An NY Times article, "Teaching About the Web Includes Some Troublesome Parts" caught my attention because it was about how students are being taught in school how they should behave online. The article discusses a middle school teacher using lessons from a site/service, "Common Sense Media," to teach students about the consequences of their actions online. The teacher went into subjects including privacy (students thinking that their online journals were private when actually they weren't), intellectual property and plagiarism, and the importance of respectful online behavior (e.g. not cyber bullying or socially exclusion). He also tried to get the students to see the "permanence" of their online posts and the possible offline effects of online actions.
While everyone taking "Culture, Power, Cyberspace" should now know that culture is learned, how does this institutional learning differ from the experiential learning which takes place online? What seem to be possible negative or positive aspects of teaching children how to behave online? Do you think it's necessary to try to control "normal" (even if it's clique-ish or not-so-nice) teen and pre-teen behavior online?
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Well, sure, you can argue that it's a "normal" behavior, but don't we as a society try to curb certain behaviors in the playground, such as bullying?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I'm seeing here, this teacher is trying to curb bullying and teach the kids to take responsibility for their actions in a new medium that might give them the sense of being anonymous. (when they aren't)
Sounds good to me.