Hello and welcome to this eLearning course on using digital skills in the classroom.
This is module 5 which is all about how to use Social Media.
In the last part of this module, we are going to be taking a look at some challenges around
Internet Safety and Responsible Use within the context of Social Media.
Now when we look at the term Internet Safety and Responsible Use, it is really important
to emphasize that the key part of this term is really Responsible Use.
That is a big challenge for us in schools because we always face the challenge of do
we lock and block a service down or do we keep that service open and work with children
and young people to educate them how to use it responsibly.
I am a big favour in terms of the latter because, let’s face it, with teachers, our job is
to educate young people.
An important thing I think is within schools across Europe is that we don’t ignore the
problem.
A great example of this is mobile phones in the classroom.
Lots of schools still ban mobile phones yet they are powerful mobile devices.
The reasons that mobile phones are often banned is not because they are a distraction and
not because they are not good for learning, it is because the teachers that want them
banned normally suffer from poor classroom management techniques.
It is important that we work with those wicked teachers, to teach them about 21st century
pedagogy, so that they are comfortable about using not just mobile phones but all forms
of technology in the classroom.
If you want to find out a little more about this type of emerging practice, I suggest
that you read the cloudlearn report from heppel.net and Nominet Trust.
It talks a little bit around effective practice in schools moving to the end of lock and blocking
in the classroom.
It gives examples of using Facebook, using Twitter and using YouTube.
Again, some of these services are still blocked in some European schools.
If we are talking about Internet Safety and Responsible Use, it is really important that
we understand the language that young people across Europe are speaking about.
There is lots of different examples for this, but my favourite example is this picture.
If I ask you to look at this picture and said to you what is this picture of, I can guarantee
that lots of you are thinking “this is a picture of a digital camera”.
Yet, if I asked a group of 6 or 7 year old, what is this picture of, I can guarantee that
most of them would say “this is a picture of a camera”.
There is a subtle difference, isn’t there?
Digital camera / camera.
It is because the young people have only grown up with the digital technology.
They don’t remember the digital cameras where you had to load a film, take the film
out and take them to a shop to get them developed.
The same principles could be applied to the word “friend” from a social networking
site.
To me a friend is somebody that I know, somebody that I trust, somebody that I will be sharing
some of my intimate secrets with.
To a young person, a friend is just a connection on a social networking site.
It is important that we work with young people to help them actually understand what a friend
is within different contexts.
Privacy is another important word that we need to consider when we talk about understanding
a common language.
There are lots and lots of reports that suggest that young people are more concerned about
privacy that ever before.
However, in my own research, when I ask a young person if they are concerned about privacy,
they will say yes, but if I ask them what privacy is, they will struggle to define it.
Again, they are giving us the answer that we want to hear rather than really understanding
the actual matter.
The challenge is within European law, it is almost impossible to keep up to date with
the technology and the emerging technology.
For example, across Europe, we have got lots and lots of laws that protect our privacy
when it comes to closed-circuit TV cameras or security cameras.
However there are practically no laws that protect us against high streaming webcams,
which let’s face it is pretty much a form of closed-circuit TV.
You can go online and you can download apps and you can access webcams all around the
world, which arguably are a breach of privacy but there are no laws that protect us.
The biggest breach of our privacy is of course social media sites, where we choose as adults
and young people to give away information.
One interesting activity to try is to try Googling yourself or even trying Googling
me.
As you will know from module 2, if you put your name within speech marks, it will give
you a definite search of both your first name and your surname.
You might be surprised that what comes up, particularly if you are into digital technology,
and particularly if you are interested in this field.
There might be things that come up from the digital news.
It might for example reveal your phone number of your address in some kind of online phone
directory.
Or you maybe even be able to access national records from your country if they have been
put online and if they have been digitized, and if you have given them permission for
them to be accessed.
Quite often we don’t even realize that we have given permission for a personal information
to be accessed.
We talked a lot about search engines in module 2.
One search engine called Pipl is a people search engine.
With Pipl, you can use your email address, a username or a phone number to cross reference
other social networking sites to find that information about a specific person rather
than a product or service.
So as I say, we quite often choose to give information away via social networking sites
or other data that people might already have on us.
