Digital Citizen – Omegle
From the start this site concerns me. Omegle is a chat site that carries the banner “Talk to strangers”. Essentially you go to the site, start a chat and are randomly connected to a stranger. The stranger is anonymous (as are you) and the conversation is unmoderated. If the conversation gets bad you disconnect. Anecdotally students have told me that disconnecting, because of weird conversations, is a regular, actually very regular thing.
As an educator and as a parent this site is a great big concern. We try to teach our students the basic tenets of Digital Citizenship – respecting and protecting yourself. This site by its very nature presents places users at risk. And given the feedback from the students the conversations got “weird”.
Links:
- http://omegle.com/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omegle
Six tenets of Digital Citizenship
- Respect Yourself. I will show respect for myself through my actions. I will select online names that are appropriate, I will consider the information and images that I post online. I will consider what personal information about my life, experiences, experimentation or relationships I post. I will not be obscene.
- Protect Yourself. I will ensure that the information, images and materials I post online will not put me at risk. I will not publish my personal details, contact details or a schedule of my activities. I will report any attacks or inappropriate behaviour directed at me. I will protect passwords, accounts and resources.
- Respect Others. I will show respect to others. I will not use electronic mediums to flame, bully, harass or stalk other people. I will show respect for other people in my choice of websites, I will not visit sites that are degrading, pornographic, racist or inappropriate. I will not abuse my rights of access and I will not enter other people’s private spaces or areas.
- Protect Others. I will protect others by reporting abuse, not forwarding inappropriate materials or communications; and not visiting sites that are degrading, pornographic, racist or inappropriate.
- Respect Intellectual property. I will request permission to use resources. I will suitably cite any and all use of websites, books, media etc. I will validate information. I will use and abide by the fair use rules.
- Protect Intellectual Property. I will request to use the software and media others produce. I will use free and open source alternatives rather than pirating software. I will purchase, license and register all software. I will purchase my music and media, and refrain from distributing these in a manner that violates their licenses. I will act with integrity.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Andrew, have you thought about how trust and reputation is a core component of social gaming? In fact most of the ’skills’ we talk about as being desirable, can be learned via gaming – and in most student’s cases probably are. Yet they are omitted visibly from much of the edublogger discourses in favour of text, sound, video, image tools – which ironically are holistic in gaming. Talking to strangers is how I met my wife.
[Reply]
andrewch Reply:
July 20th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Hi Dean
Reputation and trust are, as you have noted, key components of social gaming. Without these most MMORPGs fall apart. They are jealously guarded by players. And you are correct that this is probably not included directly within the Digital citizen framework. Its is implied. I would see reputation in with “respecting yourself” and trust fits across all categories whether it is presenting oneself as trust worthy or trust in your relationships with others. All trust fits into validating information sources. Interesting – worth pondering some more.
As educators, we do overlook the significence of gaming. I would imagine that because few of us use games as a core component of our teaching, its easy to ignore/overlook. If we are educating the the whole person then this is something that needs to be considered. That is not to say, set down a set of rules and abide by them, rather that the students are aware of the public environment they are in.
We all talk to strangers, because everyone is a stranger initally. Omegle is a site that actively promotes this (which in itself is not a bad thing) but the feedback I have heard and the reports I have seen lead me to question its value and worth. If there was moderation, who knows.
thanks Dean, as alway you raise interesting questions
A
[Reply]