Understanding Media's Impact

It’s hard to get through the day without hearing a heartbreaking cyberbullying story. As we watch these stories grab the headlines, it’s helpful to keep in mind what John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and author of “Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives,” said recently, “[c]yberbullying is just bullying that happens to be mediated through digital technologies. There's nothing fundamentally different about it” (2011). 


In fact, overall incidences of physical bullying, thankfully, are in decline. According to a new study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center, the percentage of children reporting physical bullying in the past year went down from 22 percent to 15 percent. Additionally, cyberbullying happens a third less than traditional bullying. Nevertheless, even one case of bullying, cyber or otherwise, that results in harm to a child is one case too many.

If there is any upside to our awareness of these stories, perhaps it's the reminder that just because our kids seem tech-savvy at increasingly younger ages, doesn’t mean that their brains have caught up with their digital acumen. According to the renowned developmental theorists, like Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, it takes children about twelve years to develop the cognitive structures that enable them to grasp abstract, metaphoric, and symbolic types of information… logical thinking, in other words. Before twelve, it’s pretty much cognitively impossible for children to fully grasp the effects of their actions upon others, online or otherwise. Yet may of us put powerful digital devices in their hands well before they hit their teens and then react in shock when they use them poorly.

Furthermore, even though most children start thinking logically by twelve, and thus show the beginnings of ethical thinking (which requires logical thinking as a prerequisite, btw), new brain science has found that certain parts of the brain are still not fully functional until about age 25. Guess which part of the brain takes the longest to mature? The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that just happens to be largely responsible for impulse control (I know, this seems like a cruel joke on those of us with teens learning to drive cars and to navigate the information superhighway).

So although a teenager might understand, for example, the impact of nasty text message upon its recipient, the part of their brain that warns… “hey, hold on a minute, better not hit send” isn’t fully operational yet. So guess what happens? The message gets sent.  

So, short of taking away mobile phones and computers until well after college graduation, what's a parent to do? Well, according to a recent article in Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning, “[e]ducators and parents nationwide are turning to new digital citizenship curricula to help students understand their rights and responsibilities online” (Jackson, 2010).  Even the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) concurs. In a recently released clinical report, “The Impact of Social Media Use on Children, Adolescents and Families,” the AAP states that the answer to our concerns about cyberbullying and the like, is digital literacy, both for students and their parents.

Our “Cyber Civics” classes at Journey School have been underway for a couple of months now. We’re currently working on Common Sense Media’s  “Connected Culture” unit which addresses the issue of cyberbullying. One of the games we've played, called “You Chart It”, has students use their ethical thinking skills to evaluate situations that can happen in cyberspace. For this game we made two x and y axes on the floor with masking tape, labeling them as seen below…

After listening to stories describing different online scenarios (in one, for example, a boy posts an unflattering close-up of his friend’s face that causes the friend to be made fun of at school), the students were asked to take the point of view of the person who took the action. They had to imagine a point on the y axis that stood for how intentional or unintentional this person’s actions were, and to imagine a point on the x axis that stood for how helpful or hurtful that person’s actions were and then take a place on that spot. 

I’ve played this game a couple times with adults. They almost always think the young “perpetrators'” actions were unintentional (“I’m sure he had no idea what he was doing…”).  Here’s what the kids thought...

  

It is apparent, at least to me, that these 12-year olds are fully capable of the ethical thinking required to puzzle through the consequences of their actions. So will any of these kids be the ones who, despite understanding the impact of their actions, hit “send”? Maybe. Nobody can make their brains mature any faster than nature intended. However, we can help them exercise the muscles of wise decision-making by discussing and considering these scenarios well before they occur. We are fortunate that, at Journey School, we get to spend a few precious school-time hours practicing these skills.

I wish all kids were so lucky.

