16 things kids should know about social networking

Useful list from Deb Ng on the Kommein site of tips about social networking.  No harm for some adults to review them either.  I remain astonished at what people choose to share, and how trusting some are.

OK, so you and I can read this.  And then what?  Why not find several ways to share it?  Email to students, put on your school/library website with other resources on online safety, make a few points into a library poster (that you don't display forever, because then it becomes invisible...).  This is as much a wakeup call to me, to use all this stuff I am finding as much as possible.

Cheers

Ruth

A dozen ways to teach ethical and safe technology use

Read this excellent blog post from Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog.

http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2010/12/26/a-dozen-ways-to-teach-ethical-and-safe-technology-use.html

Cheers

Ruth

Facebook privacy options

While going through our DER laptop student responsibilities with Year 9 last Friday, I touched on social networking and privacy.  At present, they can't access social networking on their DER laptops at home or at school, but this may change in the future; and right now, they certainly are using social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Facebook Privacy: a bewildering tangle of options is a New York Times article with a detailed graphic illustrating just how many privacy options there are - and where - in Facebook.  On the one hand, it's complex enough to make lots of people (including students) toss up their hands and run in the other direction.  On the other hand, if you do, then the choice is letting far more information than you may wish or realise become public.

One to share with students and staff.

Added later, from Twitter:

• Will Richardson: Teach. Facebook. Now
• Are your Facebook privacy settings doing their job? Here are two tools and a slideshow to help you: http://bit.ly/cfbvDH  

Cheers

Ruth

How to link/embed YouTube videos into PowerPoint 2007

Our DER laptops for Year 9 will be distributed at the end of the week, so I'm busy putting together the PowerPoint for the first period, on school rules/policy reminders.  The laptops will then be issued, period by period, and in the last period of the day, I've been asked to address the whole year group (200+ kids...)again, on 'stuff like copyright and things they need to know'.  So that's another PowerPoint, with the slightly more formal title of "Digital Citizenship".  (Rumpestilskin, where are you??? - two major PowerPoints to prepare in under a week...).

However endlessly entrancing I may find my own voice, and however utterly brilll-y-unt I may be at holding an audience of 200+ year nine students for nearly an hour... (twice in one day!) I know that there must be some great things out there on digital citizenship, cybersafety, copyright and so forth to add different voices/change the pace/keep their interest.  And there are.  I'll share some of them this week on the blog.

Having found some useful YouTube videos, my next challenge was working out how to put a YouTube video into a PowerPoint, because I haven't done that before.  Google google google and here's the most useful set of instructions I found.  It's from Clay's Blog, and specifically refers to PowerPoint 2007.    The Captivate animation to show you how has a broken link on the above page (it's his new site) but works on his old site - click here to see how-to, step by step.

My one variation is that I paste the original URL into the Note section of the PowerPoint slide for future reference, then paste it again to edit it as the instructions outline (I can delete this second one once it's in the Properties - the Properties Movie window where it has to go is teenytiny).  If this makes NO sense, read his instructions/watch the Captivate demo and then it will.

You still need to have the computer showing the PowerPoint being connected to the internet during the presentation - this links rather than embeds.  It still means that you don't have to clunk out of the Presentation and over to a browser, but just instead click on a Play button.

Hey! Something new I've learned how to do, and something to share with colleagues and the kids.

Cheers

Ruth

Internet safety: Teaching about the web includes the troublesome parts

There's some discussion of this going on around the traps internet safety, cyberbullying, the dangers of the social networking online.

Teaching about the web includes the troublesome parts by Stephanie Clifford in the New York Times

Common Sense’s classes, based on research by Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychology and education professor, are grouped into topics he calls “ethical fault lines”: identity (how do you present yourself online?); privacy (the world can see everything you write); ownership (plagiarism, reproducing creative work); credibility (legitimate sources of information); and community (interacting with others).

Here's a link to the (coming soon) curriuculum documents - there is a preview of the privacy unit. 

Edited by Howard Gardiner: Young people, ethics and the new digital media (link to a free pdf).

 Cyberbullying report from the ABC's 7.30 Report:

In a recent study one in four teenage students said they'd been bullied in the previous few weeks. A conference in Melbourne starting later this week will examine why schools aren't able to properly tackle the problem, and whether bullying itself should be made a crime.

This report spends time on teacher unfamiliarity with social media, and teachers' lack of training, as being part of the reason for the problem.

I am not abrogating the role schools and teachers can play in educating to reduce/eliminate cyberbullying, but surely it's not down to schools alone to solve this (if indeed it can be entirely eliminated/solved)?

I've done a short presentation on cybersafety at the Year 11 Crossroads program these last few years, so it will be good to incorporate material from these resources.

Cheers

Ruth

Safer Internet Day 2010: 9 February

Logo source, which has more information

This is an international cybersafety event, with the theme of 'think before you post'.  It's organised by InSafe, and international organisation for internet safety, and supported in Australia by ACMA.

The link above has more info, including a poster to print, tips for kids and teens, and this YouTube video:

Why not compile a quick email to send out to students/parents/staff?

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: burgled

Being burgled?  Not fun.
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Cleaning up the mess/broken glass? Not fun either.
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Thinking how much worse it might have been? Most important.
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Having, quite inadvertently, acquired the world's 'coolest' crime scene tape*?
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PRICELESS!

