Social Networks and Socialising
The other day, as I drove home I listen to the local Radio News station interviewing their regular tech expert – Tech Tuesday on News Talk ZB.
The topic of conversation came around to the usual suspects of youth today and socialising. The resident DJ and expert had a lively discourse on how the kids of today are anti social, done get out and do things and are at risk from predators from their online habits. They reminised back to the days when the kids went out into the street and played with their neighbours and were “social”.
Today’s kids are as social or more social, they live in a world of collaboration and communication,they collaborate and communicate with a level of ease that leaves many of the “older” generations dumbstruck. They do play, socialise and interact in the real world with their peers. But they are not limited to the same kids on the same street or playground, they are not limited by their peer group at school or in their neighbourhood to provide the breadth of their social contact.
Rather, the connected student of today has a contact circle that spans the planet. They have meaningful interactions via the medium of social networks, virtual worlds and games with a range of cultures that they would never encounter in their nieghbourhood or in many cases schools. At a time when we need to embrace internationalism, to understand and accept different cultures and beliefs the last thing we need is reduce the circle of contact.
How many people can you play with in your street? School? or neighbourhood?
As to predators, yes they exist in the virtual and the real world. We can not protect our children by wrapping them in cotton wool either virtually or really. Eventually they will be outside of the bounds of our protect and woefully ill prepared. Rather we need to educate them, establish dialogue that is open, frank and honest about the risks; build a relationship of trust where they are comfortable talking about these events if they should occur AND teach them how to avoid ever getting into at risk positions.
We can’t be there all the time, we need to teach our students and children how to behave in a safe and appropriate manner.
For us as parent or teachers we need to apply the i3 rule. Parents and teachers need to be….
- Interested – ask them what they are doing and who they are doing it with.
- Informed – understand about what social networks are, what the games are, what are the benefits and what are the risks.
- Involved – be involved in the students (or child’s) use of technology, keep them insight and be there.
Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion
March 20th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I completely agree, and love the 3i rule. I had a parent come in to see me a few weeks back who was freaked out because they had heard the class was using a blog. I’m not sure how much they’d heard about blogs prior to this, but whatever it was had got mixed up with lots of stories about internet predators. And so they insisted that their daughter not use the internet at all! Zilch! Fortunately we were able to use the opportunity to tell them what we were really doing and reassure them that their daughter’s personal information would not be splashed across the internet.
We have beach safety and road safety education, but you never hear of a parent saying they don’t want their kid to have anything to do with roads at all. There’s a certain irrationality that comes into play with the internet, especially when the children are ‘digital natives’ and the parents are not even ‘digital immigrants’. We almost need to educate parents themselves about the internet and safe use, and to show them that, as you say, it actually opens the world up to them like nothing else. As long as they get out for the odd wharf jump as well from time to time!
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March 21st, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Being interested, informed and involved sounds fantastic until we look at the lives of many of our students and their families. Through the Digital Education Revolution, our schools are overflowing with technology but sadly, we are lagging way behind in bringing teachers up to speed and developing practices for students that will make effective use of all this technology. Parents also appear to have been left behind in this issue. Our young people are extremely well connected and with a 15yr old son, I have a first hand view of how they operate. I know intimately how Messenger takes priority over homework and assignments that have been handed out weeks prior are suddenly tackled the night before. It is very much a boy thing and one I dont see a ready answer to unfortunately. I read with interest the positive view Andrew adopts toward young people in this highly connected and technological world but I see a disturbing aspect in all of this and that is the inability of many of the students I work with to connect their learning to the world beyond school. The lack of connection with their subjects is cause for great concern and working in a practical subject, I find it extremely concerning when the opportunity to work with their hands with minimal written work still doesn’t engage or excite them. I saw a statement recently that suggested we would see a generation of unemployable teenagers and that should concern everyone. With so much uncertainty in the world, I do wonder how our young people will manage and if they are as well connected and adjusted as Andrew believes, they might find a way to survive what looks like being a very difficult period.
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April 1st, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Andrew … I found this post really interesting and particularly appreciated the i3 rule. You have raised some excellent points, and offered a practical solution to the idea of internet awareness. As a Gr 5 teacher, I will adopt some of your ideas for my daily classroom use.
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April 15th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
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April 22nd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
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