It finally happened; in a passing conversation my principal mentioned Facebook and one of our students. Curious I jumped onto my account typed in the name and there it was; his profile for the whole world to see. No protection, no privacy, but all the information you could want about this 10 year old kid. I noticed he had more than 800 friends and so I scrolled through and sure enough about 8 more of our 5th graders showed up and even some 4th and 3rd graders. Yes, I felt like a creepy stalker but also I couldn't help but think why hadn't anyone taught them about their privacy settings? I shouldn't be able to see his pictures, his walls, his friends
This post is not to debate the merits of Facebook. I think a lot of 5th graders are on there, whether they should be or not. It is to discuss how we are not able to teach them the safety lessons they need when we stick our head in the sand and pretend they are not. I have written about it before and it continues to irk me. As a school we do internet safety, sure, which mainly teaches the kids how scary the Internet is, instead of devoting our time to teaching them how to use the internet properly.
Now some may argue that it really is the job of a parent, but with Facebook changing its privacy policy more times than I change shoes, can you blame them if they are as confused as their kids? So I propose that we as teachers figure out a way to teach the safety and proper privacy policy of Facebook. Maybe not in younger grades than 5th although my searching found 8 year olds on there, but there needs to be some sort of open discussion. There needs to be some sort of acknowledgement that these young kids are on there and that we need to teach them to do it right.
I have used Edmodo with my students and my students are probably more internet savvy than most other 4th or 5th graders. And while I like Edmodo one drawback is that my students don't have control over their own settings. I set it all up so that they are protected. I decide what they can post and who they can post to. Edmodo is a step yes, but it is not enough simply because it is not the wide-open world of Facebook We don't expect kids to learn how to drive by keeping them on a bumper-padded closed course either? Instead, we take them into the real world and navigate it with them, we need to do that with Facebook. Facebook comes with such immense responsibility; why are we skirting ours when it comes to teaching safety?
This post is not to debate the merits of Facebook. I think a lot of 5th graders are on there, whether they should be or not. It is to discuss how we are not able to teach them the safety lessons they need when we stick our head in the sand and pretend they are not. I have written about it before and it continues to irk me. As a school we do internet safety, sure, which mainly teaches the kids how scary the Internet is, instead of devoting our time to teaching them how to use the internet properly.
Now some may argue that it really is the job of a parent, but with Facebook changing its privacy policy more times than I change shoes, can you blame them if they are as confused as their kids? So I propose that we as teachers figure out a way to teach the safety and proper privacy policy of Facebook. Maybe not in younger grades than 5th although my searching found 8 year olds on there, but there needs to be some sort of open discussion. There needs to be some sort of acknowledgement that these young kids are on there and that we need to teach them to do it right.
I have used Edmodo with my students and my students are probably more internet savvy than most other 4th or 5th graders. And while I like Edmodo one drawback is that my students don't have control over their own settings. I set it all up so that they are protected. I decide what they can post and who they can post to. Edmodo is a step yes, but it is not enough simply because it is not the wide-open world of Facebook We don't expect kids to learn how to drive by keeping them on a bumper-padded closed course either? Instead, we take them into the real world and navigate it with them, we need to do that with Facebook. Facebook comes with such immense responsibility; why are we skirting ours when it comes to teaching safety?
