Blogg-Ed Indetermination

In a previous post, I reviewed Generation Text: Raising Well-Adjusted Kinds in an Age of Instant Everything by Michael Osit, and promised to follow-up with a review of a  new text from ISTE, Raising a Digital Child: A Digital Citizenship Handbook for Parents, by Mike Ribble.

Judging by the title, one might think that these books might be redundant. But they are not, for reasons that I will describe below. Both deserve a place on the educational technologist’s bookshelf, but for different reasons.

Ribble’s book is based on his previous volume from ISTE, Digital Citizenship in Schools. It takes the themes he developed there and extends them to the family.

Ribble’s central tenet is that we need to teach students how to be digital citizens, and that such citizenship is comprised of nine elements. These nine elements, in turn, may be broken into three categories.

HOME AND COMMUNITY

• Digital Access: full electronic participation in society.
• Digital Commerce: the buying and selling of goods online.
• Digital Communication: the electronic exchange of information.

HOME AND SCHOOL

• Digital Literacy: the capability to use digital technology and knowing when and how ot use it.
• Digital Etiquette: the standards of conduct expected by other technology users.
• Digital Law: the legal wrights and restrictions governing technology use.

HOME

• Digital Rights and Responsibilities: the privileges and freedoms extended to all digital technology users, and the behavioral expectations that come with them.
• Digital Health and Wellness: the elements of physical andd psychological well-being related to digital technology use.
• Digital Security: the precautions that all technology users must take to guarantee their personal safety and the security of the network.

What I like about Ribble’s approach is that it is “not simply a list of rules… but ideas and guidelines for thinking about technology.” This is consistent with my school’s alternative approach to “acceptable use” policies for students, which eschews a long list of “thou shalt nots” (and the regular need to amend the list as technology changes) and instead focuses on “honorable use.” Learning how to think about technology is also consistent with the new concept of “digital wisdom” espoused by Mark Prensky.

In the not-so-distant past, parents could rely upon their own experience as children and teens, and the guidance of their adult mentors, to help them navigate the challenges of childhood and adolescence. But parents today often lack experience in social networking, collaborative web technologies, text messaging, blogs, wikis, and other elements of the technology landscape so familiar to their children. Without context and the practical experience that comes from the mistakes, parents have little experience to inform their intuition and therefore be able to act as competent, wise coaches for their children. Lacking such experience, parents may be clueless about what their children are doing, think that everything on the Internet is harmful or dangerous, or abdicate all responsibility for digital education to the schools. There are obvious shortcomings to each of these approaches.

The only approach that has really makes any sense is to engage your child in conversation and practice about technology, learning as much as you can about the technology yourself by participating in it, and talking with other adults (parents and teachers) about technology.

Ribble describes a four stage process for parents to address digital citizenship:

1. Awareness
2. Guided Practice
3. Modeling and Demonstration
4. Feedback and Analysis

My experience is that most approaches to parent education about the technology use of children stop at stage 1, Awareness. This may be followed by (2) hand wringing, (3) installation of blocking software and/or keystroke capture software, and (4) lectures about the perils of the internet. Ribble’s model makes much more sense.

I am particularly fond of the idea of parents practicing with their children, and then modeling for their children, the responsible use of technology. I wish Ribble’s chapter on this model went into more detail about this process.

And this leads me to my major caveat about this book. Raising Digital Children will work best, I think, when used as a textbook in a parent education class led by an experienced educator. There are many open-ended questions that beg for an opportunity for parents to discuss among themselves before bringing these questions to their children. Similarly, while I believe it is instructive for parents to learn something about technology from their children, I also believe there is safety and security to be had when a group of parents learn how to create a Facebook account together, from another adult who knows about things like recommended security and privacy settings.

Taken together, Raising a Digital Child and Generation Text are two different yet compatible takes on the role parents have to play in rearing children in a digital age. The former would make a wonderful text for a class on the subject, while the latter would make an excellent companion reader.