References

Jackson, S. (2010, December 7). Parents’ Reaction to Cyberbullying Underscores the Need for Digital Citizenship Education. Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. Retrieved April 18, 2011 from http://spotlight.macfound.org/blog/entry/parents-reaction-to-cyberbullying-underscores-the-need-for-digital-citizens/

Palfrey, J. (2010, October 1). Cyberbullying and a Student's Suicide. The New York Times. Retrieved April, 18 from http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/30/cyberbullying-and-a-students-suicide/palfrey

Imagining Digital Footprints in 2021

From: Common Sense Media

Not too long ago I attended a presentation at our local high school given by Glen Warren, a passionate information and digital literacy advocate who’s the V.P. of Government Relations for the California School Library Association (CSLA). He said that students today need to do more than just protect their digital reputations, they need to actually “do positive stuff online” so that their digital footprints speak volumes about their character. 

We already know that future employers will likely go to the Internet to do background checks on these students before entrusting them with jobs. Additionally, colleges and universities are starting to rely on digital interactions when deciding which students get letters of acceptance. For example, I learned about Zinch.com from The Media Psychology Blog. It’s a social networking-like site that lets students post profiles and links about themselves that are viewed by college admissions officers. Based on the idea that a student is “more than a test score” (really?!?), this site provides a good example of how a digital footprint is our new first impression.

That’s why the 6^th graders in our Cyber Civics class at Journey School took a proactive approach imagining and designing their own digital footprints; the ones they want the world to see in ten years. Judging by the things they scrawled into their footprint outlines (from Common Sense Media’s “Digital Citizenship” curriculum), it was a class full of future presidents, professional soccer players, artists, scientists, musicians, gamers, fashion stylists and more. Some were going to achieve renown by eating themselves to greatness and others were going to win the Nobel Peace prize, the Heisman trophy, feed the homeless and perform hundreds of pet rescues (frankly, I’m most excited about the Horchata-flavored ice cream). Even if only a fraction of these digital dreams do come true, I think it will be a future we can all look forward to.

Learning About Digital Footprints

When asked about the UCLA student who recently posted a disparaging video on YouTube (see last blog) that ultimately led to her withdrawal from school, Robert Hernandez, a professor of Internet journalism at USC, said her story serves as a reminder of the need to be aware of your “digital footprint” in the Internet age.

Understanding the impact of one’s digital footprint is challenging, even for those of us who have been online for a long time. We see examples of adults being digitally disastrous every day, maybe not to the extent of the UCLA student, but certainly we can all think of someone who has shared too much information or posted a photo that makes us cringe. So imagine the difficulty of trying to introduce the concept of a “digital footprint” to a roomful of sixth graders who are just making their first voyages into cyberspace.

To teach this concept we used curricular materials from Common Sense Media and adapted them to make the lesson particularly relevant to these students. As part of a recent Business Math block, this class started what turned out to be a very successful pie-making/selling business called “Sweetie Pies” (they made and sold hundreds of pies over the holidays). So we told the students that “Sweetie Pies” needed to hire a national spokesperson, and as owners of the company it was their job to consider two applicants, Jason and Linda, and look at their “digital footprints”.

After conducting this digital background check, the students were asked which candidate they should hire based upon the following criteria: who was more honest and who worked well with others? They broke into small groups to ponder this decision.

Most of the students came to the conclusion that neither of the candidates should be hired (only a couple considered the possibility that the digital information may not have been 100% accurate). So we presented the class with some additional digital food-for-thought.

I think I could actually hear the wheels turning inside their heads (it's a beautiful sound, btw) as these 12-year old's pondered the fine line that exists between the digital information about ourselves that we can control and that which we can’t. These children are entering a world that requires much greater critical thinking than ever before, because the consequences of one or two false moves in cyberspace is tremendous. Just ask that UCLA student.

References

Common Sense Media (n.d.). Common sense media education programs. Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators

Lovett, I. (2011, March 15). U.C.L.A. Student’s Video Rant Against Asians Fuels Firestorm. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/us/16ucla.html?_r=1

 

It's All About Community

Last Friday Mr. Keller’s class and I explored the notion of community in our Cyber Civics class. I learned a lot. We talked about what Common Sense Media calls “The Rings of Responsibility”, that is, we all have responsibilities to three entities: ourselves, our friends and family, and to the larger community. This holds true whether we are offline or online. Responsibility and respect know no digital boundaries.

    From: Common Sense Media

The sixth graders enumerated all the things that can cause a community to break down: meanness, gossip, lies, exclusion of others, unwanted matchmaking, pretending to be something/someone you aren’t. It was a good lesson. I came home determined to be a kinder member of all my communities.

I couldn’t help thinking of these 6^th graders over the weekend when I heard about the third year political science student at UCLA who videotaped herself ranting about Asian students in her school community and then posted the video on YouTube for all the world to see.  While this brings up all kinds of questions about the ethical thinking (or any kind of thinking, for that matter) required to get into a university like UCLA (a subject for another blog), you do have to feel sort of sorry for the girl. After all, her lapse in judgment will live on in cyberspace for the rest of her life.

In Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project (2008) authors James, et al, explore the "ethical fault lines" that young people experience online and remind us, 

Mentors play an important role teaching young people to view themselves as participants who do not simply use media, but shape it.  This perspective is echoed by Jenkins et al. (2006) who consider the new media literacies to entail not just traditional literacy skills such as writing and research, but social and ethical skills as well. Youth need social skills to interact with the larger community and see themselves as part of it.  Furthermore, they need to be thoughtful and reflective about their actions. These key skills are not learned in a vacuum, and certainly cannot be assumed to accompany technical skills. Here the responsibility lies with adults (educators, policymakers, parents, etc.) to provide young people with optimal supports for good play and citizenship. (pp. 42-43)

So while I can’t begin to imagine any of the 6^th graders in Mr. Keller’s class ever having a similar lapse in judgment, it is important to remember that part of the job of being young is making mistakes. But, hopefully, if any of them are tempted to make a mistake that might break down a community they belong to, like this poor UCLA student did, they’ll think back to what they learned from their classroom community one Friday morning.

Reference

James, C., Davis, K., Flores, A., Francis, J.M., Pettingill, L., Rundle, M. & Gardner, H. (2008). Young people, ethics, and the new digital media: A synthesis from the Good Play Project (GoodWork® Project Report Series, Number 54).  Project Zero, Harvard School of Education. 

Using Stealth to Innovate Education

Seeing many of the scholars cited in my capstone at this weekend’s Digital Media & Learning Conference, not only did I feel like a 12-year old at a Justin Bieber concert, I also felt immensely excited about our Cyber Civics project at Journey School. This conference was brimming with innovative ideas supported by scholarly research on how digital media can transform public education, yet an underlying current of reality reminded us that it basically takes an act of God to get innovation into the classroom. One of the weekend’s popular tweet/retweets captured this sentiment best: Schools are seen as tangential in a lot of these sessions... they are the elephant in the room that DML needs to work with. Instead of waiting for divine intervention, we need to find another way in.

Concerns about online safety and privacy appear to be the biggest roadblock to inserting digital media into the classroom. Hearing Anne Collier say that “citizenship and media literacy need to be taught from the moment a connected device is put in a child’s hands” and that “kids need to be practicing digital citizenship, not in media labs, but in their core curriculums” (another popular tweet/retweet), it dawned on me that not only is this a developmentally-wise approach, it’s also a stealthy way to seep digital media into traditional education. I think danah boyd’s comment that “stranger danger rhetoric is dangerous” is right on the money. Instead of filling children with fear (there’s plenty of people who do that already), why not arm them with the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate the ethical decisions that loom in cyberspace? Perhaps when adults feel children are armed and ready, we will have more confidence in their ability to make wise digital choices. As Jason Ohler (2010) writes, “the best Internet filter available: the one between their ears”.

That’s why I love the curriculum that Common Sense Media offers. It’s pre-emptive. For the 28 children we are working with at Journey School this will be their first exposure to “technology” in the classroom. Additionally, because this is a Waldorf-inspired charter school, many of these students have had limited media exposure at home. A veritable tabula rasa, so to speak.  

Think of it like Driver’s Ed. Once students learn how to drive safely, we can put them in the driver’s seat and let them show us what tools work best to practice the new media literacy skills the Henry Jenkins and his team write about in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century . 

That’s an educational environment I’d like to see while my children are still young.

References

Common Sense Media (n.d.). Common sense media education programs. Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Weigel, M., & Robinson, A. J. (2006).Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Retrieved September, 12, 2010 from http://newmedialiteracies.org/. 

Ohler, J.B. (2010). Digital community, digital citizen. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Cyber Civics at Journey School

Having recently received an M.A. in Media Psychology and Social Change from UCLA/ Fielding Graduate University, I was eager to put my studies to work. Although I found every facet of media psychology absolutely fascinating, I was particularly drawn to media literacy (my Capstone topic: "New Media Literacy Education: A Developmental Approach"), primarily because I’m a parent of school-aged children. My daughters attend a Waldorf-inspired public charter school in Southern California  (well, actually, one just completed grades K-8). Those who know anything about Waldorf education probably know two things: 1) this pedagogy it terrific for developing creativity and critical thinking skills, 2) this pedagogy eschews the use of technology (often until 8th grade)… a curious dichotomy in the current educational environment. 

There is another fact about Waldorf-inspired schools, however, that is equally curious. Research (Hether, 2001) shows that Waldorf-educated students score significantly higher in moral reasoning than do students from traditional public high schools and a religiously affiliated high school. In fact, Waldorf educated students score in a range that that would be more commonly associated with college graduates.

Taking all of this into consideration, I decided to explore a possible way for Waldorf-inspired schools to integrate new media literacy into their curriculum. Since the times they are a changin', Waldorf-inspired schools in general are realizing that they must find a way to do this. So, having tackled this dilemma on paper, I am now enjoying the opportunity of putting my research to work by conducting a pilot program with the 6^th grade class at Journey School in Aliso Viejo, CA. We are calling it "Cyber Civics" as it takes place during what was this class' civics block.

We just completed lesson one yesterday. This lesson was adapted from Jason Ohler's book "Digital Community; Digital Citizen" (2010) which advocates for a “whole school approach to behavior that sets the entirety of being digitally active within an overall ethical and behavioral context” (p. 145). Thinking that these schools may already have a head start in this area, I figured his approach to new media literacy would be an ideal place to begin.

We spent our time together yesterday doing what Ohler suggests, becoming "De-Tech-Tives". The children pondered the positive and negative impacts of different technologies... from the television to eyeglasses, the printing press to hair dryers! The class broke into small working groups to discuss various impacts, imagined ways in which they would have improved the technology had they invented it themselves, and finally presented their "findings" to one another. Their homework assignment this week is to interview a parent or grandparent and ask what life was like before the mobile phone and how it has impacted their lives, for better and for worse.

Our plan is to adapt and piece together a curriculum, much it from Ohler’s book and also from the Digital Citizenship curriculum offered by Common Sense Media that is based on the digital ethics research of Dr. Howard Gardner and the GoodPlay Project at the Harvard School of Education. The overall goal of the Common Sense curriculum is to “empower young people to harness the power of the Internet and digital technology for learning, and for them to become safe, responsible, and respectful digital citizens” (Common Sense Media, 2010). 

That is our goal too. Stay tuned for photos and updates.

References

Common Sense Media (n.d.). Common sense media education programs. Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators

Hether, C. A. (2001).  The moral reasoning of high school seniors from diverse educational settings (Ph.D. dissertation, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center). Retrieved November 10, 2010, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text (Publication No. AAT 3044032).

Ohler, J.B. (2010). Digital community, digital citizen. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.