I have been using blogging for the last year and a half and had a huge recent set back. Two posts were added to a student assignment, using cursing, insulting my students, the school, and I.
All student identities are anonymous so no one can track them, but parents are unwilling to give students emails, and therefore cannot get IDs. I also monitor all comments, and therefore caught it pretty quickly. This has never happened in my year and a half of blogging assignments
Any advice for this? It's so disheartening to take so many small steps forward and then one giant leap back.
Go public.
And I'm talking big time.
Don't sit on this. Don't treat it as an isolated disciplinary event. And don't get despondent.
Go public.
Hold a meeting for the school community; maybe try to work this out with your PTA. Make sure there are tons of parents there.
And show them the offending comments.
And explain to them that these sorts of comments are not a product of technology.
Rather, these comments are an example of why we need to teach kids how to use social tech. I've said it before: Don't like using YouTube because of all the vulgarity and hate in the comments? Then teach kids how to use social tech responsibly and help raise a generation that will not tolerate abusive language on YouTube.
The parents need to understand that social technology is not going away. And they need to understand that it is in their own best interest that their kids understand both how to use it and how to be responsible digital citizens.
This sort of thing, more than anything else, should help bolster your argument for why we need to be integrating social tech into our classrooms on a daily basis. Because it's about changing culture. Take charge of this teachable moment.
Incivility is hardly a new problem, and one need only look at the "shouters" on Fox News Channel, AM radio and on the Republican side of the House of Representatives during Presidential addresses to find the current mass media models that lend social acceptability to it today. Of course, one can also look in locker rooms and playground cliques to find it closer to home in the face to face life of students. That it shows up on class blogs is hardly surprising. And, I wish you luck in "going public" in an attempt to quell it. However, in the 30 years I've been teaching, and the 57 years I've been in and around schools, I've seen many determined efforts to teach civility by dedicated, sincere and capable people. Sad to say, this seems to have had little effect.
ReplyDeleteThis is more of a comment for the PLN out there as I haven't yet had the negative situation listed above. I am just beginning to use Twitter with my Spanish 3 students- we just signed up for accounts today. I am a little bit lost as to how BEST to use Twitter to supplement their learning. I am going to use it as a sort of homework help line where they can tweet me & each other for help & answer each others' questions. I'm also find with them using it to just to little updates (hopefully in Spanish) about what they're up to. Another way I'm hoping to incentive tweeting is with a "word of the day" competition wherein I provide a spanish word with a brief definition & the first student to tweet back what it means in English & use it correctly in a sentence receives a participation point (which they have to get to fulfill a portion of their overall grade).
ReplyDeleteQuestion is this: today kids weren't being inappropriate, they just simply weren't really being relevant or posting useful things at all. So far only one parent is upset & refusing Twitter usage, but, her argument is that she's looked at Twitter & cannot find anything edifying on it; she sees it as somewhat useless in the learning of a 2nd language and after seeing what the kids posted today, I see her point. BUT, I'm super sad to see her child just miss out on this new tech usage altogether.
So a few quetsions:
1. How do you communicate with a parent who is dead-set against their child using web 2.0 in any capacity in or out of school? (blogs were also a no last year)
2. How do you incentive students to post not only appropriate but also relevant, useful information on Twitter?
Thanks for any insight!!!
I think this is a hugely important topic because of how much of a role technology plays in students' lives. It is now an educator's role to teach their students the socially acceptable roles of cell phones, laptops, and now blogs. Blogs are increasing in popularity in the classroom and students must be taught the proper way to use them. That includes school rules of no profanity, etc.
ReplyDeleteIf this happens again, I say, go public! If kids are writing innapropriate comments and are willing to send them to you peacefully, something needs to be done about it. If you just sit back for another minute because you are having doubts about having it happen again, then it will come upon you 3x stronger than before.
ReplyDeleteI would totally put it out public! People especially students shouldn't be cursing and saying inappropriate things on the internet. I agree with Jackie. It will get worse if you just leave it alone because then students will just keep doing it more frequently. You need to do something about this so it doesn't back fire and get worse.
ReplyDeleteI would totally put it out public! People especially students shouldn't be cursing and saying inappropriate things on the internet. I agree with Jackie. It will get worse if you just leave it alone because then students will just keep doing it more frequently. You need to do something about this so it doesn't back fire and get worse.
ReplyDeleteI would punnish the whole class, students will stop each other from doing things when the entire class will look down on them just because they made a mistake and as long as that happens they will not do that again until the rules change.
ReplyDelete