When Trust Gets Breached, Repairs May Be Impossible

There Goes My Privacy #ccoursesAbout ten summers ago, in my role as technology liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, we were setting up a blog site for our month-long Invitational Summer Institute. This was at the near dawn of blogging, and most of the participants barely knew the word, never mind the concept of online writing spaces. I was just learning, too. We were using a blogging platform called Manila, which had been graciously managed by the National Writing Project.

We decided early on to keep our Summer Institute blog closed and private, as a way to help build a sense of trust with our teacher-writers in a space that they didn’t quite comprehend. We wanted the hurdles low for writing and sharing and reflecting. We explained this to our participants, most of whom were relieved that their writing would stay private. I had the idea of taking head shots of everyone and having them all create profile pages as a sort of “get to know you” activity, and everyone agreed.

We set up the pages, which were successful, and then got down to blogging through the summer, and the online writing space was a hit with the institute. Connections were made. Classroom practices were shared. Writing was done. By the middle of the next school year, I had sort of forgotten about the blogging space. As with most summers, even now, once the institute ended, it was nearly impossible to encourage folks to keep on writing. The energy gets lost as the school year looms and our attention turns elsewhere. (which is too bad, but that is mostly the reality).

So imagine my surprise when I get an email from one of the Summer Institute participants, in a tone both angry and confused. This teacher was doing a Google search on herself, and lo and behold, she found the headshot of herself that we had posted in our private space with the promise that the content there would be remain private. She was upset and sort of panic stricken. Even then, I thought she was a tad too nervous (who would search for her image?) but I do not know her whole story (maybe she was hiding from someone) and I was just panic-stricken as the one who had told her things would remain private.

I had broken that trust and it gnawed at me.

I never did find out exactly how the image from the private site spilled into public view, but I suspect it was my own doing, not the site’s. The problem, then as now, is that once the information spills out, it was nearly impossible to stuff it back in. I did remove all the pictures from our site, and even sent a message to Google at the time (and encouraged her to do so) but I know the innocuous nature of a simple headshot would be unlikely to sway Google to move it off its search results. Months later, I could still search her name and still find her image.

I apologized more ways than I can count to this teacher. She never really did accept it, and made it clear that my role as an administrator of the site was a sacred duty, and if I promised something, then I had a responsibility to make sure that happened. Nowadays, we go into digital sites with a little more wiggle room in our expectations, I think. Facebook has done more to erode confidence in privacy issues in social media spaces than any other organization. We are both skeptical of privacy statements from companies and hopeful for the trade-offs.

Most of the participants in the Connected Courses are at the University level, and they have to grapple with the concepts of the privacy walls for their students when they move towards an open platform. If everything is open, how can a student protect their own privacy? Do they have that agency if openness is expected of them? Who is the gatekeeper? The instructor? These very complicated questions require learning about the flip-side of that question: how does one construct a positive digital footprint for yourself that will withstand the possibilities of breaches here and there? This is often one of the important points that Will Richardson makes so eloquently in his various talks and books (including the fantastic, Why School?). His line, not quoted verbatim here, is that when a high school student graduates, they should be able to Google themselves and find a slew of positive data, and our education system needs to do more to help make that happen.

For me, as a teacher of adolescents, it comes down to first making my 11 year old students even aware of the ramifications of their online lives, now and into the future, and we do an entire unit around this concept. Clearly, not enough parents are having those conversations at home with their children. To have choices, you must be made aware of the issue, and be helped along the way to be empowered. Trust between people, and between people and networks, requires awareness of the boundaries of information flow and the places where things might leak out. (Note to movie starlets: don’t take naked photos on your iPhone. Yes, it is despicable that someone hacked your account but what were you thinking in the first place?). We, as teachers, whatever the level, can’t assume our students, even if they are adults, understand this tenet of the digital age we now live in. Assume nothing.

Trust leverages awareness and knowledge, and when that trust is breached — as it was with me and the teacher in the story above — it can be nearly impossible to repair. That teacher never talked to me again, and I wear that responsibility and that memory like a scarf, and I think of it every time I set up an online space for young people and for teachers.

We are potentially entering the age of The Right to Be Forgotten, although I suspect it will be a whole lot difficult that some believe, particularly here in the United States. For me, as a traveler here in various digital realms, I still believe in the Right to Be Remembered, too, and I still think the positives of online interactions outweigh the negatives (call me naive, but that’s what I believe and trust in).

