9/30/16

9/30/16 Blog Post
9:09 pm

9/23/16

How To Encourage Positive Digital Communication

                In a recent article published in the August 29, 2016 issue of Time magazine, Tyranny of the Mob: How trolls are ruining the internet, author Joel Stein claims the web is turning into a “sociopath with Asperger’s. Stein claims that if you release too much personal (emotional) information on the internet, your interpretation of the internet’s reaction can be devastating. “Psychologists call this the online dis-inhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building.” (Stein, 2016.) So, the question for us teachers is, how can we try to stop this culture of hate and intellectual waste online? These Digital Natives still seem to be holding on to the idea that anything that happens online is not part of their real life. The skills they use for communication on the internet are completely separate from the skills they use to communicate in school and with their friends face-to-face. It is part of our job to prepare our students for the future, and it is obvious that ALL aspects of the internet are going to be part of our future, including the dreaded “comment section” on websites.

ISTE 4 states teachers must “promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information” (2008). In order for us to teach students how to behave like we are part of a civilized society on the internet, we must follow what I like to call Common Sense Teaching Rule #1: Show them how. However, to show students how to communicate appropriately on the internet, we will need to use online communication tools in class. This can be frustrating when one does not consider the “big picture” when engaging in online communication with their students.

Lead By Example

 At my previous school, all teachers were required to have our students work in an online reading program that was supposed to increase their reading comprehension skills. Within the program, there was a ‘chat’ feature in which teachers controlled the settings. Teachers decided if students would be able to message each other, message the teacher, or post on a message board. They also had the option to shut the feature off. So, a few months went by and we all used the program with our classes. We were all surprised to find that the program trainers were coming back to our school half way through the year to do a follow-up professional development session (Follow-up training?! That almost never happens!). During that second session, the trainer asked us how we were enjoying the messaging feature in the program. Eight out of 9 teachers in the room said they had completely disabled that feature after a few uncomfortable experiences. They spoke of students posting on the message board with incorrect grammar, or posting about topics unrelated to the program content. One teacher mentioned that a student posted his opinion of a story the class was assigned to read, but his posting indicated that he did not understand the main idea of the story and he had confused all of the other kids. Another teacher explained that she disabled the messaging feature because too many students were messaging her asking for help with their assignments. I hate to admit it, but I also disabled the feature a few months prior to this meeting. I felt bad when a student would send me a message that I was not able to respond to. With all of my responsibilities as a teacher, I figured I did not really have time to be reading all those messages and responding in a timely manner. 

  Looking back, I am horrified to think about all of the missed opportunities we had to model digital etiquette in our classroom. If I was participating in that meeting today, that conversation would have gone in an entirely different direction. Here are some of the things I might say to those teachers if I realized how important it was for us to model behavior in online communities.

To the teacher who disabled the message board due to postings containing improper grammar: What message are you sending to your students when are essentially taking away their ability to express their thoughts on a story just because they are having trouble spelling? This might discourage the students from ever posting in an academic setting again. You are essentially telling them that they are not welcome in this community. Most of my 5^th grade students do not know how to use any features in a word processing program, including spell check. This would be a wonderful opportunity to have the students practice typing their responses in a program that will check their spelling and grammar before they copy-and-paste their response online. Teach your students that there are tools they can use to avoid mistakes and to proof read their work!

To the teacher who disabled the message board due to students posting unrelated messages: Why not use this as an opportunity to teach your students about the appropriate placement of their comments? Demonstrate that there is a time and a place for their ideas, but this particular message board exists only to discuss a particular assignment. Maybe this serves as an indication that the students need a safe place where they can communicate about non-school related content. If a student is posting about his basketball game in your ELA message board, this student is not aware of the separation of social media for personal/academic use. This student will be “that guy” who inserts a link to his pyramid scheme website in the comments section of a CNN article.

To the teacher who disabled the message board because of incorrect responses: I literally cannot think of a better opportunity to teach your class the “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” mentality. Kids need to learn that there is a possibility information someone posted online might not be completely true. They need to do their own research in order to determine what is true and what is incorrect. They also should practice expressing their concerns in a positive, respectful way. The teacher should model how a response to a posting containing inaccurate information should look. “Billy, I like your idea about the story, but did you read the part about ______?”

To the teacher who disabled the student-to-teacher messaging feature because too many students were messaging her asking for help: Isn’t it your job to help your students? Think of it as incorporating reading and writing with communication skills: the student needed to think about how to ask a question in written form, and then they need to read your response and use the information you gave them to solve their problem. I would argue that a teacher providing help via live-chat is providing assistance that requires students to think more deeply about an assignment than the teacher who just answers a question verbally. By disabling this feature, you are sending the message to your students that their questions annoy you and you want to shut them out.

