September 29 -
Prior to taking this course, I had never even considered the topic of Digital Citizenship. As I began week one, I realized how much I didn’t know that I didn’t know. As I wove my way through the course, I realized that my expectations of Digital Citizenship were the same expectations I have for Citizenship - basically, do what’s right.
As a former high school football coach, and now a college one, I am aware of the ease at which strangers can log on to various message boards or media comment boards to let us know what we did wrong during any given game. While we are adults, strangers can also be very cruel when it comes to criticizing our student athletes.
Watching the Monica Lewinsky TED Talk gave me a whole other perspective on the damage that can be done via the internet. The pain caused by strangers Tweeting or commenting their opinions world wide, with the click of a mouse, can cause long lasting damage to a person - even death.
What was my best work? I’m not really sure. What I am sure about is the realization I had that I could have a positive impact on my Lamar University athletes as good Digital Citizens. I had several “a ha” moments - the most important being the difference that can be made by being purposeful in our posts online. As my college athletes move towards graduation and begin looking for their first job, if they do it right, their digital footprint can help them.
As coaches, when we begin seriously looking at a prospective recruit, we do look at their digital footprints. When a person begins looking through prospective applications for a job opening, they Google the applicant. Like it or not, we are what we post, forever and ever. By preparing our student athletes now, they can begin to build a positive digital footprint that will impress any future recruiter or employer that might be considering them for a position. The realization that they control their image and digital reputation is huge.
The thing I learned in this course that will continue to help me grow as an educational leader is the realization of the huge responsibility we all have in producing successful graduates who are great Digital Citizens. While I believe this must begin at the earliest levels possible in elementary school, as college coaches, we must also do our part to instill the positive values of good digital citizenship.
There is so much negative posted online. Cyberbullying isn’t just in school - it can affect anyone with a keyboard. By realizing that, no matter what age or level of students we work with, it is all of our responsibility to do everything we can to build society up online, not break it down.
Other than the challenges I faced through mother nature with the closing of the Lamar campus and the loss of data through flooding, the only thing I would have changed about the course was training with some of the technology options we were given for assignments in Week 2, I believe. I was not familiar with any of the options, and had to do my best to try and learn on my own. Apparently, the link I used was not correct, so my assignment wasn’t graded. Having links to solid online training for each would be helpful for future students with no knowledge of particular apps. That being said, this was a great course, and I leave with a treasure trove of valuable information that will serve my student athletes well for years to come!
Lewinsky, M. (2015). The price of shame. TedTalk. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch??v=8yOWLm78U
September 22 -
As a 27 year old male, I was fortunate not to have experienced cyber bullying during my school years. However, as a high school football coach, and now a college football coach, I have experienced an adult form of it.. There is no end to the number of grown men, and women, who seem to take great pleasure in armchair quarterbacking and trash talking coaching decisions and player performance just minutes after a game on messaging boards. It has caused me to wonder if these people just woke up one morning and decided to be computer bullies, or if they have been doing it since they were teenagers.
Our society has moved from a time where bullies existed mostly in the playground, and with alert school staff could be monitored, to a time where there is literally no end to the ways a person can be bullied. During my high school years, I remember hearing about a high school drop out who had created a “versus” sight on Facebook at a school in our area. He would pick two girls from the school and post “who would win a fight between student 1 and student 2.” Students at the school would begin talking about it, and before you knew it, one of the girls would typically jump the other. I remember thinking that was a new low.
Today we have endless social media sites that allow anyone to target anyone openly or anonymously. With the push of the enter button on a smart phone, a student’s life can be changed in a split second. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know it starts with every adult that has a child in their life getting involved. Ask the right questions, pay attention to behavior changes, know their friends, monitor social media sites, and make sure schools are vigilant in all of the above.
As I pondered what I might do if I ran the world I would start with a couple of things. I would make compassion and empathy TEKS - I would include them in the curriculum in pre-K. I would find ways to incorporate the need to help others in every class. I would allow school counselors to actually counsel - not just coordinate testing. I would make sure there were staff members available to make sure every student was involved with some club or activity - a place where they “belong” - whether it be in fine arts, athletics, chess or reading clubs - a group for everyone.
Next, I would start a Public Service campaign on Television, radio, and every Social Media site available. I like the term that Lewinsky used, “Upstand,” urging people to use Social Media to build each other up, not tear each other down. There is certainly room for civil disagreement, not cruelty. At the rate we’re going, I can’t imagine where we’ll be in ten years if something doesn’t change.
Lewinsky, M. (2015) The price of shame. TedTalk. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_8y0WLm78U
September 15 -
As I reflect on the materials for the week’s assignments, as well as the assignments, I am reminded of just how much technology has impacted education in a relatively short amount of time. Before the introduction of technology, when students completed research reports, and teachers created lesson plans, they were limited basically to the World Book Encyclopedia, newspapers and magazines - all very easy to recognize and cite. Today, we have the entire world literally in the palms of our hands. Students and educators can access published written research, informative videos, and music and movie clips for any kind of academic project or activity they could ever be expected to produce.
