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I missed this class so I am going to tell you guys a bit about my paper topic and sent you to do a couple of activities if you are interested. I’m writing my paper on the risks that children face in social networking sites (such as second life or neopets), specifically risks around sexual exposure and exploitation. I was trying to find out how serious the risks are for different age groups and what kind of prevention strategies are out there. I was quite shocked (although I should know better) that the research that exists and the programs that exist have two completely different focuses. Research suggests that teens are at the most risk because they willingly meet people offline and because they are at an age that they crave affection and often online offenders can give it to them. Unfortunately a number of prevention strategies have focused on convincing youth not to hand out person information and photos of themselves. Although both of these things are important, the problem is that they are not being taught that these people do not have their best interests at heart and are only going to exploit them. I found one Canadian program through cybertip.ca for teens, which focuses on teens respecting themselves, and they also have one for younger girls called “Zoe and Molly Online” that teaches them not to believe everything they are told online. I think that they are pretty good. If you check them out, let me know what you think.
www.cybertip.ca
I find it amazing that we have spent a considerable amount of time discussing the constructionist approach for learning for children in the classroom, but have said very little about how it applies to the teachers as well. The discussion that we had around using robotics in the classroom was a great example of this, and so was the debate that went with it. So many people understand how the teacher is part of the constructionist approach, but some people are still stuck with the idea that the teacher has to have all the answers. Really a teacher only needs to have enough answers or knowledge to make sure that the children in their classroom are not going to hurt themselves while doing the activity, everything they can learn along the way, just as the children are. I also found that we got too caught up on the concept of robotics to see the bigger picture. It’s not about building robots in your classroom, it’s about doing something new and something hands on, it’s about learning in a different way. Pick something the kids want to learn about (that is part of constructionism) and go with it, maybe as a teacher we feel safer when we know what we’re doing, but that does not do anything for the kids in the classroom. Besides once you’ve done it once, just think how well it will go for the next class that wants to do it. I think teachers (especially those in the field for a long time) have become so obsessed with control and order in the classroom that they lose site of the fact that children are individual, inquisitive, creative creatures, not just blank slates that need filled up. Think of anything that you know how to do really well. How did you learn it? Chances are it was hands on, and you screwed it up quite a few times before you got it right. Shouldn’t children get the chance to learn this way too?
Tonight’s discussion on what is too violent in a video game was interesting. There seems to be this line where we’re against it or for; like it’s an all or nothing kind of deal. I can understand how it’s alarming that a child is shooting bad guys on screen (or worse playing one) and as an adult we find this hard to see because there is a visual for us on the screen. Is this really different than a child playing outside and pretending to shoot someone using a stick? Sure it’s different for us watching, but is it different for them? In a sense we can see what they are thinking as it’s played out on screen, but is their experience of killing the bad guy in play scenarios all that different. One just requires more imagination than the other; in some cases the video game offers more realistic consequences to killing someone than their imagination alone.
I was very glad that someone brought up the difference between using the computer as a babysitter and actually using it with a child. Often in our discussions we treat the child and their interactions with the computer as isolated and universal activities, forgetting that there is a context in which that computer use takes place. A child can escape into a computer game for fun because their peers play, or they can escape into the game to avoid drunken parents screaming at one another. These factors are going to play a huge role into how and why children will use certain social media; some ways are going to be of more concern than others. This makes it really hard to judge any kind of social media because we are constantly looking at technology outside of the context in which it is used.
I got a feeling from people tonight that most people are kind of skeptical of the concept of edutainment. I think like most things these programs are great when used in moderation and when the context is being taken into consideration. I also think it’s incredibly important to allow children to play for the sake of playing. Children do not need to be actively learning at all times. When kids just play to play they learn, but that learning is usually social skills, play skills, or learning identity and self-knowledge. All of which should be given more credit than an academic approach usually does.
Okay so I got a Neopet. Honestly I quite like it, it’s fun and it has potential to teach children some valuable lessons when it comes to consumerism. I know there were a lot of concerns addressed in class, especially around the capitalist nature of the activity. I’m not denying that this is true, but I am wondering why it matters. Children see this in real life everyday and they are going to grow up into a world that is based on money. The sooner they learn the value of it and how it works the better. This ‘game’ is offering these kids very valuable skills when it comes to managing money. There is a bank where they can save money and collect interest, they can get jobs and earn money, they negotiate over the price of items, and can even open their own store and sell their items. I also found the game to be fairly gender neutral. Maybe I just didn’t see it, but it seemed not to focus on gender very much at all. What does everyone else think of that?
Media literacy is one of these concepts that I think we take for granted in a couple of ways. I think that many of us assume that we know exactly what the word means, and that we assume that because we are adults that we are media literate. Both of these assumptions make it difficult for children to be media literate, and I think that their media literacy is the most important. I would argue that children are more immersed in media (In this case I mean media of all kinds, computers, TV, ads, shopping, etc.) or more susceptible to it because they haven’t had the time to adjust to it as much as adults have. As adults, just being bombarded by media does not make us media literate either, a lot of us learn how to ignore it and not take it too seriously, but most adults don’t really look at it with the critical kind of standpoint that they should. We learn what to pay attention to and what to ignore, I think some people take for granted that children will learn to do that as well as they get older. I think if adults were to take a more critical approach to media then we would be more inclined to teach our children to be media literate at a young age. However, all of this assumes that we know exactly what it means to be media literate. Do we? Does the medium matter? I would argue that I am fairly TV and advertisement literate, but when it comes to computers and video games I’m not literate at all. This makes me think that I’m not going to be able to teach a child much. But maybe we don’t need to teach them everything, maybe we just need to teach them to think for themselves, and for a lot of parents and teachers that‘s a dangerous proposition.