And finally, to myself, the teacher who disabled the student-to-teacher messaging feature because I did not have time to respond to all of my students’ questions:  You need to find time to respond to the students’ questions daily. What message am I sending to my students if I require them to spend a few hours working in the program every week, but I don’t spend any time in it myself? How am I supposed to foster an online learning community if I am not present in that community? The students need practice with online communication, and they need to feel like their messages actually go somewhere. By ignoring them, I was only adding to the beliefs that messages sent out over the internet have no consequences and are not “real.”

Final Thoughts 

           In a previous post, I said “Older teachers talk about computers as if they were weapons: the single force that will destroy the American Education system.” It is time for ALL educators to realize that computers are not destroying our education system—people on the internet are. We must fight to teach out students how to use their education to make the internet a place worth having. We can’t allow our students to treat the web as “I’mRight.Com.” We must teach them how to appropriately express themselves online, as well as in person. It may not seem like much, but including activities for students to practice basic communication with any online social tool will lead to the creation of ‘good habits’ on the internet. Our digital happiness depends on it. 

Funding: A Lazy Excuse for Ignoring Technology Education in Elementary Classrooms

My very first day as a teacher, I expected to walk into a classroom of 5^th graders who knew more about computers than I did. I actually used to have anxiety about my students knowing how to use our class computers for evil without me noticing. I started thinking about ways to use technology in my classroom before I was introduced to a curriculum guide. What I found was a classroom full of digital natives that had no idea how to use computers for anything besides gaming, Facebooking, and watching Netflix (I would have said “streaming videos,” but if I used that term, the students would have no idea what I was talking about). Imagine my surprise when I gave out our first project assignment. I thought it would be simple: research an explorer (i.e. Christopher Columbus, Ponce de Leon, etc.) and create a poster to present to the class. There were specific questions that had to be answered on the poster, such as “What did your explorer discover?” or “Why was his discovery important?” I assumed this would be a very simple project the students would be able to finish in about three days.

Our first day in the computer lab working on this project was a disaster. Here is a list of things I was shocked to learn the students could not do:

• Locate any type of word processor on the computer
• Copy and paste text or an image
• Change fonts in a word processor
• Use spell check, or even realize that the squiggly red line under a word means something is wrong with it.
• Save a document or a picture
• Locate a document after its been saved
• Conduct an efficient Internet search.
• Shut down a computer

I did not understand why the students seemed as computer illiterate as I was when I was 10 years old. Hadn’t these students grown up with computers and iPads their entire lives? My parents didn’t even own a computer until I was 11, so at least I had an excuse. This led me to wonder, what are these kids doing with their technology? Everyone always talks about how these kids are the most digitally connected generation of all time. Older teachers talk about computers as if they were weapons: the single force that will destroy the traditional American education system. From what I witnessed throughout my time in the classroom, they have nothing to worry about. Weapons can’t destroy anything if no one knows how to use them.

In a recent interview, "'We Don't Have Resources to Keep Up with Technology,' 2016 US Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes claims “We don’t really have the resources to keep up with technology in the way that other industries have….We train students on programs that end up being obsolete by the time they go into the workforce” She is correct about one thing: most of the programs our students use today will be obsolete in a few years. However, the skills we can teach students while using these programs can stand the test of time. Think about how long you have been using a PC and all of the ways it has evolved. When system changes occur, we adapt. It takes only a few days to “get used to” using a new version of a previous program because we have a solid foundation of knowledge on the way a program works. We become familiar with a program’s jargon, the way it’s functions are organized, and what it’s best tools are. I know that the way I learned to save a file the very first time I ever saved to a floppy disc paved the way for my daily usage of the cloud.

The monetary and logistical limitations of constantly outfitting out classrooms with the most up-to-date technology are obvious. We don’t have the money or the resources. But what we do have are teachers: an entire industry of people dedicated to preparing students for life beyond the classroom. To solve the problem of technology becoming obsolete by the time a big purchase is approved by the school board, teachers should be focusing on teaching their students basic skills we tend to take for granted. The pieces will begin to connect faster for our students than they did for us and they will soar. I guarantee you will never hear a student say something like “Man I really wish I never learned how to type in school. Practicing basic computer skills like typing and learning how to search the Internet sure was a waste of my time. Now let me get back to practicing my cursive writing…”