Tag: resources

I’m giving two talks today at the ISL, one for teachers and another for parents, about teenagers and social networking (that the request was specifically for “social networking” makes me happy, because we’re finally moving away from the whole “blog” thing). I think we’re moving away further and further from the “internet as library” metaphor, and the “internet as city/village” image is the one that most people are starting to have.

I have already gathered many links with useful information all over the place, but I think it’s a good thing to collect some of them here for easier access. If you’re reading this not long after I posted it, you’ll find a whole series of quotes in my Tumblr, too.

General starting-points

• my bookmarks tagged teens, youth, fear, digitalyouth, edublogging (click on “related tags” at the top right of each page to explore more)
• search Wikipedia for Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, etc
• search digital youth on Google for educational resources and research
• visit Facebook, MySpace or skyrock to explore or create a profile there

Fear of sexual predators

This is by large the most important fear linked to teenagers and the internet. Thankfully, it is much exaggerated and no more of concern than fear of predators offline. Three starting-points:

• Predator Panic: Reality Check on Sex Offenders
• MySpace Banning Sex Offenders: Online Predator Paranoia (contains relevant quotes and figures from a 2007 research presentation one can view/read in full online)
• My Advice to Parents

The real issues

You’ll see that these are much less “newsworthy” than sexual predators.

• privacy (in the sense of revealing too much about yourself or in an inappropriate context, which leads to embarrassement or social problems) — a look at Facebook privacy settings
• permanence of online media
• weakness of anonymity
• misunderstanding of how online interactions affect communication and relationships (“chat effect”, flame wars…)
• slide-show of a presentation I gave about the kind of mischief teenagers get upto on blogs (what I managed to lay my hands on, with screenshots — no fear, it’s pretty mild)
• intellectual property (copyright)
• necessary to move away from a model of “education through control” as everything is available at a click of a mouse (age-restricted content like porn, shopping, gambling)
• rumors, hoaxes and urban legends (use snopes.com to debunk them)
• bullying and many other unpleasant online phenomenons are also offline phenomenons, but sometimes less visible to adults; the core issue does not change — if these problems are addressed properly offline, then they will also be online
• cyberaddiction is not common at all, despite what some articles might want to have you believe — unhealthy usage of the computer usually is not the problem in itself, but an element of a larger problem which needs to be addressed
• the jury is still out on gaming — though it’s clearly not healthy to be spending too much time immersed in interactive virtual worlds when you’re learning to get to grips with reality, it seems that participating in multi-player online games can have a significant positive impact on ability to work in teams and solve problems creatively

Other links or comments

• Notes of round table discussion with 4 International School teenagers from the Geneva region
• blog of “web2.0-enabled” educator Ewan McIntosh
• blog of danah boyd, PhD researcher on youth and digital spaces
• tip for teachers present in social networks where students are: make “public” part of profile “school-compatible”, don’t send out friend requests to students, but accept incoming ones (people outside the teaching sphere have similar issues between “personal life” and “business)
• the computer is not the only device which gives access to the living web
• should parents spy on their kids online? (Facebook)
• a good book for parents: Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online
• beyond teenagers, into business (there are many, but two pointers): How Blogging Brings Dialogue to Corporate Communications, and The Cluetrain Manifesto, a book that gives you the bigger picture

I will probably add to this article later on, following the requests made during the talks. If you want to suggest a topic or ask a question, feel free to do so in the comments.