M4-L1 – Public or Private Noelene? My post – July 12/2010
How might Noelene address the concerns raised by the parents in a way that does not negatively impact the activity for the students? Are there justifications for having students work in public spaces on the web?
Post your thoughts on this to the Public or private discussion forum under Module 4.
I think there’s a few steps that are missing here that Noelene has either forgotten about or perhaps not considered. Communication is key as many of you have mentioned!
Primarily, Noelene needs to clearly understand the social media use policy in her district and school and have a conversation with her administrators regarding the use of social media like blogs as an instructional tool before she addresses the blogging concerns with the parents. She may end up having to develop a proposal including curricular connections to describe the rationale of using social media such as blogs, clearly identifying the strengths and the weakness (or issues) of using blogs as an instruction platform to justify her rationale and so that she is prepared to address issues that may arise. Without their support, Noelene will no doubt be in hot water.
After consulting with her admin, Noelene can update her security settings on her weblog. With security measures in place, Noelene can confidently reassure the parents that her students are participating in a safe environment. As teachers, we need to keep our parents informed of the nature of the projects and activities that use the internet and the school policies regarding these interactions. This includes teachers informing all parents about the security settings in place to ensure their child’s safety online and that when participating in internet based activities like weblogs, all discussions should be appropriate, school-related, follow proper netiquette, and that all school policies apply, such as plagiarism and bullying.
With admin support, Noelene could then have a general parent meeting or individual meetings with the parents in question that have concerns. She could/should also have these school policies, privacy/security measures and “Golden e-Rules” resources available online (in a wiki, blog, CMS, etc) or in print form for easy access for parents and students. This way, Noelene can empower her parent group. Those parents who don’t know what netiquette is have the opportunity through these resources to learn about it and become more responsibly aware parents. She could also encourage parents to watch the video about 21st Century Learners so that they may understand their “Net-Gen” child better: Learning to Change, Changing to Learn (the video is on my cool videos link).
Noelene needs to make sure her class is ready for meaningful educational blogging. Therefore, as part of an introduction to blogging and proper netiquette, Noelene should do an introductory e-Rules lesson. This lesson should not only include proper netiquette, but also awareness about online privacy issues. Students need to be taught how to protect themselves online (like not releasing any personal information online such as real name, address, school name, phone number, email address, etc.). Students can use pseudonyms (or nicknames) that only Noelene, their classmates and their parents would know. Students tend to like picking new names – it adds to the fun! Further, due to privacy laws, Noelene could discuss having a district ID number or email address for each student and only these numbers and addresses are to be used which would increase the security measures. We have this in our school division and it works wonderfully!
When the curricular objectives and the purposes of using LiveJournal are clearly stated, and with all possible precautions and security measures strictly adhered to, I would think that most of the parents would have no problem with using weblogs as an instructional tool.
Noelene should also allow parents (and students) to “opt out” of these activities and do an alternative activity if they have any concerns that can’t be resolved – in that case the student would be doing a paper/pen writing activity in lieu of the virtual writing activity.
According to Downes and Fisch, students today are quite different from the students in the past, including ourselves. Learning is more relevant when it is more authentic and related to personal life. We teachers need to be able to “penetrate” through the walls and allow the students to “experience” the actual world. The digital divide that separates the parents from their “Net-Gen” children is what causes much of the conflict. After all, these students are already grade 9 and many of them may have a personal blog (or different blogs) already. It is the time for both teachers and parents to face the reality and learn how to deal with the invasion of social media. After all, their kids are no doubt Face Book experts!