Virtual Teachers

Having read the first three chapters of LOL...OMG, I am interested, but not surprised by what the author writes about. At first glance, the title seems like a simple nod to the stupefied language prevalent in much of the IMing and texting world today. At a closer look, it has much more meaning than that. The title captures the idea that what we put online for our amusement (LOL) can quickly grow out of control into something that irreparably harms our reputation (OMG). For me this is a true-to-life lesson- I myself have put things online that still come back to haunt me. ( A poem I wrote in 2007 about President Bush delayed my pistol permit for close to five weeks, while a flippant Tweet garnered the ire of my department head, who happens to be a good friend of mine...) While these are both minor inconveniences caused by my virtual callousness, there are plenty of examples of people hurt much more by their posts and online mistakes

As my school heads into the five year period leading up to our next NEASC visit, the hot-button-topics of the day are technology and authentic assessments. It would seem that one would go hand-in-hand with the other. Authentic assessments are assessments that are modeled after real-world tasks students may encounter in the working world. Quite often, these tasks employ technology in some aspect, be it the creation of a presentation, or a video-chat. In many ways, in promoting the use of technology for real-world use, we as teachers are inadvertently meeting NETS Standard 4, which states, it is a teacher's responsibility to "Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility." Allowing students to utilize technology for a positive and real-world reason goes a long way towards promoting citizenship and responsibility.

However, the other piece of the NETS standard is that, as teachers we need to model the reasons why digital citizenship is so important. After last weeks class, I was really taken aback by the idea that we all have a digital footprint. After reading the first few chapters, this unease was only heightened. I am constantly thinking of the final statement of chapter three, where Ivester states, "Digital content stays online forever." I think of my AP students, many of which are great kids with successful lives to look forward to. I doubt that any of them truly thinks about what impact (negative OR positive) they have every time they log on to the internet. Although the extended snow days put a wrench in my plans, one way I want to address this issue is by having students take part in the same exercise we did in class- I'm going to have them Google themselves and see what their footprint looks like. To take it a step further, I am going to have my students get into discussion groups to share what their immediate reactions were to their individual footprints (which meets the communication requirement of the four c's), and then, in small groups, I'm going to have students create video ads that I will share with my freshmen on the impact of their digital footprints. In this way, my older students will be teaching my younger students about digital literacy; what better way to incorporate authentic learning into a digital citizenship lesson?

I recently finished reading the last few chapters of lol...OMG and I really think this book has great information and key talking points that are extremely important for students to read about and discuss. Although this book is geared for students entering college, I feel that high school students should read this entire book. I also think that there are parts of this book that can be taken and used with students as young as my 6th grade class. I especially feel that chapters 9, Good People, Bad Behavior and chapter ten, Your Digital Citizenship, have significant information for students of all ages.

Chapter 9 has great information on cyberbullying and this chapter can be used in many ways in the classroom. One thing I would do with my students is to pull out the information that explained unintentional cyberbulling and after reading about it have students write a response with ideas on what unintentional bullying might look like and discuss what happens when without meaning you do or say something that hurts someone else. I also would use the vocabulary words which explain the different types of cyberbullying and ask students to choose one to write about on the classroom blog and make a connection with something they may have seen that relates to that word. Then other students would have an opportunity to comment on the posted ideas.

Chapter 10 has a great section in it called You be the Judge, which gives ten"tests" that students can take to think about their own actions and hopefully make good decisions when using social media websites. I would use this as a discourse lesson. I would put students into groups and have each group discuss one of the "tests" by  analyzing the questions in that test and discussing why the questions are important to think about when engaging in social media sites. We would then come together to share each groups thinking. Our collaborative thoughts would be written as a guideline for students to use when they use our classroom blog.