Best Practices for Educating Parents About Digital Media Issues

Perhaps the parent group at your school is struggling with the issue of how teachers, administrators, and parents can work together to head off digital issues and get more educated about digital literacy? If so, take a look at the best practices list presented in an article on the Common Sense Media site, citing what has been done in two parochial schools in San Francisco.

Cyber Communication: Progress or Problem—What Kids Say

This year’s Optimist International Oratorical Competition for students focuses on the topic: Cyber Communication: Progress or Problem. After listening to many student speeches, these thoughts went through my mind. (1) Students, at least the ones participating in this competition, know the dangers of the Internet. (2) They know social networking sites have a minimum age, but they ignore it—it’s like it’s not there and doesn’t matter. (3) They realize cyber communication is here to stay and say people should get used to it and learn how to use it correctly. (4) They have no idea what to do about the problem of cyberbullies, but they know that it happens and feel for those who have been victims. (5) Although they text and video chat mostly, and still use email and instant messaging, many love to get written letters—one speaker even wrote an obituary of a love letter and then recited from one of Abigail Adam’s letters to John.  (6) They can’t imagine carrying a dictionary around or having to look words up in a dictionary. (7) It’s foreign to them not to be able to type their essays into the computer. “I couldn’t just sit down and write my stories on paper,” one commented. (8) They see cell phones as a necessary part of their lives, but they do not think parents should give cell phones to young children. (9) They are not sure about the option of technology to locate where they are. “That’s scary,” according to some. Others thought it could be useful for parents but noted that parents might purchase a cell phone for young children for this reason and not realize the other dangers present in cell phone options. (10) They see that cyber communication can be a powerful force for good in our world even though they realize that everyone doesn’t use it as they should—one speaker said, “You’ve got to remember that everyone isn’t nice.” Another said, “Alexander Graham Bell didn’t invent the telephone so that people could make crank calls or threatening calls. We must step forward with the technologies we have today thinking how we can help our world.”

 

Happy Birthday Internet! Mid-Life Crisis at 40

USA Today in the article, “ As Internet Turns 40, Barriers Threaten Its Growth ” says that the Net is going through a mid-life crisis. Problems such as spam, hackers, and fees cause us to pull back from use and innovation. We set up firewalls and other barriers, and we limit, because of safety concerns what our students can do on the Net. It’s not that we should do away with the barriers; we need them. But perhaps we can find a way to handle the Internet’s continuing and emerging problems. Dealing with such difficulties as spam, scams, and hacking waste our time and money. Problems such as Internet predators and cyberbullies threaten to make open interactive communities impossible. The Internet will move beyond its mid-life crisis into a greater maturity, but will the spirit of innovation and openness be the same? Maybe it can’t be and must find a different path. (Note: The USA Today article also contains a nice overview of Internet milestones.)

Big Brother Knows Where You Are

It's called social mapping, and it means that people can tell where you are through your cell phone connection. You see it on television shows all the time. CSI investigators locate criminals without a problem, don't they? It doesn't work exactly like that in real life for citizens like our students and us. To use social mapping, the software has to be loaded onto phones (or computers, in some cases) and users must specify who they will allow to locate them. They also can tell the software to reveal their exact location or perhaps only that they are in a certain city. Keep in mind that if the system uses GPS, the locating can be very accurate; if it's by phone towers, it can be miles off. Google is coming out with Latitude, a system that works with Google Maps, and there are other social mapping programs like Loopt and BrightKite. With the mapping programs, parents could keep track of where their children are and friends could find each other. —But when you consider the possible problems of pre-teens and teens with peer relationships and the worry that some young people might open their tracking to "friends" they don't really know, questions arise about this type of software. Could peer pressure cause some students to opt-in to tracking when it's not wise? Very likely.

Court Rules MySpace Postings are Free Speech

A Court of Appeals in Indiana has ruled that a judge violated the First Amendment rights of a teen when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal. In February 2006, Greencastle Middle School Principal Shawn Gobert discovered a Web page on MySpace purportedly created by him. The unidentified teen, who did not create the page, made derogatory postings on it concerning the school's policy on body piercing. The state filed a delinquency petition in March alleging that teen's acts would have been harassment, identity deception and identity theft if committed by an adult. A judge ruled that her comments were obscene and placed her on nine months probation. The teen argued that her comments were protected political speech under both the state and federal constitutions because they dealt with school policy. This incident magnifies the growing concern of many schools about exactly where does a school's authority end. Will parent and teachers become more and more adversaries rather than partners because of these kinds of incidents? Would love to hear your comments on this.

Alleged Hackers Fight Expulsion

Two teens in York, PA, accused of hacking into their school district’s computer system in October, are being threatened with expulsion. While their parents have filed suit claiming that they were denied their constitutional rights and that the district is levying a punishment more severe than the district’s rules provide for, many school districts are watching this case as a bellwether for how schools will be handling cases of this kind in the future. Once seen as a practical joke, hacking is now considered a major crime and with schools invoking zero tolerance policies for many infractions that used to be treated with minor suspensions, this case should be of interest to concerned teachers, parents and students.

Blocking Sex Offenders

MySpace has announced that it is working on a tool that will help block access to its site by convicted sex offenders. Using a database that includes the physical descriptions and names of offenders in the United States, MySpace hopes that the tool will be able to find profiles so that offenders using the site can be identified and denied access. The database, according to an article in the Washington Post, will update monthly and will "include details such as names, age, hair color, height, scars and tattoos." The system will not be able to catch all offenders or tell what age a person is, but it is a step forward.

Teen Questioned By Secret Service After Threat on MySpace Page

A fourteen-year-old 8th grader was taken out of class and questioned by Secret Service agents about a picture of President Bush with the words “Kill Bush” scrawled over his face that she had posted on her MySpace page in protest of the Iraq war. After having learned in a class at school such postings were illegal, the girl had taken the page down, which also featured a dagger stabbing the president’s outstretched hand, but not before agents had noted it. The girl and her parents acknowledged the right of the agents to question her, but protested that her parents should have been there for the 15 minutes the agents spent with her, reducing her to tears. Make sure you emphasize with your students what constitutes a threat or defamation of character in an online posting and how EVERYTHING online is public!