I’ve been monitoring a discussion about the appropriate use of social software in schools. I’ve offered an alternate perspective, and I have an anecdote and some comments to share as well. But before I get to that I would like to simply say that I don’t consider myself an expert in these matters. My interest in computer technology is relatively recent, and springs from my interest in textual studies and literacy. Most of what I’ve learned about the internet has been learned from Chris Lott, and from reading and writing in this space that I’ve created on the web. I respect the variety of viewpoints that have been expressed because I have been given plenty to reflect on. For whatever the experience of one teacher is worth, I offer mine as an example of the problems with trust and danger that Miguel and Bud, Will and Darren talked about.
Glacier Travel: A near miss
Several years ago, when I first came to Alaska, I participated in a practical course in winter mountaineering sponsored by a local mountaineering club and the University of Alaska. We learned all about glacier travel, rescue techniques, and gear. We went on weekend climbing trips. I met some good friends. The course ended and the following winter one of those friends and I headed out on a trip into the Alaska Range on our own. It’s been said of mountaineering that experience is gained suddenly, and that you don’t necessarily grow from all the times when things go as planned. So on this unguided trip my friend and I discussed whether we should use a rope to cross the glacier – despite the fact that we’d been taught to ALWAYS use a rope. We’d hiked up the lateral moraine of the Castner Glacier for about 5 miles, and needed to cross it in order to reach our destination on the other side. It seemed like a trivial detail. There was light snow and rocks showing all the way. A huge and very intimidating crevasse lay to the right of our proposed route across. We’d steer clear of that! As an academic exercise, we finally decided to use the rope. We were about three quarters of the way across; the snow was only a few inches deep. I was about to step up onto a small pile of rocks when the bottom dropped out of my world. I remember that fall as an eternity. When I shook the snow out of my glasses I realized that I’d fallen into a small moulon – a glory hole – an abyss that is carved by summer runoff on the surface of the ice that ultimately finds a path to bedrock. It was not very big, maybe 10 feet across. I couldn’t see the bottom. From where I hung on the climbing rope, the top was a small hole showing only a patch of gray sky, way above my head. My first instinct was to claw my way back up, but of course that wasn’t possible. Instead, I had to remain clear-headed and follow the protocol we’d been taught. Summing up my feelings about this whole experience I’d say that I thank God for whatever inspiration prompted the impulse to use the rope that we carried, and I marvel at the ignorance that tempted me to consider leaving it in my pack.
Internet Highway Travel: Dodging trouble
Last spring I set up some student blogs for my fourth-graders. I considered district policies regarding their privacy and took measures to ensure their anonymity. I monitored the comments on a special email account I reserved just for that project. The student blogs were a big hit. I was very gratified. A couple of things happened, though, to give me pause. Early on in the project one young man decided he would publish jokes that people sent him. He tried to publish his personal email address so anyone who wanted to could send him jokes. I caught that one. I told him that I didn’t want him to engage in any email conversations with strangers. He was mad at me for ruining what he thought was a masterful plan to generate a great humor collection. The spectre of control began to haunt me. We worked with a professor from the University on a math-related project and she asked the kids to reflect on their experience with her research. One of the young ladies in the class expressed her feelings with what I would consider a vulgar and impolite word. So I began to ask myself, whose web space is this? And is this really blogging if I take this much editorial control of their writing. Still, they needed to respect the same social conventions that apply to all of their schoolwork. The final cautionary incident came shortly after school let out. I found a comment from a stranger on the blog of a boy who had written about trampolines. The comment was entirely appropriate on a superficial level. The commenter asked my student to provide advice on doing flips, and sent an email address for the child to respond to. I had to hack the template to allow only registered users to comment. Those student blogs are gone now, and we’re working out a new non-blog authoring alternative that would be suitable for elementary-aged kids.
