The kids are doing it for themselves

MySpace: the final frontier is an article written by Yojana Sharma, journalist and international affairs specialist, which appears in the current issue of the TES. It looks at how pupils are choosing to use the internet in their free time to make new ‘virtual friends’ from around the world with services such as MySpace and Bebo. These popular social networking sites allow users to share their interests with each other through the creation of customised multimedia home pages which can be accessed by anyone who wishes to subscribe.

Yojana argues that pupils are attracted to this form of communication because it is immediate and allows them to exchange ideas on their own terms. She describes her own teenage daughter’s excitement at communicating with her like-minded foreign peers as a driving addiction.

'She downloads music and links up with young people in various countries who share her tastes. She has put up her own web page profiling her interests, shares music tracks, uploads photographs, blogs regularly and holds live chats.'

By embracing new technologies in this way, the author suggests pupils are transforming the way they think and learn, and in turn are creating a digital divide between them and their parents and teachers. This may be so, but this shouldn’t devalue the benefits of eTwinning projects where staff can spend a great deal of time and effort organising and maintaining school links abroad. Arguably pupils could be more enthusiastic about making links if they are already used to making them independently of school.

An essential issue is, of course, web security. Schools must ensure that external access over the internet to individual pupil information (e.g. via a school website or blog) is regulated and properly supervised. Pupils must also be well aware of the potential risks and follow golden rules such as never giving out any personal details such as their surnames, where they live or their email address to the school operated website or blog. Schools that have an established link with a foreign establishment can control access by:

• setting up a blog where articles can be read, but comments cannot be left unless they are approved first
• sending text, audio and video via email to a known person.
• creating a private video-conferencing link with their partner school

To check the views of my own pupils, I asked various Yr 7 and 8 classes if they had MySpace or Bebo accounts and was a little surprised, to be honest, to find out that about half did. I also asked my form to compare the advantages of using such sites compared to say a blog monitored by a member of staff. Here are some of their comments:

Remi
I think that it is a good and bad idea because you can find out about other countries, but then it can be dangerous if you give people your details out.

Rachel
I don’t think it is good because you don’t know who you are talking to. I think we should have school links instead so you can be supervised. It will be much safer, but at the same time it’ll be lots of fun.

Katie
I think it is a really good idea because you don’t need any teachers to tell you who to talk to or can’t talk to.

Tom
I think it is better to communicate with different pupils in your own way.

Zoe
I think that it is better to talk in your own way at home so you can talk to people from around the world, but it could be good at school as well.

Paris
It’s better at home because you can talk to other people without teachers or other people reading your conversations. You can also write things of your own at home without being told what you can or can’t do by teachers. You get more chances to use it at home.

Jack
I think that it is better to be private at home and chat more privately to your pen pals

Anne
I think it is good to go on websites on your own because if teachers are there, they could see what you are writing and if you are on your own, you can meet new people and see if they like the same stuff that you like e.g music, pictures and ringtones.

Ellie
I think that it is a good idea to use Bebo and websites like that because you can talk to people in different countries and you feel that you are part of something big. You are talking with people from the other side of the world. I have my own website and I can control what goes on it. I can also share my tastes like music with other people from around the world.

In conclusion

Harnessing technology should not be seen as a threat. We need to find ways to stimulate the interest of our pupils and keep them safe while doing so.  Any comments welcome.

Comments

[Marlyn Moffat]

Your conclusion sums it up. Harnessing the technology and keeping them safe. You probably know that every school in the country has a bebo page. Ours contains much material that the school would wish not to be associated with. We've been having problems with bebo bullying and stuff spilling over into the playground. The quizzes that the children set up on their home page have been racial, sectarian, and just downright cruel. None of them should have bebo accounts being between 8 and 10 years old as they are. There's been a bit of discussion about this on my blog www.marlynmo.blogspot.com and Ewan MacIntosh at edu.blogs.com. You'll probably know him through the Mfle.

[Joe Dale]

Dear Marlyn,

Thank you for leaving your comment. Here's a comment I left on Peter Ford's blog yesterday on the same isse

Taken from: http://fordlog.com/?p=159

Blog safety of children is of course paramount. I published a post yesterday called ‘The kids are doing it for themselves’. It was about the article MySpace: the final frontier by Yojana Sharma which appears in this week’s TES.

It describes how children are embracing sites such as MySpace and Bebo and communicating with ‘virtual friends’ from around the world. It doesn’t however mention net security particularly.

Since writing my post, I’ve been checking out articles on Bebo and it seems that they fall into two camps. They either say that children should never use these sites or that if they do they must adhere to the sort of advice available in the downloadable leaflet referred to in this post.

Children are clearly using these social networking sites in their thousands. Therefore it seems better to educate them on the possible dangers of using them than being over judgemental. What do you think?

Best wishes

Joe

Useful links

http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2006/07/the_kids_are_do.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/09/nbebo09.xml
http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2247403

[Marlyn Moffat]

As teachers, we have a'duty of care' which applies to all areas of health and safety. We are therefore responsible for educating the children in anything that we know might cause harm or upset, and need to take the lead. These things will never go away, but I wouldn't want to see the good that they can do being overshadowed by misuse. We are building into our PSD and Health programmes for next session, to ensure that the issues are dicussed in every classroom. I used my Primary three children to talk to the primary sixes about the do and don't do, but we now have to look at the moral issues of some of the behaviours, ignore the language and look at the content.

[Joe Dale]

I couldn't agree more. Pupils are generally very web literate nowadays, yet can still be naive about revealing personal information on the net. We certainly do need to educate them on how to reduce potential risks.

Having Bebo or MySpace accounts allows them to express themselves in ways which would be impossible without the net. They like being able to network with their friends and meet people with similar interests. This is understandably exciting for them.

I am not advocating that as teachers we should be encouraging pupils to use these sites in schools. However, I do think that we should be using blogs to publish pupils' work (text, audio, video) as long as they are properly moderated.

Blogs give pupils a real purpose and audience for their publications. They can motivate them to raise their standards at the same time, knowing that what they produce will be accessed by many people, not just their teacher.

It's still early days (in England anyway) to see how blogs can enhance learning. It's an exciting journey which needs to be policed with care.

[Joe Dale]

Talking of internet safety, this has just come up on the ICT in Education blog:

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cs/blogs/ictineducation/archive/2006/07/26/1018.aspx

Best wishes

Joe

[Andrew Lees]

I am the Producer responsible for the BBC’s GCSE Bitesize website. We are developing some new GCSE French revision resources but sadly none of the contributors we planned to use are available. We are therefore looking for an experienced GCSE French Teacher(s) to act as a writer consultant. If you or any of your users are interested please contact me at
[email protected]

[Rojario]

It's like many years ago when people debated if it is alright to use these social networking platform. I consider those somewhat okay. We communicate so much through these new technologies that sometimes we cross a line in what should be face to face and what shouldn't.