Cybersafety Outreach

Last Thursday, I attended a Cybersafety lecture given by ACMA at my university. It was a real eye-opener as while I had always known that I wasn't the best at technology, I have just found out that in addition to that, I'm not an effective cybercitizen either.

The lecturer kicked off spouting out a number of scenarios where the use of technology has inadvertently placed technology users in a whole lot of trouble. I remember sitting there thinking 'This could easily happen to me!!!!'. Little alarm bells started going off in my head and I started sitting a little taller in my seat and leaning a little closer to the front.

Q:How can we protect ourself from being on the wrong end of the the wonder of technology?
A:Be an effective cybercitizen.

We need to constantly educate ourselves and students on how to be an effective and safe user of the cybercommunity. This includes educating students on appropriate online behaviour to ensure positive online experiences. Cyberbullying has become an issue and adults need to be aware of it and be on the lookout of possible signs that cyberbullying may be occurring. Students should from an early age be taught how to develop positive and appropriate relationships and also how to avoid or deal with cyberbullying..

Students and adults alike need to be critical when analysing and media text or images that are viewing online. In addition to that, we need to be cautious about what we choose to upload to the web and how we choose to do so. Posting items on unsecure profiles or websites can lead to unwanted attention, undesirable self-images and identity theft. An innocent photo of a person having a drink at a party today may easily come back to bite us 10 years down the track as a photo of a 'teacher enjoying one too many drinks at a party'.

This leads us to

THINK BEFORE YOU POST

Taking that extra few minutes to think about the item that we are intending to share on the web and the repercussions that may come along with it is an important aspect of being a safe user on the web. Take into consideration who we have on our social networking sites and the relationship we have with each person. Do we want that person to know about this item we're posting? If not, why? Is it because, quite possibly the item is inappropriate or perhaps the person isn't a friend anymore and you may be better off deleting them from your social networking page?

As a future teacher, I've learnt that my duty of care can arguably extend to the use of technology outside the school grounds in situations where I may become aware that a child may be harmed. Failure to take reasonable care may amount to negligence. Now, this scares me, A LOT. The use of technology leads me to a land where there are no physical boundaries to limit it and I will need to one day police this land and ensure that all my students are safe. That feels like a responsibility of monumental proportions. This lecture however has awoken me to that responsibility and made me realise while it is physically impossible to limit this responsibility, I can learn to identify the risks associated with the Internet, educate my students about this risk, embed cybersafety practices in my teaching and above all be aware of the school policies in place. Knowledge is POWER.

Until my next post...

Multliteracies

If any of you have read Mark Pegrum's reading for week 6, it goes beyond talking about print literacy, texting literacy and hypertext literacy and introduces us to a world where terms such as search literacy, information literacy and participatory literacy not only are used but consequently where the reader finds themself figurng out if they identify with each of these terms.

But first, let's consider print literacy. The simple idea of figuring out how a combination of letters become a word and a set of words in a speific order become a sentence that conveys the meaning of its writer. If we didn't have those skills, would the Web be of any use to us? I don't believe a person without print literacy will gain as much from the Web as an equally skilled person at navigating the Web but who also is print literate will. The idea that there are radicalists who suggest that print literacy is unimportant in this day and age stricks me actually as a very backward frame of mind as it appears to refer back to a time where people communicated using symbols and drawings except it will be done on a more sophisticated platform.

With that though, I do believe that the Web and technology advancements have evolved the use of our print literacy resulting in what people refer to as netspeak. What is it? It's the shrthnd lang of é technologically proficient 2day. This form of literacy goes beyond attempting to fit a single train of thought into a specified number of characters a mobile network gives you to being a language that is well suited to situations that require rapid communication and at the same time serves as a membership to a technologically savvy 'cool' crowd. In the case of children and teenagers, it may even be safe to say that the presence of netspeak has created a situation in which children are happily writing more and more without even realising it.

Can it and should it be used in the classroom? I think the answer to the question lies with the teacher of the classroom and how comfortable they are with having children using it in their classroom. If it exists as a foreign language to the teacher and ends up being more frustrating attempting to accommodate this new language then it's probably a better idea to discourage its use in the classroom. If on the other hand, the teacher views it as a fun challenge to see what new levels this new language can take the class to then the idea of 'codeswitching' and incorporating netspeak in daily tasks may be appropriate.

This leads me to the platform in which I first learnt to speak the language: Chats and Instant messaging. Hurrah for the days where I'd rush home from school to switch on the computer and log on to chat rooms and speak to people that surprise, surprise I had just spent 8 hours of my day at school with. I don't think there's any way to describe the allure of chat rooms and instant messaging except that if they were so captivating to me, why I should doubt the magical hold it has on children today. I say embrace it and be creative in how we can use it to create new and innovative ways for students to discuss their ideas.

Until my next post...

Another weekend comes and goes

The Web has frustrated me all weekend. I spent the last 2 days attempting to complete my Capstone presentation and doing research online. While I've not picked a difficult topic of interest, I do realise that I've picked one where assessing and locating information may not be as familiar or simple a process as I'm used to. The Internet is an incredible source of knowledge but when you fail to have the appropriate navigational tools or in my case I like to refer to it as 'driving directions', you end up going in circles and meeting roadblocks. So yes, the incredible source of knowledge then becomes inaccessible and basically useless to me without the appropriate directions. Random keywords whilst helpful in dragging up shopping sites, aimless information and fascinating videos on other occassions are certainly not advantageous this weekend.

My one saving grace this weekend though has been Wikipedia. While information on the page is not peer-reviewed and prime material for referencing university assignments, it has provided me a quick history catch-up on information I have long forgotten. It has also managed to minimise my random keyword searches to more specific terms and whilst I'm still 'driving' aimlessly, it feels a little bit more like my Navman is in the process of getting fixed and soon, very very soon, I will be able to navigate the Web for the information I need efficiently again.

Until my next post...

p.s. New frustration: Why can't I put spaces between my paragraphs????? This is my third and last try...if it doesn't work, then it's meant to be.