lol...OMG

I am in the middle of reading lol...OMG! while I have not yet finished the book one chapter in particular stands out for me. The chapter entitled Your Life, Online is a very eye opening look at the way people are viewed in this day and age. I, being a bit older (lol), spent my young adulthood in relative ambiguity. I know I made first impressions in person or through my academic work, but I didn't have to think too much about how these impressions affected my future. My college professors weren't calling my possible places of employment to give information on me unless I asked them to. I had a lot more control over my personal information than people have now. Now students begin creating online data as early as 3rd or 4th grade and this information stays with them forever. Some key points that this chapter makes are that negative information is much more important than positive information and what you put online can have a huge impact on future jobs, college education and even personal relationships. Also, students think they have control over their posts, but they may not have control over something that they post online if somebody they choose to send it to shares that information. So how do teachers educate students on process they should go through when deciding what content they should or should not post? Right now in our school the policy is that students can't have cellular devices on in school. They can't text or connect to social media sites. If cellphones are seen, they are confiscated. This is an attempt, I believe, to keep the responsibility of this type of learning on the parents. I do believe that parents should have this responsibility. However, I also think that the lines are becoming more unclear as to what students may eventually have in their online portfolio because there are links everywhere. Therefore, I feel that teachers do have a responsibility to help students understand the implications of any actions they take when connecting in any way online. I think this is a great book for high school students to read and discuss and I feel that teachers in younger grades can use some of the content to begin discussions with younger students as they begin to develop their own online reputation.
     Now that I have read Digital Citizenship in Schools, I think that there is material in lol...OMG that can be used to help students understand some elements of digital citizenship. I would use parts of this book to teach students about digital etiquette and digital rights and responsibilities. Some activities I would use would be having students read exerts from the book and then having then turn and talk to their partner about the reading in a think, pair, share model where they would then come together and share their ideas about the reading with the class. I also may have partners write scenarios that may happen when using social media sites and then asking them to role play these ideas with solutions they have for the problems that they create in their scenarios.
Ann St.Laurent