Okay, I have to admit it. I might be a digital immigrant. I’m not so proud of this, I used to think I was pretty good with technology and the newest innovations, but really somewhere in all this traditional type of education I think I’ve gotten lost. I think that speaks to part of the problem with education as it stands now. You would think that a system dedicated to teaching young people would be more up to date with what young people need and use. I don’t really have any experience working in the school system, but from what I’ve heard from my colleagues is that they are pretty open to changing the system to be better for children, but somewhere along the line it doesn’t happen and the system stays the same. I think part of this may come from this digital generation gap, maybe despite our best efforts we don’t actually know what children need from technology, or what they can do with it. I think this is why this native/immigrant distinction is so interesting; it gives children credit for the technological ability they have and is trying to tell us we could learn something from them, which is exactly what I think we should be doing. I find myself yet again thinking about how we never give children credit for what they know and what they are able to learn on their own or in general. I can’t help but think that if I had kids things like this would be such a fantastic opportunity for them to teach me something and spend some time with them. Selfishly it would also be a sneaky way to find out some of what they do online without being that parent that pesters them about their online activities.
Tonight’s experience with Second Life may have been one of the most things I’ve done in class at Ryerson. It was really fun to see everyone working together and interacting in such a fun and excited way. I really want to give credit to Second Life, but I just can’t. That experience was fun because we were all physically sitting in the same room together, not because we were all online together. At first I was thinking, “wow Second Life is fun”, but I soon realized that it’s my classmates that are fun, not the program that we are using. Second Life is neat and has phenomenal programming, but had we been given something else creative, something that was hands on we would have had just as much.
The one thing that I did find fascinating was the process of creating my avatar. It’s the strangest feeling to be intently trying to narrow down what you look like into numbers in a drop-down menu. I haven’t been able to get anywhere close with my avatar, which makes me really wonder how well I know what I look like. Some people did such a good job that you could pretty much tell who they were. This experience gave me a lot to think about in terms of how we form our identity, and how technologies like this have great potential for changing the way we create our identities.
Tonight was full of some interesting comparisons. I blame my background in philosophy with my obsession with how people define things. The difference between green and published media was really neat. I was quite surprised that people think that amateur media is going to become more popular than the polished and professional media. I’m not sure that I can agree with that. As someone who often tries to get people to watch Canadian TV shows I can tell you that people tend to go for the polished stuff. Maybe the Canadian TV shows are not amateur enough to count. So I’m going to assume that there is a line in there somewhere that makes it so amateur it’s good. The real “homemade” media will have some attractiveness because of the fact that we look at it and say, oh cool I could do that too, I can make my own movies. But really how soon is that going to get old? Continuing with my TV theme, are television networks and advertisers really going to pay to put this stuff on TV? Or will it be that polished TV will dwindle down as we absorb ourselves in amateur works and quit watching the good stuff? I don’t know about you (although I can guess it’s unlikely), but I love Sci-Fi, but if the fans start making the shows and that’s the only thing that I can get, I’ll go back to reading novels. However, I have ot admit despite this reluctance on my part that looking at other aspects of the Sci-Fi world there are many places where amateur collective online media have done some pretty amazing things, like create entirely new genres of fiction and keep favourite characters or shows on the air. But somehow that fun in all of that is that they are not mainstream, they are not the norm. Somehow I feel that the effect will be lost if it becomes the usual thing to do.
Sorry Guys, I haven’t posted any of my blogs, so you’re going to get them all at once.
Although it may seem fairly straight forward I liked the discussion around the difference between a game and a tool. I was quick to assume that most of these digital tools were essentially games, I hadn’t really given any thought to the possibility that they weren’t. This got me thinking about how the definition of the word game is often used in philosophy to demonstrate how constructed knowledge is. If you really think about it there is no final all-encompassing description or definition that covers everything we consider a game. It is a term that we all take for granted that we know what we mean by it. In this case my idea had to change to account for something that I had previously not considered a game, of course I could also argue that they really are games based on changing my definition of game, but I’ll leave that to the philosophers.
I had a really interesting encounter on the subway after class that I thought was relevant to this course. I was sitting playing SIMS on my phone to entertain myself when this rather drunk man beside me starts asking me about what my phone can do. Since it’s new and I’m bored I tell him what I can about it. He seems pretty amazed and tells me about his nephews being better with the computer than any of the adults in the family. It got me thinking, if I really wanted to know what my phone was for and how to work all the fancy details I should hand it to a teenagers for about ten minutes, they would have all figured out and set-up to their liking. It almost seems like a waste, but then again if they made a basic adult-friendly phone they wouldn’t be able to charge that price for it and I’d still be bored on the subway!
