After reading that articles “(Under)mining Privacy in Social Networks” it really made me think to myself how many different concerns we should have for our students. I would say after talking to my students everyday they probably access the internet on their own for at least two hours a day. Some of that may be searching the net but for the most part it is talking on MSN, Facebook, Twitter and being in chat rooms. To be honest with you I guess I was kind of nieve because until I read this article I had no idea that all that coComment, Trackbacks, Merging Social Graphs and unwelcome Linkage even existed. So as well as teaching our students about all these issues I think we should also be teaching the teachers and the parents about these issues as well.
As for cyber bullying and identity loss that is a huge issue that has been around for a while. I teach at a pretty tough school and some of the things that I hear student’s say to one another’s face are cruel and demeaning. So when you put a computer in front of them and they do not have to actually confront the other person (worry about getting hit for something that they have said) they then take on this extra confidence and with the extra confidence comes more cruelty and demeaning comments. I have seen cyber bullying go so far where the police have been involved, and I think that with time unless we educate our parents and students it is just going to get worst.
As teachers I think that we need to be aware of what the students are accessing at school for research sites and other sites for school projects. In my school district it is pretty straightforward, at school there are a lot of sites that are blocked and cannot be accessed from any school computers. When they go home to continue what they started at school if a parent does not have any security on their computer our students can access anything.
Therefore as teachers the only thing I can think to do would be teach them about what can happen if they give out important information on the internet. Give them real life stories, have them realize that they are not invisible and it can happen to them. I really liked the safety tips that were provided I will read and go over them with my class when school starts again in September. I also think that posting them and constantly revisiting them is a great idea. Students need to understand the harm they can cause not only to themselves, their family but also how they could really truly hurt other people by what they post and give out on the Internet.
This is kind of a little off topic but close to the end of the year I told the students if they wanted to bring in a movie to watch at the end of the day we would put one in. Now, I went over it has a to be PG, with no violent and so on. So the next day I had one of my students bring in a movie that was pirated. It was “Night at the Museum II”. He asked if we could watch it at the end of the day. I looked at him and said where did you get this movie? He said his mom’s friend had given it to him. I said he would have to call his mom to come get the movie and he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t watch it. He didn’t understand that it was against the law to watch/pirate movies. So to prove my point that if we educate not only our students but their parents as well we might put a dent in trying to stop some of our technology cons that have arose in today society.
To answer the last part of the question do I think we as educators are doing enough I am going to have to say “no”. Do I know what has to be done I am not quite sure but I do know that every little bit helps and I am going to start with the safety tips and the famous quote “Treat everyone the way you would like to be treated”.
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