The Right to Forget #ccourses

Peace (in thinking),
Kevin

Short Video Vignettes from WMWP for #OurNWP

As part of an effort to create an archive of the National Writing Project for its 40th year anniversary (called OurNWP), I went into our Western Massachusetts Writing Project video archives and pulled out a few short pieces that we have done in the past few years, usually around the National Day on Writing. I love how our voices come together as teacher, writers, colleagues.

I also donated to the cause, as the effort to create the archive is slated to require about $100,000 to complete and NWP is halfway there. I gave a donation in honor of a past WMWP Director, Charlie Moran, whose work in the field of writing, and with our writing project (as a founding member), paved the way for many a great idea, and whose thinking has always pushed me forward, particularly around the ideas of digital literacy.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

How We Write (pen vs screen)

How we write (a comic)
I made this comic a few weeks after reading a piece about the physical writing process — of handwriting with pen on paper and of tapping out words on a keyboard. I am so much of a keyboard person these days, as my handwriting can’t keep up with what I want to say. But I recognize there are conflicting thoughts on this, and it had me thinking of both sides. (And in a recent Reading Teacher PLC that I am part, the advantages of learning cursive writing for dyslexic students was new to me.)

This comic, taken from conversations in the past with students and with my own ideas on the nature of writing as a physical act. Despite what the comic says, this was not a research study or anything. It’s just a comic.

How do you like to write?

Peace (in the frame),
Kevin

Making Your Own Jam Is What It Is

I had a good friend in an one of my very first bands (The Roadbowlers!), and when I would bring in original songs for the three of us to play, she would always be so appreciative and receptive, even if the song sucked and fell apart (more often, than not, it turns out). Susanna was just learning to play guitar but her philosophy around music making was informed by an artist she listened to a lot and admired as an artist making her way mostly independent of the record industry, Michelle Shocked (although a controversy over some of Shocked comments that were deemed homophobic would no doubt upset my friend terribly).

My friend, Susanna, would quote this line from the song, Strawberry Jam:

Yeah, if you want the best jam
You gotta make your own
– Michelle Shocked

The line resonated for her, and later for me, because it reminds the musician that you don’t need a recording contract to make music. You don’t need a manager. It’s not about the money or the fame. What you need is something that you can play on, something to sing about, maybe a porch to sit on, and then, you make your sounds wherever you are. You make your own jam because that’s the best jam there is.

I was thinking of Susanna and her musical mantra the other day as I was reading a reply to a comment I wrote at Howard Rheingold’s post, asking us to check in as part of the Connected Courses.
Test

I had written in my comment to him that things were going relatively smooth, even from my angle of a K-12 teacher in the midst of University folks, but expressed the wish that more of the facilitators would be more involved in social media interactions. This was not a criticism, knowing how busy folks are. It was more of an observation, and worry that the online component was seeming to replicate the classroom experience of the knowledgeable one imparting lessons (via video) as the students (us) listened.

One thing we agreed on early in our own Making Learning Connected MOOC is the concept of “no one gets left behind” — ie, no blog post or project ever sits there with no comment, and no interaction. Facilitators were active in sharing, commenting, etc. It made a huge difference to people, to know that other folks are in the mix, reading and interacting. This is not to say this is not happening. Howard, and a few others on the Connected Courses team, are doing what they can, given the feed of information flowing. I was just hoping for more. (ie, selfish me)

Howard’s response was logical: he is encouraging facilitators, who may or may not be used to social media on this scale, to dive in, and he noted, rightly, that this is the start of the fall semester for many of them, and we all know how swamped we get when things get rolling.

Then he made the comment, which has stuck with me for days. He said:

What it is, is up to us.”
— Howard Rheingold

In true Connected Learning fashion, we make the connections that matter to us and we build our networks and communities that are meaningful to who we are and where we are going. We sustain us. His small sentence reminded me again that waiting around for validation by the “teacher in the room” goes against the very grain of Connected Learning.

Thank you, Howard, for reminding me of where the learning starts. If you want the best jam, you need to make your own.

What it is

Peace (in the think),
Kevin

The #CCourses Caption Contest (of sorts)

You know now the New Yorker has its caption contest each week? How about one for the Connected Courses? I’ve taken a screenshot of a Blackboard LMS I am going to be forced to use as a student for a state certification program, and added a few, eh, bugs.

