Digital Identity and the Role of Teachers

This week’s prompt, what role should schools play in supporting students in the development of their digital identities, feels so complex. And looking at it through the lens of a high school teacher, I feel like, by the time they get to us, they are already so deep into social media and putting things on the internet that it’s very much like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. Having said that, I also feel like, if we don’t start teaching them about digital identity, and their digital footprints, some of these kids aren’t going to get that information until it’s too late, and are going to be shocked when it suddenly comes back to bite them.

We had an incident at our school last year involving social media, and online bullying, and rumours flying amuk while the administration at our school and the police officers tried to get to the real story. It was ugly, and we actually had a couple of students arrested for sending harassing communications to another student. Since then, our school has upped our digital citizenship education (which, considering we were at close to 0, depending on the teacher, still isn’t much), and there has been a lot of discussion about what our role really is, and what it should be. And while I’m sure that some parents are very conscientious about speaking to their kids about engaging with the digital world, I also feel like a lot of these kids have jumped in head first, and their parents don’t even know what all they’re using in terms of platforms, let alone what is being posted.

And I don’t know about other educators, but as I get into some of these lessons with my students, it also feels like we’re making a lot of assumptions about what has already been discussed or taught to some of these kids. And it makes sense, in a way. Social media use has exploded in recent years, and the young people we are currently teaching have grown up with it. I remember not getting internet until I was in Grade 11, and I didn’t get my first phone until after I started driving and going out on my own. And now I’ve aged myself, right?

My point is, we didn’t grow up with social media and technology being a part of our early lives, so of course it wasn’t something that we needed to learn about in school. And for a while, changes were slow enough that besides information processing and learning type without looking at your fingers, what more did you need?

Now? My 8-year-old is on Roblox, and her friends recently taught her how to talk on there. Not sure how I feel about that, but you can bet that, when she is talking, it’s where her Dad or I can supervise, and there are expectations that are changing as we encounter different situations. We’ve limited her friend list, she knows she isn’t allowed to speak to anyone that she doesn’t know, and we talked about why. So the introduction to social media and interacting and what not has begun. But how many kids are getting that guidance? We learned as we went, and most of us were young adults when we started to get into social media, so I’d like to believe that we were a little more responsible? Maybe? I also know, though, that I’ve gone back and deleted a bunch of stuff from my own Facebook page from years ago, because no one ever warned me to be careful about what I was posting. I didn’t know about data mining and identity theft, or future employers looking up your information when they were looking to hire. Lots of people didn’t!

So to round my way back again to the prompt at hand – yes, I think schools need to step up and provide an earlier and more comprehensive look at the digital world, digital identity, and being aware of what you are posting, and what you want to have associated with your name in the years to come. I went to do a little research into whether or not we actually had anything in our curriculum documents that looked at any of these, and do you know, we have a Digital Citizenship Education in Saskatchewan Schools document that they Ministry put out in 2015? Because I sure didn’t. And while it’s obviously a thing, and readily available, let’s also address the fact that there has been no push or urgency (on behalf of the Ministry or division) to have it incorporated into classrooms.

One site that I have found to be invaluable as I negotiate teaching about digital everything is MediaSmarts. Again, not knowing about the Ministry document, we were kind of left to incorporate this on our own, and I feel like English Language Arts is one subject students all have to take, plus we’re talking about different forms of literature and media, so it makes sense to me to fold this into our repertoire. I know that there is a Media Studies option at some schools, but it’s an elective, as are Communication Media, Information Processing, etc.

So. Do I think this needs to be a joint effort, something that students learn both at home and in the school? Absolutely. Am I convinced they are getting it at either? No – with some of them, I’m really not. And like many other things we teach (even more than some things that are already present in our curriculum documents…), I think this needs to be a mandated piece of our curriculum, starting as soon as we get them using technology.