While I was aware of the need to cite particular works when used in written reports and research, I was honestly not aware of the very specific requirements when choosing to include those materials for educational use. I had not idea that there were specific rules for using an entire work, portions of work, articles, stories and excerpts, for instance. I wonder how many educators really know the rules, and more importantly, how many of the rules are violated daily. It would seem to me that a much larger portion of staff development be spent on topics like this.
YouTube videos and other videos come with their own sets of requirements. Students are allowed to use parts of “lawfully acquired copyright works” in their own projects, but it can only be the lesser of 10% or 3 minutes. That alone would be a challenge for a junior high student, but I guess it would cover teaching across the curriculum!
Finally, copyright protection for artists in movies and music is allowed specifically for integration into projects. If it’s not hard enough for a teacher to grade projects, now they have to make sure that any musical composition used is less than 30 seconds per composition. I’m going to assume that teachers in CATE clustered multi-media courses spend as much time on legalities as science teachers spend on safety, but it is difficult to imagine that this can be well monitored with a total class load of 30 per class in 6 classes.
Honestly, the large amount of information we have seen this week informing those who use copyrighted material in all forms is a bit overwhelming. The responsibility is huge, as the consequences are expensive. This is the kind of training that educators really need in pre-year staff development - I hope all districts are providing it!
September 8 -
As college football coaches, we are expected to maintain an active and positive social presence through Twitter, as well as other popular social media sites. Our success depends upon the recruiting of high school football players who are often influenced by social media. As I Googled myself to verify my digital footprint, I was glad to see that mine was positive. I expected it to be, but I am also aware of how rare that can be in this day and age. I realized that even though I work with college students who are over 18, I still have a responsibility to teach digital citizenship. Our students still need to be reminded to “think before they post.” They also need to realize the value of marketing themselves in a positive light, as they will be looking for jobs in a very short time.
I was raised to think before I posted anything online and to ask myself, “Is this okay for your Mom or Pastor to see?” While I do have a Facebook and Instagram account, the bulk of my posting is on Twitter, as it is actually an expectation of my job. Because of that, my postings are always related to college football and positive aspects of our program. My postings are intentional and positive, as I want people to look at Lamar University in a good light, as the success of our program is dependent on the success of our recruiting - we need to look good to high school coaches and high school players.
As a college football coach, I model this to my players. I stress to them that in a very short time, they will be leaving Lamar University with a degree, ready to search for a career. Employers will be Googling them, and they will be judged on posts on all formats. As I read over the materials in this section and watch the videos, I am going to begin stressing to my athletes that they start to use social media to advertise themselves to future employers. If you know you will be searched, you have the opportunity to make it positive, to use it for positive advertisement.
We hear so much about the negative aspects and the dangers of the internet, but we don’t stress and focus on the positive ones as it pertains to our digital footprints. Maybe by modeling and stressing positives, we can begin to decrease the negatives.
September 1 -
While the concept of Digital Citizenship wasn’t new to me, the actual term was. As an adult, and someone who works with college undergraduates, the past week’s material caused me to take a look at the concept in a completely different way. Our current generation of students has basically lived their entire life with access to all that the world has to offer, both good and bad, right in the palm of their hand. With that accessibility, we have to seriously consider our responsibility as educators to prepare them to use it wisely in order to keep them with respect, literate and safe from harm, both physical and emotional (Ribble, 2015).
In our current environment, I believe that we can look at Digital Citizenship and Citizenship synonymously. My student athletes are very rarely away from their mobile devices. During my years working with high school athletes, I was always bothered by the number of disagreements and fights that were instigated online. As a college coach here at Lamar, there are endless negative comments made on message boards that affect our athletes. Most of these comments are made anonymously. Sadly, these issues seem to be prevalent throughout our society - people don’t seem to think anything about posting negative, mean things about anyone. I envision someone sitting in their parent’s basement behind a keyboard just taking their problems out on innocent people online. I could go on and on about this topic but, bottom line, until the pendulum swings back from texting and typing to personal conversations, I am afraid they are one and the same.
As far as literacy, the things available to students online, and the ways that information can be shared grows daily. Currently, Twitter and Instagram seem to be the most widely used, but the next thing is right around the corner. We need to continue to be aware and mindful of what these “next things” are so we can be better prepared to educate our students on the good and the bad.
Safety goes without saying. There are those online who want to steal your money, and those that want to do you harm. Working with 18 to 22 year old college athletes, internet “hook ups” and dating are very popular. The endless dangers that put our youth at risk continue to grow on the internet. Knowing that our students are interacting with people that they don’t know, that may or may not be who they are purporting to be, can actually put them in a life or death situation. From meeting a stranger for a date, to meeting someone purporting to be selling a car for cash, waiting for the buyer to come with money in hand.
I think of the internet as this generation’s National Enquirer - if it’s on the internet, it must be true. We need to do a much better job at every level of preparing our students to be responsible digital citizens. To much is at stake, and the issue is only going to get bigger. It is all of our responsibility to prepare the next generation to be good Digital Citizens.
Ribble, M. (2015). Digital citizenship in schools (3rd ed.). Eugene, OR: International Society of Technology in Education.