Digital footprints
An issue I’m facing at the moment is how to begin successfully implementing web 2.0 tools into ICT! In ICT, which really should be the forerunner for using web 2.0! We can use it in other subjects but if we’re not using it in ICT what’s the point? So I’m trying (with support/help from my HoD) to design units for year 8 and 9 ICT that will use web 2.0 tools and successfully allow students to not only understand the implications of their digital footprints, but begin stamping their digital feet. Because what surprised me this year was that very few students really know how to use many web 2.0 applications. Social media to them is for gossip and games.
When I set my year 8 students a task to write on our wiki what they use technology for, half the class failed to complete the task – they didn’t really know what to write. These are students who use the internet everyday. When I set them another task for the wiki – to include a website (just one) they think would be useful to the other students in the class, three quarters of the class were unable to complete the task. Because the (only) parameter I set were that the website must have some educational benefit – I even said they could include games. I think that parameter was too hard for them to understand. Their immediate instinct was to go to google and search for educational games and click on any link whether it had the word educational in it or not! Then play the games and hope I wouldn’t think they were wasting my time.
What this experience taught me is that our students are using technologies without knowing what kind of real benefit they can gain. Without realising that the internet is more than something you can just access whenever you feel like it. Digital citizenship is not even a term many of my students would have heard of. This scares me as from what I read and witness, today’s youth generation are playing violent video games that require you to kill a certain amount of people or beasts or aliens or other fantasy-themed characters, before advancing to the next level. They do not see that they are killing things, they just see the killing as a means to advance. This tells me that they see through the messages in these games, and perhaps they cannot see the harm their online behaviours on social media sites like Facebook and Myspace are doing.
How can we emphasise the importance of creating a positive digital footprint? How can we emphasise the importance of our students not involving themselves in cyber bullying or other inappropriate online behaviours? One way might be to show them this video:
Find more videos like this on The Educator’s PLN
Thanks to Steve Johnson for posting this on the Educator’s PLN ning. I would think many of my fellow teachers would be interested in viewing this video as well. The only problem is, how do I get them interested too? But that is for another blog at another time…
Filed under: teaching | Tagged: digital footprint, online behaviour, PLN
Excellent article- excellent video- thanks for sharing- will spread the word in my blog. Students need to be educated how to use social networks responsibly. And it’s up to us teachers to help them.