Last Night’s Forum

April 16, 2008 · Posted in learn 

Michael Carr-Gregg is a very polished speaker and was very easy to listen to. I enjoyed his humour and totally agreed with all that he said. The problem for me was that I wanted to learn more than what I already knew, but that was no reflection on the presentation. I wish more parents and teachers were present to get that level of knowledge.

 The main message I think as a teacher or parent that we need to get across to our kids and students is they are not anonymous on the net. We need to get across to them they are accountable for their online behaviour and need to behave online as they would in real life. A member of the audience did raise the issue that you can only be traced to a particular computer and a number of different people could be using that computer – how do you work out who it is?

There are some new problems that have arisen from communications technology and these are getting a good share of media attention. I think the problem is the lack of role models young people have. As Michael Carr-Gregg said in his address, they are early settlers in a new land, and there are few adults. As teenagers they have developmental tendencies to be rash and impulsive and it can be a recipe for disaster. I want to hear about the solutions and shift some attention to that.

There are a few educators that are harnessing the technology to give it a positive purpose. I’m not one of them yet. I play a little and have lots of discussions with my students about ‘life online’, but I am still frustrated in my ability to use technology effectively in the classroom.

Will Richardson got over 130 comments on this very relevant post about skilling up teachers: Weblogg-ed: 21st Century Skills for Educators. The comments are as interesting as the article. Another post this week, Weblogg-ed: Students Pay a Price (Literally) for Cell Phone Ban, highlights the potential for using technology. The students are ready.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Last Night’s Forum”

  1. Bettina (20 comments.) on April 17th, 2008 12:30 am

    It’s certainly a very timely topic.

    I’m having a lot of problems at the moment with my daughter’s circle of friends – they simply haven’t been shown how to use the internet with any discretion, a sense of responsibility to others or caution. They are signing up for networking software they know nothing about, sending invitations to each other willy nilly and cc’ing each other’s email addy’s all over the place to god only knows who.

    I’d really like to know where some of their parent’s are while they are doing this. We have some pretty strict rules in our house regarding internet usage, but so many parents don’t monitor and simply aren’t aware of what their children get up to.

  2. Joh on April 17th, 2008 12:52 am

    I think many parents have a very low level of technology understanding and the kids have it all over them. An interesting quote from Greg Gebhart that was mentioned last night was that teenagers were having experiences that their parents hadn’t actually lived through themselves (something like that). The lack of being able to know what it’s like, from their own experience, for many parents makes the situation more complex.

  3. Bettina (20 comments.) on April 17th, 2008 2:12 pm

    Yes that’s quite true. Though it would seem to me that if you are going to have a technology in your home that at least one of the adults in the home should know how to use it. And really, getting the kids to show them is a great excuse to sit down and do something together isn’t it?

    I heard him (MCG) speak last year at our school – he’s very good. But like you there were some things that I wished he would have expanded on.

  4. Joh on April 18th, 2008 12:45 am

    Everything you say is true, yet I have given up expecting anything of others as parents, we all have our blind spots. I think understanding the technology is really only a small part of what young people today have to cope with. I think about the issue of cyberbullying itself, it has the potential to be publicly humiliating in ways that schoolyard bullying could never be – on a mass scale. I imagine this could be overwhelming for all involved and once done, can be difficult to reverse or undo.

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