The other night, the segment about data mining and privacy issues in the digital age ran on Fox News, and my students and I were part of the mix. Some of you may remember that I allowed Fox News, with anchor John Roberts, to come to my sixth grade classroom on Digital Learning Day as we were in the midst of a unit around digital citizenship. The hour-long feature — called Your Secret’s Out — is pretty damning, as Fox examines how companies and the government use data to know who were are and what we’re up, too, etc, and is pretty much, well … Fox News. There’s heightened music, a sense that something is very wrong with the world, and Robert’s arched eyebrows show us that we better be more aware of our use of digital spaces. Now, this is true, but the feature gives is more of a dark underpinning than it needs. But that’s television, for you.

Now, you can imagine my worries about how my students and I would be portrayed in that kind of conversation. The last thing I want is for my students to come across as fools, or inarticulate kids. That didn’t happen. We did OK. I think we all came off as pretty thoughtful, and the brief segments show us in good conversations about the digital world. I think I was able to explain the rationale for teaching about digital footprints, in soundbites. I have edited our section out of the larger piece so that I can show my students. The stories that immediately follow us include references to sex tapes and Charlie Sheen and other pop cultural references that I’d rather not bring into my classroom, if I don’t have to.

Peace (on the small screen),
Kevin

We wrapped up our discussions about Digital Lives yesterday by moving our topic from issues like identity and privacy and behaviors in online spaces to something more concrete: the lifespan of electronics and the environment. It also gave me a chance to guide my sixth graders to be critical close readers of a video as text, which is difficult and which will require much more practice. The topic of the day was about what happens when companies build for “planned obsolescence” (ie, put out the newest model every six months to a year) and we buy new stuff, only to toss away the old stuff.

The video we used — The Story of Electronics — is an offshoot of the larger The Story of Stuff (worth watching, too) and it provides a great opportunity to talk not only about the issues of e-waste and production cycles, but also about point of view, use of “facts and data,” and visual persuasion. This video has it all. While it is a powerful indictment of the ways electronics are endangering the health of workers and others on production lines, it also mostly avoids bringing in a balanced view, uses data without much direct citation, utilizes powerful animated images to evoke an emotional response, and more.

I won’t lie and say we had as full a discussion as I would have liked. The video came near the end of the period on the day before February vacation, and after a vocabulary quiz. But even so, the video did spark lots of discussion about the ways my students and families view electronics, and that sharing gave me avenues for pointing out the techniques of the video. We’ll be revisiting this topic later in the year, for sure.

Peace (in the stuff),
Kevin

We had some interesting discussions in class yesterday about passwords. Stories about getting hacked by friends, about sharing passwords as a sign of friendship, of never even considering how easily a password could be cracked, of forgetting a password. And most of my sixth grade students admitted they think very little about the passwords they come up with, and most use the same password everywhere. (I suspect the same can be said for many adults.) The discussion was part of our Digital Life unit, and I shared an interesting tool that tests the hackability of a password. The kids were jazzed about testing the strength of passwords, and then were suitably shocked when the site would say that their passwords could be hacked “instantly.” The video from Common Craft hit all the right spots, too.

Again, I downplayed the fear factor in all this, and turned it around to a positive, and guided them to think about how we can use language and writing to create strong passwords. This includes reminding them of memory devices for creating passwords that might seem like nonsense to the outside world but will make perfect sense to them. We talked about how the use of symbols and numbers, and mixing upper and lower case letters, all help strengthen a password.

Here is the site we used:

Password Strength Meter Checker

And I did not show this video, but it cracks me up everytime, as this comic laments passwords. Very funny.

Peace (in the password),
Kevin

We’re nearing the end of our Digital Life unit, and yesterday, our topic was cyberbullying and bullying, in general. It was a deep conversation across my sixth grade classes, rich with questions and insights and, unfortunately, experience. One of the topics we discusses is the role of the bystander, and as luck would have it, I came across this activity/event in my National Writing Project network.

