Week 8 Assignment 1 The Future of Educational Technology

What I like best about blogging and tracking other blogs is being able to easily compare findings. This comes through best in digital citizenship, ethics, and netiquette.  Compared to what I found, my colleagues’ sites are interactive and relevant to the younger audience.  iSafe may advertise a young audience of students who have “bought in” with the help of their educators for sure.    

However after it is all said and done if I were a youth and introduced to these optional sites to learn more about digital etiquette, I would certainly more internally motivated to interact with these sites.  When internal motivation is triggered, learning is a bonus byproduct.

For instance, MTV came up with its own method to reach youth to young adults. I keep coming back to Izlem’s discovery of A Thin Line.  I am not certain how he found it as it was difficult for me to locate such websites, but I appreciate its ability to use notoriety.  I am not a big fan of MTV programing, however I appreciate that it is taking a stance for the safety of our youth.  As Izlem describes: “A Thin Line (http://www.athinline.org/), which aims at teaching young adult learners how to become digital citizens and Digital Passport (http://digitalpassport.org), which is a tool for educators to prepare their learners to become good digital citizens” (2012).  He continues by detailing its many facets that learners can explore from taking a stand, to empowering others, to accessing resources for information or if they have been a victim. I saw this second site a couple of times posted by other peers.  It is Brainpop.com. I revisited this site per William Caruso’s prompting and again learned something new called “trolls” who cruse the internet causing “flamewars”.  William describes Brainpop as: “A great technology or resource for the idea of Digital Etiquette is a movie and subsequent activities on Brain Pop (http://www.brainpop.com/technology/computersandinternet/digitaletiquette/)” (2012). Caruso points out that it is geared towards the youth, but I do appreciate it’s simplistic cartoon method to get its point across. Not to mention it has a variety of movies over different topics and a educator link, a junior link, and a regular member link.  I believe this would be the perfect introduction to even adult learners.  With the classes I consider moving into it fits the atmosphere.  I plan to work in an introductory level of learner.  Therefore, as I introduce adult students to the digital world this site could place all on a basic level and we could advance from there.  I could easily assign learners to take a quick tour and write a page on a resource regarding the dangers of digital citizenship and then write a page on any other resource of their choice so as to become familiar with that they can reference at another time.  As far as AThinLine, my assignment purpose would be similar however the method would be to take some action and get involved.  I imagine requesting students to either choose to add their voice in taking a stand in one of the offered areas or writing a one to two page script of what they would say if they were to post a video on “Your Story”.   Either way I my goal would be to spread the word about the power of cyber bullying and the best way to combat it.  As a dad of a 10 year old daughter, and certain that the adult learners may have children of their own, I could do my part educate and advocate for creating responsible digital citizenship learners who could grow responsible learners in their own homes.  

It appears we are losing moral ground each day.  My view is that this could originate from systemic failures.  It is similar to what I learned as a trainer with the State Attorney General’s Office, working in domestic violence. It was hard for men to take responsibility for their actions because they had gone so long without having to take responsibility.  It may not have been their fault, but it was now their responsibility.

The same can be said with youth and digital citizenship.  Our responsibility is to introduce their self-policing before cyber-bullying leads to further acts of aggression such as we have seen with school retaliatory shootings.  Morality and responsibility cannot be legislated or taught, it must be caught.   

References:

Caruso, W. (2012, December 13). Digital citizenship, ethics, and netiquette [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://carusoeducationtechnologies.blogspot.com/2012/12/digital-citizenship-ethics-and.html

Izlem, A. (2012, December 13). Digital citizenship, ethics, and netiquette [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://izlema.blogspot.com/2012/12/digital-citizenship-ethics-and.html