“Is it safe?” is the iconic line from the 1976 movie thriller Marathon Man starring Dustin Hoffman (as Thomas Levy) and Sir Laurence Olivier (as Christian Szell). Szell, a former Nazi war criminal with millions stashed away in diamonds, mistakenly believes that Levy is the key to his escaping the U.S. with his fortune. Using torturous dental techniques that only masochist Arthur Denton could love, he tries to coerce Levy into into revealing knowledge he does not have, repeatedly asking him:

“Is it safe?”

The Bogey man thirty plus years later is the Internet but the question remains: “Is it safe?” This is especially true when talking about the Internet and children.

And there wouldn’t be much of a story here if the Internet was totally benign. Thus it is that dozens of books, web sites, consultants, speakers, and talk shows warn us of the dangers of the Internet. Millions watch as television news shows capture Internet predators and expose them to public humiliation and criminal prosecution. Security firms capitalize on the resulting anxieties of the public (and especially parents), resulting in the sales of millions of dollars of products and services each year to answer the question:

“Is it safe?”

“Yes, but only if you use [fill in the blank and our annual subscription to keep you safe].”

Safe Practices for Life Online: A Guide for Middle and High School Students by Doug Fodeman and Marje Monroe asks the same question, but their answer might surprise you.

“It is safe?”

“Yes. If you use your head.”

In twelve chapters they outline ideas and lesson starters teachers can use to help students make wise decisions in choosing screen names and passwords, responding to cyberbullies, safeguarding personal information, and avoiding online scams. They explain how cookies work, how phishing scams appear to be legitimate, the pros and cons of instant messaging, social networking, urban legends, information literacy, and hoax web sites. I suspect that many teachers reading this book will come away with practical knowledge that they, too, can put to work in protecting their own online interactions.

Each chapter ends with five or more exercises that teachers can use with their students to explore a topic in greater depth. Some exercises are pretty lame, such as those that ask students to use Google to help define computer terms. The better ones are much more expansive, based on case studies, simulations, and thoughtful questions that could really engage mature students in substantive discussions. As is the case with any such lessons, their success lies in the ability for teachers to create a safe (no pun intended) non-judgmental classroom in which all points-of-view are allowed and preaching is minimized.

What I really like about this book is that I think it can be used to empower students to make rational choices.

A metaphor:

When you live by the ocean, you teach your children how to swim. You teach them how to play on the beach and in the water safely and responsibly. You let them know when they need to have an adult around, and what to do if there’s a problem. They learn how to read the currents and the skies. As your children grow you, too, grow more confident in their skills and maturity. Eventually your children reach an age where they can swim without your direct supervision. You can ask them “Is it safe?” and be confident that they will answer truthfully and correctly.

This book is like that. It can help students become safe in the ocean of cyberspace..

On rare occasions the authors are a bit too heavy handed for my taste, such as the blanket statement that parents should “Forbid IM until sixth grade.” Another minor criticism as that the book’s accompanying web site is still under construction. A book such as this requires an online companion to allow readers easy access to all of the wonderful online resources it references, as well as a means for the authors to update links and add new resources as they become available. Both Fodeman and Monroe have promised to do this.

This is the book I have been waiting for to teach students online safety. The authors have made a fine contribrution to the literature on Internet use in schools, and I encourage educators with interests in this area to read it.

Colleague Matt Montagne and I had the opportunity to sit in on today’s free webinar from ISTE entitled School 2.0: Technology and the Future of School featuring the U.S. Department of Education’s Tim Magner. Yes, the people who also brought us No Child Left Behind are actually thinking about the future of American schools and we’re impressed.

After the standard PowerPoint slides on the use of technology by today’s teens, the rise in literacy, high school and college graduation rates in the world compared to the U.S., and the imperatives they raise for the U.S., Magner showed us a new web site, School 2.0 (located at http://etoolkit.org/etoolkit). The web site has a wealth of information for educators interested in thinking about and planning for schools of the future. The site is a work in progress, with some information still to be completed. But that’s par for the course in web 2.0; always a work in progress. Of particular interest is their interactive map of a Learning Ecosystem. Be sure to check it out. Magmer has a related, much shorter presentation available on YouTube (below). If ISTE releases an archive of the seminar that is available to the public, I will post the URL on my blog.