It is important as well to remember that for many social networking sites, you have to
be over the age of 13.
This is because of the United States of America law which is called COPPA.
COPPA stands for Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
It doesn’t mean that children under the age of 13 cannot use social media sites.
That is really important.
What is means is that they cannot register to be part of a social media site.
So for example, there is a big difference legally between uploading a video to YouTube
where you will be required to be over the age of 13, and watching a video on YouTube
where anybody could watch it.
So COPPA as I have mentioned is a US privacy law.
Social media are starting to get better and better about helping us protect our privacy.
You can normally find this in the privacy settings within that social media site.
One of the things that I would suggest that you do with your students is to explore what
the privacy settings mean on popular social media sites, because the challenge that we
have got of course is that many of these privacy guidelines are written for people over the
age of 13 and therefore, they are written in a language which requires you to have the
literacy of a 13 year old or above.
If you are reading that information as a 5 or 6 years old, you might not understand it
or indeed you might even not be able to read it.
What is understanding privacy, it is really important that we get across children and
young people this concept of digital footprint.
That is this idea that no matter where you go on the Web, it is almost impossible to
delete anything from the Internet.
It is going to be stored on a server somewhere and that means that it might be possible to
be retrieved in the future.
Don’t get me wrong.
I showed you this clip in the last video.
If you say the wrong thing on a social networking site, then that might lead in a certain of
repercussions.
For example losing your job for calling your job or your boss boring.
But if you say the right thing on a social networking site, then that might help you
get a job.
Again, I have used already the example of a journalist or an artist or a game designer,
who in the 21st century would be required to have digital portfolios.
It is important to remember though, as responsible adults, we need to make sure that we empower
young people to be responsible for their own digital footprint.
Some of this research here from the Internet security firm AVG is therefore actually quite
scary, because this is talking about young people under the age of 2 who are already
starting to develop social networking profiles and digital footprints through no fault of
their own, but because parents and family members are uploading content about them.
I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but what I am saying if this would be the
first generation of young people who will be impacted by this in 10, 20, 30 years time.
It is important that we have a little think about what the repercussions of this might
be.
Do you remember the Wayback Machine from module 2 when we looked at some of the hidden gems.
In module 2, we looked at how you could go back and you could recall a website from the
past.
This is a really good service to revisit with children and young people to prove that it
is almost impossible to delete anything from the Internet.
If you have forgotten about this, go back and have a quick look at that module 2 video
and use that in your teaching resource and teaching about Internet Safety and Responsible
Use.
So finally, what is the solution to this?
I am a big fan of the quote from Cliff Dennet, who is a game designer, and he says the solution
is always in the problem.
So if the problem is children using social media irresponsibly, perhaps the solution
is in young people using social media responsibly.
Again, we have got a lot of great resources across Europe that can help us do that.
Insafe, which is about the Safer Internet Forum and other Safer Internet Centres across
Europe, provides a lot of great resources and support in local languages to be teaching
about Internet Safety and Responsible Use.
We can also see a number of Internet and crime enforcement agencies starting to gain a presence
in social media where young people are able to get support.
CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency in the UK, is a great example of that.
Of course social media sites themselves are starting to develop user friendly robust ways
for you to be able to seek support in terms of what you need to do, such as the Facebook
Family Centre and the Google Family Centre.
And also of course, when we think about Internet-connected devices, let’s not forget games consoles
and let’s not forget mobile phones, because what we know from research over the UK is
more and more young people are connecting to the Internet and behaving socially using
phones and games consoles than there are traditional desktop computers.
Lots and lots of good information there.
The key point that I want you to take away from this video is that social media is not
bad.
The important thing is when we are talking about using social media in schools or social
media in the workplace, is that it is going to be about Responsible Use, and that is working
with young people and employers to use these tools and services in a responsible way.
That is the end of module 5.
The next module, module 6, is all going to be about a personal project and there will
be a bit of an introduction video for you to visit there, but there will not be a lot
of me talking, you will probably be pleased to know.
I hope you have enjoyed that series on using social media in schools.
Don’t forget to check out the Social Media in Learning and Education project, the SMILE
project, if you want to find out more about the subject area.
I will see you next week in the next module.
Thanks very much.