It has to do with thinking through and understand the role of the bystander who takes action. The term is a bit odd to say — upstander — but I had my students write down what they thought it meant before we talked about what it meant. Some of those notes have become part of this presentation that I will be sharing with my students and families, and also, submitted to the Upstanders, Not Bystanders event.

See the slideshow: The Role of the Upstander

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad
This also reminds me a presentation that I gave at last year’s NCTE meeting around cyberbullying (thanks to the invite by Kylene Beers). I’ll share it here, too.

Peace (in the strategies),
Kevin

As part of our class discussions around digital footprints, we used an activity from CommonSense Media that has students thinking of a comparison/simile for the way they use digital media. I like it because it allows us to talk about figurative language, and opens up some interesting discussions around themes of responses.

First, I will share the one that I created.

And here are some student responses.

What’s your media life like?

Peace (in the simile),
Kevin

I gathered up some of the graphs from our recent survey on this Glogster poster which I will be sharing out with my students today to begin our discussions and inquiry around technology, digital footprints, privacy, cyberbullying and more.

Peace (on the poster),
Kevin

I’ve been sharing out some of the data from a grade-level survey that I did with my students around their perceptions and use of technology and digital media. I’ve talked about how much time and what they do with that time, and also, I’ve shared out how many of my students use Facebook and Instagram. Today, I want to share out their views and experiences around online safety and cyberbullying. All of these topics will be part of our class discussions this week as part of our work around Digital Learning Day.

This topic of safety is one that often falls below many of our radar screens until something has gone too far for the kids to deal with. I was curious if adults in their lives have talked about the issue of how to be safe when in an online space and what to do if the tone turns negative and maybe even threatening. I was pleased to see that about three-quarters of the students reported that they have had those kinds of conversations before with a teacher or parent.

In looking at their narrative experiences, you can see that the line between other just being annoying and being threatening is very vague for my students (and, let’s be honest, for many adults). When a student says that another person writing in Spanish or “liking” a picture on a site that encourages that, they may be reading more into the activity than is there. But when a student says that there are too many incidents to even count, that is a cause for concern, I think.

Parents/Teachers/Adults Talked About Online Safety?

I also wanted to know if they had experienced this negativity in online spaces, and about one-third said they had.

Negative Online Experiences?

Next, I asked, if they said “yes” to that last question, what was the incident, and was it resolved? Here are some of their answers:

• Some creep “liked” my pictures and I blocked him.
• People being mean.
• Someone didn’t care about the Newtown ct. shooting so a big fight broke out on Instagram and the person who didn’t care had so many people against him, he just stopped typing. The guy was swearing a lot.
• It is not really a problem people post pictures that say this girl died and if you don’t re-post you will be next.
• Cyberbullying. I resolved it by going to a counselor.
• People swear at you and it has not resolved.
• I re-posted some of a girl’s pictures (what you are supposed to do and she said that I was “taking all her pics”) so I unfollowed her and yes it did work.
• A rude message was left for me in Minecraft and it did not get fixed.
• It was not resolved but someone kept calling me really bad things.
• Someone was talking Spanish, asked to stop, and they said something in Spanish.
• On fantage.com while I was playing (virtual world) and someone said those clothes you are wearing (on my character) are ugly. What I just did is clicked on them and then I reported them.
• Well, I don’t know how many negative experiences I’ve had online. There are too many to count.
• The people swear at you.
• Teenagers on Xbox live mocking my gaming abilities.
• People call me names on Xbox Live.
• Me and a person got into a really big fight. We have really never talk ever again.
• I saw an inappropriate and got it blocked from YouTube.

One of the areas I will be addressing this week is privacy settings and letting them know there are ways to report bad behavior of other users to most online sites. I’ll also be reminding them that they have supportive adults at home and in school who they can turn to for help in situations that seem to be careening out of control.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin