A Gift Kids Really Want: A Digital Parent!

Yesterday I taught one of my favorite Common Sense Media lessons during a 6^th grade Cyber Civics class. Called “Chart It,” this lesson challenges students to think through online ethical dilemmas — like a friend posting an unflattering photo on Facebook, a classmate cutting and pasting freely from the Internet for a homework assignment, or a girl posting misinformation on her blog. This lesson helps kids explore whether online acts like these are intentional or unintentional, and meant to be hurtful or helpful.

We spend a lot of time in this class sharing examples of online interactions like the ones above. And parents, I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, particularly right before the holidays, but guess what? Most of their examples involve us. Here’s what the kids say:

-My mom intentionally posted an unflattering photo of me on Facebook that was embarrassing and hurtful.

-My parent posted a picture of our family in Hawaii unintentionally showing us away for the holidays. This could end up being helpful to burglars.

You get the idea.

After one of these lessons, a boy said to me, “You really should be teaching this class to our parents.”

Get Digital is a course created exactly for this reason.

This series of online, self-paced lessons helps grownups understand the essentials of digital life. In fact there is a whole unit of classes in this course on “Digital Citizenship” that includes many of the lessons I’ve been teaching to kids for the past four years. Just launched in time for the holidays, this CyberWise Certified course makes a great gift for teachers tasked with teaching digital literacy, parents looking to understand the digital world our kids inhabit, and administrators looking to understand how digital media impacts education. It’s a gift that delivers lifelong returns.

When I told the kids about “Get Digital” for grownups, they immediately wanted to know if it included lessons about the social networks they love most, like Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat. (It does).

Here are a few other precious take-aways for parents from the kids:

1. Don’t talk so much on the phone in the car or in public places.
2. Learn some of the online games we play, and maybe even play with us.
3. When something bad happens, instead of restricting us from technology, help us understand and talk about it first.
4. No smartphones or iPads/tablets at school and sporting events, please.
5. Help me do my schoolwork online (telling me not to use Wikipedia doesn’t count).
6. At least try to learn more about social media and technology so we can talk about it with you.

In other words, get digital. We hope to see you online!

http://www.cyberwisecert.com/get-digital

Fun with Passwords

Recently, while giving a presentation on "Digital Literacy" to a group of K-8 parents, I shared some interesting data from a Pew Internet  & American Life Project report regarding kids and their online passwords. In this study Pew found that 30 percent of 12-17 year olds who were regularly online had shared a password with a friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, and that almost half of those 14-17 do the same. In fact, in more than two dozen interviews, parents, students and counselors said that the practice had become widespread.

When a parent in the room asked me why kids share their passwords, I couldn’t give them a good reason. So I decided to take this question directly to the students in my 8^th grade Cyber Civics class.

Their response? Simply this: they like to share. Remember, this is a generation who has grown up immersed in an online world where the ethos of community, collaboration, and networking is the norm. Here are three examples from their online world:

• Wikipedia: The free online encyclopedia that everyone can edit and use.
• Instagram: The online photo and social networking site that also lets users share what they upload with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
• Flickr: the online photo-sharing website where everyone can upload and view one another’s photos.

The other reason kids like to share their passwords, according to this 8^th grade class, is because passwords are hard to remember, so it helps to have a friend who can help remember them for you.

This second reason provided an opportunity to use a terrific lesson that gives kids a strategy for making and remembering passwords. This lesson (albeit a bit tweaked) comes from Common Sense Media’s Digital Literacy and Citizenship free curriculum.

For this lesson every student received a slip of paper with the name of a famous person on it (an actor, musician, political or historical figure). Their task was to create password using that person as a mnemonic device while also following five simple rules (parents take note, these rules are for you too!). Every password should:

1. Include upper and lowercase letters.
2. Include numbers and symbols.
3. Be at least eight characters in length.
4. Contain no personal information.
5. Use no words found in the dictionary.

Kids love challenges like this one and these students came up with some really creative and funny passwords. But the best part was the follow-up activity: every student wrote his or her password on the board, then the entire class tried to guess the person behind each password by playing a “Charades”-like guessing game.

Here’s an example of one of their passwords:

                                                       Sfttr24UK!!

In case you can’t figure it out… the mnemonic device for this password is the singer, Adele. It includes the first initials of her well-known song “Set Fire to the Rain”, she is 24 years old, from the UK, and she rocks (!!).

You get the idea.

While it’s always a good idea to remind kids about the potential downsides to sharing passwords with others (i.e., friends might post unwanted information or photos onto their social networking sites), it’s also smart to equip them with practical tools that will keep them safe online.

It also doesn’t hurt to have a little fun at the same time.

Making Fair Use Fun

Classroom lessons about "copyright" and "fair use" usually rank up there on the fun meter right next to “algebraic equations” and “dangling participles.” Even saying the words “fair use,” especially in front of class full of 7^th graders, is sure to make their eyes glaze over.  

However, what I learned teaching this lesson (using Common Sense Media’s Digital Literacy and Citizenship curriculum) can be best summed up as a mathematical equation:  

Relevant + Relatable = Fun

Here’s the relevant part. For most of us, it’s difficult to get a real sense of appreciation for copyright law is until we've created a piece of work we feel is worthy of protection. In other words, it helps to have a little skin in the game. To create this relevancy the class was told that the Happy Birthday song they’ve been singing for years is actually protected by copyright law (yes, it’s true, so if you plan to perform the song in public or include it in a movie, get out your checkbook). So, following the curricular advice of the Common Sense Media unit Respecting Creative Work, the class broke into small groups and created original birthday songs for their teacher.  Here are snippets they shot of their creations.

