Facebook safety for kids and their parents

I recently bowed to the inevitable and allowed my elder son to set up a Facebook account. Given the issues that accompany Facebook, I wasn’t thrilled about it, but as I do a lot of promotion of the value of social networks in learning, it really was time to practise what I preach.

My son has been on Facebook for 3 months. He has over 200 friends. I have been on Facebook for almost 5 years, and I have 42 friends (and of these, about 10 are really active on Facebook.) One of the conditions for allowing my son to have a Facebook account was that I would be one of his friends, so that I could see what was going on, and over the last three months I’d say everything I’ve seen on his account has been harmless (although I was reminded of the dangers of those '25 things you didn't know about me' questionnaires, which often prompt people to reveal a lot of the information people typically use as password security: mother's maiden name, first pet, etc.) In fact, he has friended an Australian kid who is very active in the scootering community on Youtube, and who (at the age of 12) creates amazingly well-crafted movies around scootering themes. This has inspired my son to find out more about photography, video editing, and movie making, so there is clearly value to be found in the social networks.

However, there is a flipside to all this. As part of one of my regular checks of his online activity (and as long as I pay the bills and take legal responsibility, I will monitor what he does online) I clicked into the Facebook accounts of some of his friends. Remembering that most of these kids are younger than the required 13 years for an account, I was really disturbed by what I saw on some of their pages. I browsed about 20 of his friends’ pages, and of these, only one page was set to private… all the rest were visible, if not to public, then at least to friends of friends. This increases the risks of cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying enormously. The content of many of these pages was equally disturbing, and showed very clearly that these kids have no understanding of the permanence of comments online, appropriate tone, and the risks associated with posting pictures of themselves. Of course, they are kids… we shouldn’t expect them to have a proper grasp of these issues. But their parents and teachers should. Which begs the question: how are we educating parents to be parents of 21st century students? Are we educating them at all? It’s all very well highlighting the risks of cyberstalking and online predators, but we can’t keep our kids offline, so we parents need to know how to keep our kids safe, and to be as active in supervising our tweens online as we were when we held their toddler-age hands while crossing the road.

I raised this issue with my son’s teacher, and offered to be involved in developing an education programme for parents. Her reply to me, see below, gives me great hope. I particularly like the way she is involving the kids in analysing the problem and looking for solutions: by making it their responsibility I am certain she is increasing her chances of success, and she is actively engaging the students in 21st century literacy skills at the same time.

…I have discussed with the class the use of FaceBook and [your son] brought up a valid point regarding FaceBook and how it is used at school. He and another student are now in the process of writing to the principal to voice their opinions and follow up with a solution to what they believe is an issue that needs to be resolved.

I agree with your concerns and have checked Facebook pages of students in the class to ensure that they have secure pages. However, as you know this is only as good as the security of their friends.

Earlier in the year we spoke about the kinds of comments/posts that people put on Facebook and yesterday we revisited those as well as talking about what information they should (actually should not) give/make available. We will revisit this a few more times throughout the year…

Hats off to you, Miss Lynch!

21st century skills from a 21st century classroom

A year ago I blogged about 21st century literacy skills, asking whether we were still using definitions of literacy that are out of sync with our new, technological world. Since then, I have had the privilege of watching my son negotiate his first year of intermediate school in a laptop class. Make no mistake, he is in an innovative and challenging school, and observing his learning, both planned and accidental, has been fascinating, but it leaves me with more questions than answers.

I have no doubt that the experience of being connected to his peers on a more or less continuous basis has enabled him to develop relationships. The school uses Adium as the social networking tool (students are banned from accessing Facebook at school or on their school laptops) and my son seems to spend an inordinate amount of time chatting online. So in that way, I suppose he is improving his skill at building relationships with others. Or is he? When I browse his chat history (and I do, because I'm a parent and I believe that is my responsibility) I am overwhelmed (and relieved, I admit) by the superficiality of the communications that take place. Is a relationship based on a dialogue such as:

son: wuu2

friend: nm u

son: nm. brb

friend: k kewl - g2g, etc., etc. (find translations here) really a valuable or meaningful relationship? Certainly, it is cross-cultural - in fact it is an entire sub-culture of its own and it gives me a headache to read it, but how far is it going towards that wonderful goal of solving problems collaboratively? Certainly he and his friends are very proficient in the use of these tools, but for what purpose? nm?

There have also been some tough lessons for him this year around the ethical responsibilities of the online environment. These lessons have been the products of chance rather than planned, and have probably been much more powerful as a result. Learning about the dangers of posting criticisms and gossiping online is invaluable, but the lessons can only be taught if there is someone monitoring the discussions. More often than not, there is no one. And so instead of students being helped to address those ethical considerations, bad, even dangerous, habits are entrenched.

Having said all that, I have recently been watching my son engage with his first virtual world, Minecraft. This challenges him on a whole range of levels. He interacts with a group of friends all building in the same world, he has to share ideas and collaborate online, and, he tells me, all in a context that has taught him all about architecture! It certainly has engaged his interest and his creativity, and would devour hours of his time if allowed. And it has provided him with a place to apply other forms of learning. Yesterday we watched some of the 9/11 memorial coverage. Somehow, despite living almost his entire life in the post 9/11 world, he'd never really been aware of the specifics of that day, and it made for some sombre conversation. What has interested me however is the outcome of that conversation: his new build in Minecraft is a tower that will be more resistant to terrorism. Sad, but a really concrete example of engaging with the responsibilities of the new and complex environments we live in.

Moving beyond traditional assessment

Vasi Doncheva recently tweeted a link to Tony Bates' blog which mentioned this article about online assessment. (Attributions can be so complicated!) In the article, author Judith Boettcher makes the point that online assessments offer numerous opportunities for engaging, informative assessments. She asks the question, 'Why is the traditional paper so prevalent in assessment, and how can we move beyond it to alternative evidence of student learning?'


In his blog post about the article, Tony Bates comments that Boettcher's article 'has major implications for course design. It suggests that online technologies allow for different learning outcomes and objectives, rather than merely mirroring the learning objectives set for classroom teaching. Indeed, thinking of how best to assess ’21st century skills’ should be an integral part of decision-making around course content, forms of delivery, and choice of technology.

How often do we even consider the 21st century skills in our course design? I fear that, all too often, we continue to design courses for 21st century learners using 20th (or, if Ken Robinson is to be believed, 18th) century paradigms. I was recently asked why I was spending time building an interactive online content package when our students already had a textbook. The question was asked sincerely, and out of a desire to reduce staff workloads, but it made me wonder if, in the often very traditional world of tertiary institutions, we are missing the boat by not focussing our energies as much on educating the decision makers as we do on educating the students. As Judith Boettcher indicates, we may spend all the time in the world creating engaging online resources for students, but if we continue to resort to the traditional assessment forms of papers and exams, we may miss opportunities to identify 'real understanding and growth' in our students.

Are instructional designers, content developers and e-learning specialists brought too late in the course design process, when key elements such as assessments are already decided, approved and cast in stone. How we go about bringing a transformation in assessments at tertiary level that reflects the transformation in learning, literacy and the information-soaked world in which we live? I'm not sure that I have the answers to this... I hope that someone out there does!