A sprinkling of common sense
I am not a fan of the box approach to teaching, where everything is neatly segregated and we all have to keep very much within our own areas. Neither I am a fan of the occasional parental belief that the teachers job is to teach their child “everything they need to know” with very little parental input. I think neither of these work as ultimately anyone, be it a child or adult, required information from a variety of sources as we treat that information differently, even if the same thing is being said. A causal discussion over the dinner table about the chat room that a child is using is as important (perhaps more so) than a class discussion on how to keep safe in chat rooms.In all honestly it all comes down to a sprinkling of common sense. I am a child of the 80’s and we had “stranger danger videos” like Charlie Says.[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDu7yYHxZr0[/youtube] To be fair when I look back now it seems to be more comedic than anything else. However, I took some note and my parents installed a good dose of common sense. They never used scare tactics and it was never discussed in class at school, however, I was more than aware of what I needed to do if approached by a “guy bearing sweets and offering me a lift home”.However, this is not to say that the the school can abdicate responsibility and not teach anything. John Merrow writes
Young people have always needed ethical guidance and the security of rules and boundaries.
Ethical guidance, within education, filters to every subject and as such we all have a responsibility to teach our pupils how to be kind, respectful members of all societies, including the digital ones. I was also interested with Danah Boyd who believes that pupils are interacting within a “...very traceable very persistent environment”. I find this interesting and makes me think back to my original analogy. A television cartoon and a chat with my parents was all I needed to know of the potential dangers, but children today have much more access to information, people and beliefs in an open global environment, so it is impossible to handle this with such a broad-brush approach.I also found it horrifying, after years of “teaching” safety online the number of pupils who still use the name, birthday and personal details on public sites. I have also discussed chat room discussion boards and Facebook friends and many of the pupils I talked to would accept friend requests from anyone - even if they did not know them.We can have the discussion, but does it really go any further than a simple class activity.Guidance can not be given in a vacuum, as it appears to be more school lessons and less real life. It therefore needs the support of parents, media and society. I think this is where you can see the potential problems. parents and teachers can discuss the principles of being kind, respectful members of the digital society, however, if celebrities are producing hate tweets and the news media focus’ on the sensationalism, if “happy slapping”videos go viral and social media is full of someones propaganda then can we blame them for not being “good” citizens. Surely they are just following society.Merrow would like to see them become more creators and less consumers:
...because they are using technology to create and are enjoying the fruits of their labor, they will be, I believe, less likely to use technology’s power negatively.
Maybe this would help but I still think that we as a society need to model the citzens we want our children to be. I think the best way to teach safety online is to show how to be save online, demonstrate through doing.Merrow. J (Apr 2012) Teaching kids to be 'digital citizens'(not just 'digital natives') . Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/teaching-kids-to-be-digital-citizens-not-just-digital-natives/2012/03/04/gIQALdFiqR_blog.htmWexler. E (Feb 2014) What are teens doing online? Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/media/generation-like/what-are-teens-doing-online/The truth about teen sexting. Retrieved from https://resources.uknowkids.com/the-truth-about-teen-sexting