I realized that there are issues and pitfalls to the use of social software that I’d not thought about. There are pedagogical limitations to using a journalling tool to teach writing, since revision is problematic with blogging software. There are questions about ownership of the web space. Who really owns the content? And I have misgivings about putting my elementary-age students in a situation where they could meet people that none of us know. I ask myself, who am I to decide these things? The school I work at serves a community that places a lot of trust in the teachers. My students’ parents didn’t really read or monitor their activity on the web. They left it up to me. My principal isn’t web savvy, and I don’t think he read their stuff, either. He trusted me. As to teaching our students about internet safety, I say that is an absolute requirement. Kids get safety lessons all the time. And it strikes me as altogether naive to think that those lessons will prevent bad things from happening. If that was true, there would be no teen pregnancies, teen drinking, or drug use. All teen agers would be home by curfew, do their homework, and go to bed on time.
Teachers need that training, too. But just like driver education, I doubt if such training will suffice to guarantee that nothing bad can happen with various socially enabled software applications. Just as we use seat belts in our cars, I believe we should use specialized tools for publishing student work to a dynamic internet environment. The issue of trust need not be construed as one that involves the integrity of a teacher’s ethical foundation or professional competence, but may be considered in light of our awareness and experience with powerful emergent technologies. As I read it, Miguel’s position could be construed as simply suggesting that we all rope up before someone takes a serious fall.
4 Comments
The fundamental issue here is that the concept of privacy and safety that schools rely on is solely becoming outmoded and replaced with a different reality (and ethos). I definitely agree that Internet safety needs to be taught. But locking schools away behind virtual walls not only makes the communities less valuable for learning but ignore the reality of what the students will be doing and how they will be participating as soon as they leave the classroom. So you are absolutely right: there are all kinds of issues and pitfalls to think about. It’s part and parcel with what makes the tools useful and, being a reflection of larger changes in how our society interacts with and through technology, they can’t be ignored.
That being said, I would love to see a federated internet of K-12 educators creating larger virtual communities between classrooms/schools. Blogs and wikis have their problems with process writing, but they also have their advantages. Paper journals have their problems too. If the blogs and wikis are walled in there’s really not a point to them. The question is: who can we safely allow into the necessarily protected space beyond “just” the students?
btw: that “outgoing link popularity” tool-tip is pretty darn cool
also btw: Just so you know, I don’t only read and respond to items that are linked to me
I have a number of your posts saved in Bloglines. You never fail to stimulate interesting thinking… whatever you learned from me you have long since eclipsed, which is incredibly gratifying!
Doug, thanks for posting this. I was starting to think I was being completely ineffective as a blogging communicator . I support the idea of building specialized publishing tools, even as i agree that blogs may lose their point when separated from the ecology of the Internet. Yet, we can build our own network, apart from the “real” Internet, that reflects the distinctiveness of its education members.
This is what Chris refers to as the “federated internet of K-12 educators,” what I’ve referred to as an ecology (using George Siemens’ word if I understand it correctly). To answer Chris’ question, who would we let in, well…we’d only let educators and their students in.
Now…how do we go about constructing a federated network of K-12 educators focused on digital conversations, personal learning networks and blogging students?
Miguel Guhlin
http://www.mguhlin.net/blog
Yes, for the most part it will be other K-12 educators and their students as long as educators is broadly defined to allow in other experts, book authors, astronauts, professional musicians, spoon bending magicians and everyone else who the official educator might want to let in. The point of the ecology (a term I’ve used for a long time in a way similar to George Siemens) is that the connections will be most valuable if they have anchors in the larger communities of practice.
I’m glad to hear there are some efforts to make this kind of thing possible. I’m also glad for people like yourself and Doug and all the other participants in this distributed conversation (and thankful I don’t teach K-12, honestly).
Chris and Miguel,
Thanks to both of you for your responses. It’s gratifying to get such positive feedback. I believe that discussion of these issues is crucial to the development of a new theoretical framework for school literacies.
And Chris, about the tool tip feature – I wasn’t aware of it since I don’t click on my own page links. The feature must be there because I use a a stat tracking service that provides information about which links are being followed .
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