed a few years ago), the opportunities for education and careers don’t get narrowed;
- Teach explicitly what it means to find information and understand media influence in online spaces, so that students understand the pros and cons of the communication, and they can learn how to make judgements about the validity of that information with informed eyes;
- Listen to what teenagers are saying about the complexity of their daily existence, because their voices are important in any educational landscape where learning is not about the moment, but about their lives."
- http://www.middleweb.com/13904/teen-life-today-sure-complicated/
I think a policy like this needs to be approached from the same mindset as setting up policies for challenged books. Basically, we need to approach this topic as a whole rather than react to individual incidents, because I think that's when we'll come from a negative standpoint.
ReplyDeleteI think we need to consider the role social media has in our students' lives & shape a policy around that.
I also think many ISHCMC teachers need to become more aware of the issues surrounding this topic before we can flesh out a realistic & meaningful policy.
As a starting point, I really like the American School of Bombay's Responsible Use Policy for secondary school: http://www.asbindia.org/page.cfm?p=2835.
DeleteGreat pointers, social media transformed the ways of looking at things and I sincerely feel that digital learning should be empowered by every single indivual which should supplement, stimulate the teaching-learning aspect. But what makes me think is, even if we have too much information, could it be possible that we might get overwhelmed by information that are available to us, this is where learning takes a shape of 'overdose' of information? or maybe not?
ReplyDeleteI believe that we need to approach this as a whole community. Parents, teachers and students all need to be aware of being responsible digital citizens. At home parents need to be educated on what is appropriate and what is not. At school, teachers need to teach students also what is appropriate. Lastly, students need to take it upon themselves to make the responsible decision. Other international schools like AIS in Singapore and YIS in Japan have workshops to involve parents and to inform them about what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. Maybe this is something we should consider at our school as well.
ReplyDeleteFrank