I am introducing an excellent workshop this week entitled “Supporting Your Digital Child,” and in gathering some resources for the introduction speech I came across this visual. In keeping with my last few posts, I thought that this illustrated perfectly what I have been thinking.
The “internet stigma” as I have come to know it is evident in people’s attitude towards things like social networking sites. The visual is hard to read so I will take you through it. The top bars that represent the higher percentages in the graph are next to questions like: “Have you ever talked to you children about how to avoid dangerous situations online?” or “What do you do if you find yourself in an uncomfortable position online?” or “Why you shouldn’t share personal information online.” While these conversations are excellent and necessary what got me was the bottom part of the survey. The questions on the bottom, that had the lowest percentages where questions like, “How do you manage huge volumes of information?” and “How do you evaluate possible bias online?”
Even though it is only one survey from 2007 I believe that it is indicative of the way most people look at using tools like social networks in the classroom. I am using the term social networks loosely here to include things like wikispaces and blogs that only one class or group of students have access to.
Why is it that most people, when asked about concerns they have about their kids using the internet never ask the important questions? How are we going to transform our students into digital beings or at least mold the digital being that they already are, if we are constantly afraid of what might happen while they are trying to gather information instead of focusing on what the most efficient way to use that information is once they get it?
