Computer Use Policy (Old Version)

• Get Permission! (To get online, to make changes, to alter anything, even the furniture)
• Do Take Care of the Hardware (Watch out for cords, keep food away)
• Do ASK before making changes
• Do use computer facilities for legitimate schoolwork only
• Respect others’ work and others!

This year, since I want to lead students into creating more content on the web, I took the opportunity to fold several things into the beginning of the year unit on technology safety and behavior guidelines.

We began with discussing these short videos:

This one, the Ad Council’s public service announcement directing teen girls to “Think Before You Post”

Download Video: Posted by mjhasley at TeacherTube.com.

In a brief discussion afterwards, I learned that many students felt that this type of commercial and related news stories were over-emphasizing the dangers and, mostly, serving to make their parents overly fearful. My students felt they understood how to be safe online, and that the dangers were remote.

Obviously, I whipped out two more videos in response–current news stories which I had picked to help us discuss what kinds of things are getting posted, and what very real repercussions they can have. (More examples crop up every day-it’s not hard to pick up current ones.)

I played this story about the alleged blackmail plot against Miss New Jersey, using pictures that she had posted online for “friends only.”

This story of a Pennsylvania college student whose 4 year investment in a teaching career was waylaid at the last moment because she’d posted a picture of herself partying online, even though she was of legal drinking age at the time the picture was taken.

The students and I talked about how families have a very real desire to know that students are not going to be caught by surprise, as the people were in all of these examples. Whether or not what happened to them was unfair or unpredictable, we agreed that parents would like them to minimize risks by putting their best public faces forward.

The middle school students agreed that one good way to reassure their families was to demonstrate that they know how to be safe online by proposing updated rules for our Acceptable Use Policy.

Rules or codes of ethics?

We discussed three models–our old set of rules, a list of 9 rules I had gleaned from another school, and David Warlick’s A Student & Teacher Information Code of Ethics.

David Warlick’s Code of Ethics

points to four areas of concern, and lists proactive considerations that students and teachers should apply to every information decision that they make. …

• Seek Truth and Express It
• Minimize Harm
• Be Accountable
• Respect Information and its Infrastructure

Under each of the four areas, David provided a list of examples of good practice. I really liked David’s work.

The students discussed the three models. They discussed each of David’s four areas. They checked to be sure that everything was addressed that needed to be covered in each of the models. They decided to compose…their own set of rules.

Yep, a set of rules. They felt it will be easier to explain rules to the younger students, and it’ll be simpler to apply. They brainstormed a short but comprehensive set of rules, and are writing them up to propose them to the school. They’ll be posting our rules on their blog, as their first post, as they get adopted.

First, this brave young man’s Eagle Scout project as pointed out by Karl Fisch on his blog:

“First, please download and watch this movie (18.4 MB, 11:36). Then think about how often we stamp “can’t” on somebody’s forehead.”

The Fischbowl: Ability Awareness

Second, this Edutopia article: Overcoming Underachievement which showed how a short self-affirmation essay at the start of the term buoyed up students — and gave them a psychological inoculation against something called stereotype threat — so that their performances improved and stayed improved. While the same short exercise wasn’t seen to have the same extra benefits for those students in the majority, they aren’t subject to stereotype threat.  I recommend this article as a good read for all of us.

That got me to thinking about those wise educators whose words stirred a similar “that’s so right” gut reaction in me. They are from many different fields, but their messages carry the same voice.

Quakers talk about “that of God in everyone.” I have heard several say that sitting in silence helps them to focus on “the still, small voice within.” A favorite song declares “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” They treat children as beings to be listened to and respected, as they have the potential to speak truth to us because they share “that of God.”

Conflict resolution methods often start with getting each side of a conflict a chance to speak, and to know that they are heard (for examples, “Google” active listening).

Multicultural and diversity awareness educators I’ve known say that we should always start with connecting to each person where they are. Getting to know, and accept the “other’s” values and culture should begin by examining and sharing your own.

Helping someone with an Exceptionality (Differently-abled People, People with Learning Differences (gifts, delays, and challenges)) entails beginning with an examination and evaluation of the person in question — I have colleagues whose mantra is “begin with the child”or “the child is your handbook.”

Affirmation is a powerful thing. No wonder so many wonderful, wise educators begin there.

www.scottmcleod.net – Cyberbullying

With all that good stuff getting added to the net, I need some time to process and research. But I also want to add to the discussion’s visibility, since that is an important way to help stop cyberbullying!

I teach about cyberbullying, safe and civil behavior, and general groundrules. I enjoy those discussions with my students, but today’s discussion has me thinking about what else I can do. I have come up with two things (maybe three):

1. Post to raise awareness.

If I could figure out how to get one of Scott’s badges in my sidebar with this edublog theme it would be there. The only sidebar widgets available don’t have an option for inserting an image! But I can add a cyber-bullying awareness message to my rotating messages in my personal email tag line, and I can suggest that others use a badge.

2. Make my expectations for civil discourse on my blog explicit.

I really enjoyed Beth Kanter’s suggestion, on a forum discussion at the Stop Cyberbullying ning site that we might think about posting ratings for our sites much the way movies are rated.

Here’s the possible third thing: I will join the discussion over at the ning site, which has already begun a wonderful collection of resources, including videos. My “to-do” list is growing…

A book wins the prestigious Newbery Medal award. It is “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron.

It becomes controversial because it uses an anatomically correct word. This word use is fitting with a theme of the book.

And one of the themes of the book is that Lucky is preparing herself to be a grown-up, Ms. Patron said. Learning about language and body parts, then, is very important to her.

