This post is (quite) a bit overdue.  Mostly because I had so many thoughts about this topic that I couldn’t focus them into something coherent and useful.  I probably still can’t, but stay tuned to find out.

I was in elementary school when Youtube made its debut into the world.  I remember most of the memes that Michael Wesch talked about in the documentary – I watched the entire thing!  I do remember that time being a little more golden than it is now.  I agree with the sense of community that was made – everyone was posting and commenting on others’ posts.  It felt welcoming and nice.  I remember posting things online and hoping to get comments and attention from other people.  There was a lot of clout tied up in how many friends a person had on MSN or, later, Facebook.  People posted a lot about their lives, and I made lots of internet friends in spaces like Tumblr. This documentary is a bit old now, but as I watched it I almost felt sad ,because there was hope and promise for the internet back then, and it seems to have gone in a less positive direction.

As a teacher, it got me thinking about the negative spaces that students are inhabiting now.  What was fresh and fun when I was a kid is now commercialized and saturated. I would love for my students to be able to experience the positive and fun sides of participating in the internet.  I’m not sure what that would look like, but it would have to be a guided experience, lots of discussions on positivity and digital citizenship.  The spaces of the internet become what we make of them.

I was watched a video recently about how much of the internet is now abandoned space, with just bots commenting back and forth to each other.  I often think the real people are only in small areas of the internet now, still trying to create that positive community that originally existed.  Even spaces like Tik Tok and Instagram have become so commercialized that they are difficult to use.

It is important for students to be able to participate in online communities, but I think we have to be careful about how we introduce them and talk about the correct ways to use them.  I do try to incorporate some participatory culture into my Arts Ed classroom.  I’ve used Soundtrap, where students can listen to others’ compositions, and work in groups.  I like having them talk to each other on Google Classroom, asking and answering questions, like we do in discord for this class.  I like apps like discord and flipgrid because they can be a bit more private and personalized. Teaching students how to interact with each other online in a private space is great because they can practice their digital citizenship skills and not have to deal with the strangers and bizarre comments that can come with being in the online world.

I do think schools in general need to be more open about these things.  The idea of teaching digital citizenship and letting students out into the wild internet is scary.  I worry about it, because I see how kids treat each other (and teachers) in person these days, and it worries me.  I’ve also seen lots of video game streams where people spew the most hateful comments, and I know a lot of it is coming from kids and young adults.  Running away from the digital spaces and not teaching students how to use them properly is a big problem.  The more we can demonstrate proper and kind internet behaviour, the more examples students have of how they should be behaving.

We see so much hatred and people have such a thin filter on themselves on the internet, I do feel like those behaviours have started to bleed into everyday life, especially with students.  It’s important to talk about the possibilities of the internet and the problems with it.  The more students are asked to think critically about the pros and cons of that space, maybe the better it can be.

I don’t really have any answers, but those are my thoughts on this.