This lesson became relatable when the students discussed how they would feel if someone sang their song and, a) did not give them credit for it or, b) claimed them as their own. They didn’t like either of these two possible scenarios and were eager for copyright protection of their creative work.

However, when the tables were turned and they were asked to create “mashup" posters using copyrighted materials in a manner that would be considered “fair use” (i.e., using a limited amount, adding new meaning/making it original, reworking/using in a different way), they were eager for the opportunity to dig in and reassemble, reuse, repurpose and rework the work of others. However before attacking the stack of magazines with their scissors, I did notice a moment of pause as many wondered how to credit the authors of the works within the pages. In fact, many of them scanned the pages searching for names to credit (even though this is not always necessary in under the parameters of fair use, it is still good manners to give credit when you can).  

In a world where cut, copy and paste have become almost automatic reflexes, all of this is confusing, murky, grey area stuff. Even as a filmmaker, I found I had to refresh myself on the current state of copyright, public domain and fair use as they apply to all the information (seemingly) freely available on the Internet before I could begin to speak about these things with the students.  In fact I’m still feeling badly about the image at the top of this blog that I found used on multiple other blogs, none of which included an attribution (if anyone knows the creator, contact me!). Luckily I found a world of help in a just published chapter (Toward a Pedagogy of Fair Use for Multimedia Composition) in a new book by Renee Hobbs and Katie Donnelly titled Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom.

As Hobbs and Donnelly tell us, “the rise of digital media has contributed to greater levels of awareness and sensitivity because ‘the practice of making one’s own music, movie or essay makes one a more self-conscious user of the cultural artifacts of others,’ as media literacy education is part of a broad practice of learning by doing that ‘makes the entire society more effective readers and writers of their own culture’" (Benkler, p. 299, as cited in Hobbs & Donnelly, 2011, pp. 279-280).

I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. In fact, it got me wondering about members of Congress who, ironically, on the same day as we were experiencing this lesson, were debating the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a new bill intended to ban allegedly copyright-infringing websites from the Internet. Critics of the legislation say it would strike at the very core of the sharing, openness, and participation that the Internet represents. In fact, many feel this bill could usher in an era of Internet censorship that will make the critical thinking skills like those practiced in this class a pointless waste of time and these students might as well have been filling in bubbles on some mandated state test. I honestly wish at least some members of Congress had gotten to make their own birthday songs and “mashup” posters when they were in school. At least then I’d feel a whole lot better about their abilities to cast an informed vote on this bill. But I digress…

If these students hadn’t had the experience of creating, documenting and feeling proud of their musical numbers, I don’t think they would have tried so hard, as they did, to find the names of those who created the works used in their “mashup” posters. At the very least I believe they learned a valuable lesson that day… that that the old adage, “what goes around, comes around” carries more meaning now, than ever before. 

How To Incite a 7th Grade Uprising

Photo: Wesley Fryer

Try this… stand in front of a roomful of 12- and 13-year olds and deliver the following news: “Kids, a team of researchers will be coming to your school to monitor your every move. These observers will record where you go (including the restroom, lunch area, playground, etc.), how long you spend there, whom you talk to, and what you do. The results of this research will help your school administrator customize the school to better meet your needs.” As you deliver this news, don’t forget to watch their expressions transform from uninterested to curious to disbelieving and, finally, to outrage!

Okay, by now you see where this is going. There’s no research company. But this lesson on “Privacy” from Common Sense Media’s free online digital media curriculum did get the attention of this class. So when they learned that this infringement on their privacy wasn’t actually going to happen at their school, but was happening every day in a place where they spend more time than in school -- cyberspace -- well, let’s just say they weren’t happy.  In fact, several students summed up their displeasure as follows, “That’s creepy!

It is creepy. In a front page story from last Sunday’s L.A. Times (Watching a Screen? It Watches You Too) Kevin Bankston, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation says, “[e]ssentially , each of us is being tailed”. Funny thing is, most of us, like these 7^th graders, really don’t think too much about it. Maybe that’s because the upside of all this surveillance can be rather nice- data collection of our behavior patterns allows companies to target us with customized information, like ads for shoes we like or cars we might be likely to drive. This gathering of our personal data happens so invisibly we scarcely notice it. However, when we stop to scrutinize how it happens and then consider just how much information is mined from our simplest online activities you have to admit it is, well, creepy.

Fortunately for this class of 7^th graders (who are hopefully home at this very moment examining their Whyville privacy policies), they get to consider all this in class. Our school, Journey School in Aliso Viejo, CA, has made the bold move of incorporating Common Sense Media’s curriculum into all of its middle school classes. Why does this matter? Because in a few years these students will be able to vote. Maybe they’ll actually pay attention to (and understand) all the privacy-related legislation that continually fails to become law because powerful companies like FaceBook and Google don’t want to relinquish access to our data.  Or maybe they’ll decide they like their information perfectly designed to meet their needs. Either way, at least they’ll be informed citizens of their digital world.