With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar – New York Times

This word is used as a descriptor between boys (and overheard by a girl) about the location of a dog’s snakebite. By 9 or 12 years of age, I hope that boys understand that there is another word for their private areas other than “family jewels” or “crotch”–if only so that they can talk with their doctors about jock itch, concerns about development, and what not. I expect that knowing the terms for various anatomical parts well enough to describe a dog’s snake bite will not cause the spontaneous spread of immorality. The boy explained to his friend that his dog was bit on the scrotum. The girl, overhearing, wonders about the word. I’ll bet that a similar book, aimed at the same age group, would be quite acceptable in mentioning that a pup nursed at it’s mother’s teat, or found a nipple to suckle.

“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. “That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”

With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar – New York Times

By the way, all three of my sons know that there are seven continents, and my sons know the terms urinate, bowel movements, and scrotums. They don’t often mention these things in conversation, but if they did, it wouldn’t be for titillation effect–just for factual information.

Read the book. Then decide.

We’re enjoying having Rand Whipple, master mind behind Box of Light Theatre, spending mornings with us for two weeks as “artist in residence” at our K-8 school, supporting our all school thematic study.  Our thematic study this year builds on our previous year’s thematic study, and reflects our diversity initiative (there is a whoooole lot of blogging potential there, in how to meet the challenge of seeking out the diversity within the local and larger world that our school faces, including our challenge of being in a small, rural community that is not very diverse). Last’s year’s thematic study was “This is Who We Are” and this year’s is “The Power of Our Stories.”  I can’t help but love that title!  ( I am a fan of Jane Yolen, who advocates teaching classic cultural tales, myths and fairy tales, in her book Touch Magic.)

A Special Role for Middle School Students

All of our students are excited and looking forward to being part of this project. Our middle school students are being the technical staff and assistants for Rand.  A team of middle schoolers is helping each lower school class to tell their stories. The middle school students are also planning on telling a story of their own.  They are eager to learn how to use Rand’s programs to record, morph, “goo,” and otherwise manipulate images, and to eventually produce a dvd.

Working Within Their Own, and Society’s, Limits

They are learning, along the way, that when a group of middle school students accompanies primary students on a field trip to record their stories on videotape, someone should remember to bring along a video camera!  Luckily, Rand thought to check before the bus left… Ah, the challenges of the middle school brain!   They are also learning the frustration of having filmed an event and later discovering that every single shot included a person they did not have permission to record.  Issues of copyright and attribution have also been thoroughly discussed.  I think the middle school students are learning that they have to work within societal and organizational constraints, even during this most creative of exercises–if they are going to be able to share their work.

It has brought to my mind Ilsa Aichinger’s story, The Bound Man.  That might be a good story to use as part of a debriefing when this work has concluded.  These students are certainly beginning to learn how to work within their bonds, and that both limitations and opportunities come with them.

Posting Work in Progress

Instant feedback is wonderful, and it is gratifying for the students to see how their work is coming out.  Rand asked if we had a spot, or if we wanted to use his website, for students to post clips that they have edited and compressed with Rand’s help.  I made a page available on the free wikispace that came with this blog, and it was a learning experience for me!  Since the wiki “insert video image” called for a web location for the image, I checked out free online places. I went with Google Video, since Odeo inserts a watermark and Google did not, plus Google Video allows you to make the file private.  If anyone knows of a better way for me to have done this, please let me know!

The first clip is up, and it is a special story from an interview of our Intermediate team teacher, Audra.  Please take a look–it is at http://matter.wikispaces.com/telling+stories+in+school

May your stories be hopeful ones.

I’ve found this wonderful link to a series of “pictures that lie.” (I’ve been getting a feed on the newly added bookmarks of del.icio.us user LibrarianEdge and this site was added by LibrarianEdge today–Thanks!). I’m extremely excited, because I was looking for a way to broaden the wonderful message of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (see my earlier post, here) and help it cross over to the male students I have. When I checked out the site, though, it addressed much more than body image issues.

It addressed censorship, political exigencies, propaganda, critical thinking, editing, feminism, media, photoshop ethics, and more (Oh, My!)! It helps place the information media awareness I want students to cultivate, the critical thinking skills they need to harness to be savvy on the web, into a perspective that includes a long history of media manipulation:

Before the invention of the digital image, the Soviets removed Trotsky from News Photos and archives when he fell out of favor and American farmers were shown with truck-sized crickets on their farm equipment. — See images 14 and 17.

The website makes it clear that image manipulation (lies, deceitful lies!) is not something only from the past, as it includes modern day images (Cover photos from Newsweek, Time, and TV Guide; modern icons such as Oprah, Katie Couric, and Martha Stewart).

My students don’t have to feel I am shining a spotlight on them as potentially gullible–these photos were aimed at a wide readership. It will be up to me to help the students realize that they can value Katie Couric and Oprah without being manipulated into putting them onto a “body image” pedestal that really isn’t them (isn’t means, in this case, that their heads were pasted onto model’s bodies for those cover shots). It will be up to the students, actually, but this should help them realize they need to look critically at EVERY image they see. Who put it there, who does it serve, is it touting a political point of view or reinforcing a powerful entity (political or corporate)…or just selling more TV Guides?

In earlier grades, I had students explore a wonderful webquest where they develop their own rubric to “rate” a website using information they researched (about authority, currency, etc.) and then they test their rubric by evaluating a pair of websites: one fake, one real. Students found the fake sights could fool some of them, some of the time…and they were not happy with that! I added additional “fake or fantastic” websites and we explored them as a group followup.

Now, I hope to help my students see how pervasive, and how easily accomplished, are “images that lie.” And that those images aren’t just aimed at fooling them–but at all of us. I’ll tell them that old saw:

Fool me once…

And I’ll mean, ME, too. I’m in there with them.