The Ups and Down to Technology

It is amazing to me how much education has changed, not only from the time that I myself was in school (which is a lot longer ago than I really want to contemplate at the moment), but also in the last two decades, from when I was a little baby teacher to now. Using technology used to be about going to the computer lab and playing Oregon Trail (and having your characters die of dysentery far too often), and in high school our “information technology” class included typing, and learning which fingers were supposed to dominate which keys. Even in University, the extent of my interactions with technology was printing off notes for classes, or using Microsoft Word to type up essays (with piles of books scattered everywhere, because research was still done in libraries).

That’s really not the case anymore, and the concept of digital citizenship is one that fascinates me – and one that I think should be taught in schools, alongside all our other curriculums.

One of our prompt options for this week was to:

• Reflect on your experiences either as a parent or as an educator. How have you seen Ribble’s 9 elements in action? Can you provide specific examples where the adherence to or neglect of these elements significantly impacted the social or learning environment?

And oh, my. I’m not going to go into all 9, because this is a blog post, not a dissertation. Besides, if anyone else’s schedules are running like mine has been, you don’t have the time. But I would like to talk about at least one.

Digital Fluency, as according to Ribble, is “the process of understanding technology and its use. The better educated or ‘digitally fluent,’ students are, the more likely they are to make good decisions online, like supporting others instead of making negative comments.” Which sounds great! Absolutely, we need students to understand the actual use of technology, and absolutely we need a little more kindness and empathy in the world. But let’s dig into this one a little.

I was recently working on a vision board assignment with my Financial Literacy class. So we talked about assignment expectations, decided we’re gonna tackle this one online, and I gave them the rundown of Canva, Google slides, and powerpoint (with the option to use any other site they were comfortable with). Awesome. So they know what is expected, they’ve got the laptops, they get going…and it’s a freaking disaster.

Not actually. Or not as bad as all that. But as I was talking to them, and watching them work on these, we started to talk about overlapping images, bringing things to the front or back, putting semi-transparent backgrounds behind our text to make it more visible, and it was like I was talking another language. So I’ve pulling a few observations, based on this and other assignments and interactions, and I’m starting to feel like:

• students are familiar with a LOT (like, a LOT) of apps and websites, and know, at a very basic level, how to use them
• if it’s not helping them with their social interactions, (most) students are not spending a lot of time developing further skills with a lot of these apps and websites
• students are not being taught about a lot of these in school. Or, if they are, their brains have dumped the information because they really only needed to know it for that one assignment

So if I’m going to build on my observations, can I share the following thoughts?

• we are assuming students know how to use the technology (including apps and software) that we put in front of them, because they’ve had access to it their entire lives, so shouldn’t they know things? Especially at the high school level? Haven’t they learned about this before?
• we haven’t built time in to our classes and curriculum to deep dive into some of these apps and software, because of the assumptions that we’re making, and we get caught in a vicious loop where we’re asking them to use certain programs, but we’re rushing through explanations because – surprise! – most of them don’t know as much as we thought they would, but we can’t book additional time, because access in schools is difficult enough as is

Which leads us to the realization that of course they aren’t (all) being kind and empathic citizens online, because we’re still teaching them to be decent human beings in the classroom, and if they haven’t internalized the safe use of technology, they aren’t going to magically be savvy and social as well. Teaching and learning doesn’t work that way. And I don’t know many teachers – myself included! – who are modeling appropriate social behaviour in a classroom, unfortunately. I take it as a win when we can get to savvy! But I think we need to find a way to do and incorporate more.

And, let’s be real, it’s not something they’re necessarily getting at home, either! A lot of parents didn’t learned when they were growing up, either. Not because they never learned to be decent citizens, because most people are. No, most of them, like myself, came across a lot of these platforms after reaching adulthood, which means we weren’t figuring things out in-person at the same time we were exploring the vast and varied online world. And I don’t think there’s necessarily a disconnect between in-person and online behaviour, save for that a lot of us forget to point out that we should be acting the same online as we do with the people right beside or in front of us.

I kind of had this driven home this summer, with my own kids. That we need to be doing more, at home and in schools. We had to have a talk with my eldest, who is 10, about what to do when you come across someone who is not being a responsible, socially fluent user. She uses Roblox, which is an app I am not at all proficient with, but you can be darned sure I put in every parental limit I could to protect them when they said they’d like to check it out. So I’m patting myself on the back, thinking I’ve protected her, that we have talked about being very careful with who we friend (only people we know), and who we chat with (only people we know, and only after asking Mom and Dad), etc. Colour me shocked when, while playing a colouring game, she came to us about the in-game chat, and some person who was threatening everyone, saying they were going to show up at their houses, etc. I had blocked chat, hadn’t I?

Sure. As much as you can. But each game has in-game chat that you have to deal with every. Single. Time. they start playing a new game.

Lesson learned. Real fast.

We figured out immediately how to turn off in-game chat (in that game, and in others) so she could still play the games that she enjoyed. And once we knew, we taught her. But I think more important was the talk that we had about a) what to do when she comes across that kind of chat, and b) our expectations of her, when she is allowed to/becomes interested in joining chats. Which she isn’t yet, thank goodness. It’s an ongoing discussion, though, and when she does start to show interest, you can bet we’ll be monitoring what she’s saying, and to who.

All my rambling comes down to this: we need more access, and we need to build it into classes and curriculum that we show our students how to take part in discussions online the same way that we teach them to take part in discussions in the classroom. Because right now, that social online fluency is being neglected, and it shows.