Jason Stone
Director of Instructional Technology
Over the course of two evenings late last month, several parents of students in grades 4-8 gathered to discuss the heady topic of Parenting Teens and Pre-Teens in a Digital Age. In past years, most meetings aimed at this topic focused on the negatives, including “stranger danger” in chat rooms, gaming addictions, multitasking’s limitations, and homework distractions. Although these remain as real issues that need our attention, this year’s discussions began by looking at kids’ technology use in a more positive light.
It is practically a given that most children in our school community will, at some point in the coming years, have an online identity and develop the so-called “digital footprint.” They will be using digital tools to communicate and share information about themselves. Even if some of the younger students aren’t interested in this online life yet, the time will come. As adults, we should be looking for ways to help our kids develop healthy relationships with these tools, and begin the conversations about staying in control of the information shared online. It isn’t enough to hope our kids delay their adoption of social networks, instant messaging, texting, and email and then simply hope for the best!
Families can look for projects to work on together that are gateways to conversations about a digital footprint. While making a video to send to an out-of-town grandparent, talk about choosing how to share that video. Do you want to post it on YouTube where anyone can see it? Would it be better to put it on a private, password-protected video-sharing site?
Discuss the content of the video: Does it show personal information that would best be kept “in the family”? Did you include people in the video who are no longer involved in the sharing process? Perhaps they don’t want their images and voice shared with the public. By discussing a video’s contents, you can decide how best to share it.
Another skill to model for your children is the act of publicly commenting on news, politics, or popular culture. Every time we post an opinion using our actual name or recognizable screen name, we are painting a picture of who we are and what we believe in. As a family, try writing a letter to an editor of an online newspaper or post to a local blog. Model the process of making and supporting a statement or opinion while remaining civil! Continue this conversation to discuss communication via email and texting, focusing on being careful about tone and clarity in writing to avoid being misunderstood.
At school, we are slowly but surely adopting tools that allow us to do similar modeling while guiding classroom discussion. Many of you have heard of Moodle, our current online classroom management system for teachers and students. Several classes use Moodle to share information and ideas, to collaborate, and to comment on students’ writing and opinions, all within a private system with teacher participation.
Our library catalog system now has an embedded social network that allows members of our student community to write book reviews and make book recommendations to other members in the system. During recent fourth-grade library classes, Renee Otero introduced this tool and lead discussions about the rights and responsibilities that this kind of opportunity brings. The classes talked about tone in online communication, and how we should treat online conversations no differently than face-to-face meetings. Needless to say, the fourth graders were thrilled with this new opportunity, and more than 50 book reviews have already been written and shared.
We will continue to look for ways for students to “get their feet wet” with social networking and online information sharing, and we hope families will do the same. It is a long, slow process for which there is little precedent. But we need to remember that children still need our adult guidance while learning to use age-appropriate online tools.