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*I was given the roll of it a while ago, when the bookshop didn't need it any more after the promotion of the DVD of the Underbelly crime series.  Thought I might use it for a 'crime books' display - didn't think I'd end up using it to keep areas secure until the police and fingerprint people and so forth had done their work.  It certainly got noticed (even the police were amused!).
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The happy life of teacher librarians...
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Cheers
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Ruth
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PS. You clean up fingerprint powder with an ammonia-based cleaner, such as Spray'n'Wipe, in case you didn't know (I didn't).  They get you to sign something before they start (because of the anticipated/inevitable mess), and give you a helpful cleanup info card once they're done.
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Privacy, Facebook and student naivety

Presenting a session on Internet Security Issues at our school's Crossroads program recently, I remarked to the Year 11 students that if my dad had done something extremely foolish when he was a teenager, it might, maybe have made it to radio and newspapers.  If I had done ditto, you can add television to the mix.  Still large corp. media outlets, though, not necessarily aware of or able to capture an individual life easily or quickly. 

Now, if they do something extremely foolish, it can land on YouTube via a mobile/cell phone, or on Twitter, within seconds.  Such is the changed world they need to take account of.  Their foolishness can be far more readily found by potential employers doing a bit of googling than would have been possible ten, twenty, more years ago.

A recent NY Times article discusses the change Facebook has made, so that ALL status messages are now by default, PUBLIC - ie available for anyone to see - unless the Facebook user actively chooses otherwise.  Default is public.  Private requires action.  Previously, the default setting has been 'private'.

How many students will make the change?  Or care?  How many should?  More than will.  I find students interestingly (expectedly?) naive about such things, far more trusting than they should be.  It's part of being young and bulletproof, maybe.  I regularly discuss internet privacy issues with students informally, as well as on the more formal occasions such as offered by the Crossroads program.  The school system in which I work has, at present, blocked social networking sites such as Facebook so they aren't available when logging in at school, but students are certainly using these outside school hours - and I know that there are schools/systems where social networking sites are used in educational contexts.

How aware will students be that something they don't mean to be public may have legal implications?  Unintended and possibly serious consequences?  A whole scale of possibilities, from the agonies of social embarrassment to active/passive cyber-bullying to legal action for libel?

Given that the new social media are new to parents and teachers, the responsibility for understanding the implications of this - and conveying wise advice - is shared by home and school.  But do parents and teachers understand and convey?  And, if they don't, how bitter might be the lessons some of our kids learn from unexpected experience?

Cheers

Ruth

YouTube as search engine

Is YouTube the next Google? Is YouTube your search engine of choice?  Maybe not yet, but for some, including kids, it is.  A thought-provoking article, At first, funny videos.  Now, a reference tool in the New York Times, written by Miguel Helft, discusses this phenomenon.

The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries.

And further on:

At YouTube, Hunter Walk, a director of product management, said the move toward video might not necessarily lead to a decline in the consumption of text or other media. Video, text and other formats, he said, will complement one another in interesting ways.


Mr. Walk said a good example is provided by an ad for Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries — the one in which a voice asks “Who do you want answering the phone?” at the White House at 3 a.m. during a crisis. A search for “Hillary Clinton 3 a.m.” on Google would bring up news stories about the ad and the controversy surrounding it. On YouTube, the same search brought up the original commercial, as well a response by the Barack Obama campaign, pundits’ commentaries and an assortment of spoofs, giving users a much different understanding of how the story unfolded, Mr. Walk said.

At present, the school system in which I work has blocked all access to YouTube, for students and staff, due to concerns including those related to child protection.

I wonder about what decisions will be made in the future.  Dictionaries, for instance, always had words like f**k and s**t in them; kids could find them, but had to hunt.  Few school libraries would not have pictures of naked people, whether in a National Geographic or a health book.  Now, with the internet making searching many sources faster and simpler, stuff kids had to work to find is more immediately located.  The openness of the internet makes it a challenge for educational systems, deciding what to allow, what to block, and why; and even if they can. 

And then there are always the sites like YouTube.  Like the dictionary, a collection, a cornucopia, of material judged worthy and less worthy.  And at what point (assuming that it's not possible to allow some access only, as I've been told is the case - to allow some is almost inevitably to allow all) does the educational value outweigh the educational and social (eg. child protection) negatives? 

Web 2.0 is about interaction, user-driven, user-uploaded content.  But in a free, democratic society, the freedom is there to upload the good, the bad, the indifferent.  There are great YouTube videos and vilely stupid ones.  Great blogs and vilely stupid ones.  Fabulous Flickr images and ridiculous/troubling/antisocial ones.  The collection that is our human society, our mess and melange of thoughts and ideas, available in unimaginable volume, as never before.

I don't know the answers.  As a teacher, as a teacher librarian, I think about these questions, though.  What access should we offer at school?  It's probably always going to be less than home internet access (and that's assuming all kids do have home internet access), but where the line is drawn?  That's a problem for Solomon.

And creeping up on the horizon are cheaper and cheaper netbook computers, wireless broadband, mobile phones (cell phones/cellphones) with internet access), so it's getting easier and easier for kids to step past the protective systems their school may put in place, and jump onto the internet.  To use YouTube as a search engine, for example.

Solomon?

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Safety on the internet

With the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, students (and not just students) can be tremendously innocent/trusting/unaware of security issues, providing personal information without realising how open it is, and the possible consequences. The SMH had a blog entry about this recently.

While sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not accessible through the public school system computers in NSW, we still have a responsibility to point out to students the importance of their online privacy. I make it a habit to have my postcode, if I have to give one, as 2000, the postcode for central Sydney (an easily remembered lie) - but of course, this isn't a useful strategy for a social networking site in which location is important as part of your identity.