CCourses Caption Contest

Your task? What’s the ladybug saying? You can either leave it as a comment to this post, or add it on Twitter with the #ccourses hashtag, or share it elsewhere. If you are adventurous, you can even layer in your caption/dialogue into the original but that’s not required. Just have fun with it. That’s what’s required.

Peace (in the funny),
Kevin

 

PS — already got a few to share …

From Jim:

Embedded image permalinkFrom Todd:

Embedded image permalink

In Knowledge Quest: Educator Advocacy

Advocating Advocacy KQ
I had the pleasure of being asked by Melissa Techman, a guest-co-editor of the September/October 2014 edition of the Knowledge Quest journal, to write a piece about educator advocacy. My aim was to share some of the work that our Western Massachusetts Writing Project has done with regional teachers around getting published in local newspapers and to showcase practical advice on how to hone a message that is both positive and focused on supporting teachers in the classroom.

My piece — Advocating Advocacy: Raising Voices to Make Change — did not make it into the paper version of the Knowledge Quest magazine (darn, and we get it at home, too, as my wife is an administrator and a librarian) but the piece is available as an online exclusive for viewing and sharing. I owe a debt to my networking friends Steve Zemelman and Menoo Rami, who answered some of my questions about work they do to support educators in finding their voice through writing. And I need to give a a shout-out to a local teacher, Michele Turner Bernhard, for allowing me to use her story as a teacher-writer as my lead-in to the piece.

You can find the article through the American Library Association website or just go here to the article itself, as pdf file. And it is always worth checking out Steve’s Teachers Speak Up website for what he has been up to. And for inspiration, read Menoo’s book, Thrive.

Peace (in the raising of the voice),
Kevin

 

Slice of Life: A #CCourses Folding Story

(This post is both for the Slice of Life writing with Two Writing Teachers and for the Connected Courses. It’s all about intersections).

WRITE a slice of life story on your own blog. SHARE a link to your post in the comments section. GIVE comments to at least three other SOLSC bloggers.

One of the main things that gets me interested in online learning spaces is the possibilities for collaboration. All too often, it seems that the online experience is little more than a replica of the offline experience: the presenter speaks or shares, the audience listens and nod head, and then writes independently, a few folks comment and then … radio silence. (That seems like a topic for another blog post, another day.)

As I did with the Making Learning Connected MOOC, I wanted to spark some writing with other folks, so I set up what is known as  Folding Story and invited people in to write with me. A folding story is when you write collaboratively, but you only see the part of the story directly above you, not anything earlier. (It’s a version of the Exquisite Corpse idea). And you have a set amount of space to write, before sending the fold forward to the next person. I’ve done this with paper with my students (a huge hit) and then found an online space called Fold This Story, which works great for online collaboration.

So, this weekend, I set the story in motion for the Connected Courses, with the somewhat provocative title of “You Call This a Course?” and then I began spreading the invitations through the Connected Courses network. A bunch of folks jumped in, and the story soon took off. For most of the story, it kept to the theme of connections. At the end, it veered into zombies. That’s a folding story for you.

Curious about how it came out? Here it is, as a pdf.

You Call This a Course (A Folding Story) by KevinHodgson

And, as I did with CLMOOC, I decided to read aloud the story as podcast, to give it a consistent voice and just to let you/me hear the story unfold in audio. It’s up there in Soundcloud so feel free to remix the heck of it, if you want.

I have not yet used the Fold a Story site with my students, but we will be diving in this year. I wonder how the stories will unfold …

Peace (in the colored threads of collaboration),
Kevin

Why We Teach ….


I’m enjoying the project over at Connected Courses in which folks are writing and creating media on the topic of “why I teach,” because it gives everyone a point of reflection. As I wander in and out of projects, I see a lot that connects us together, regardless of the level in which teach: engagement by our students, enjoyable learning experiences, a sense that we are making a difference in the lives of others.

Why do you teach? Add your piece to the collection.

Peace (in the share),
Kevin

PS — the vine above is in conjunction with the comic below:
Why I Teach
 

Three Comics for #CCourses

I found myself in a webcomic mood yesterday ….

Right to the Quiet #ccourses

Board the Starship #ccourses

At your service #ccourses
I appreciate those who are sharing ideas out, which become kernals of ideas for comics as I explore the Connected Courses thinking.

Peace (in the funny pages),
Kevin