Personal use of the Internet

I’ve been thinking a lot about a line from Frances Jacobson’s book, I Found It on the Internet.  (My review.) She worries libraries suffer from comparison to the Internet in students’ minds when, “Libraries become places to look for information other people want you to find, not for information that you yourself find intrinsically compelling or valuable.”

On our state media association list, a Minnesota media specialist recently asked a question all have asked at one time or another:

     …what do you allow students to do on the Internet? I started the year (in a high school) with a pretty loose policy, then had to step it up to no games, videos, quizzes, chat rooms, email, discussion boards, IMing, etc. Now I am battling eBay and anime sites and I am tempted to squash Internet use for personal things altogether.
     However, I also had a student today looking at different religions and I get students researching signs of depression and serious topics that they should be able to learn about on their own. I need to find a balance between no personal use and free access.

Below is a snippet from a book chapter I wrote for Carol Simpson’s Ethics in School Librarianship: A Reader which summarized my answer to the above question:

The pursuit of information by students to meet personal needs should be encouraged in schools. Life-long learning strategies, practice in information evaluation, and experiences in building effective communication strategies are all reinforced when students use information technologies to meet personal goals.

As library media specialists and technologists, we need to lighten up a little in regard to what students are doing with the Internet in our libraries and classrooms as well. The Internet has vast resources that are not directly related to the curriculum but are of high interest to students at all grade levels. Information about sports, fashion, movies, games, celebrities, and music in bright and exciting formats abounds.

 The use of the Internet for class work of course must be given priority, but computer terminals should never sit empty. And there are some good reasons to allow students personal use of the Internet:

• It gives kids a chance to practice skills. After all that’s why we have “recreational” reading materials in our libraries. Do we really subscribe to Hot Rod or Seventeen because they’re used for research? If we want kids who can do an effective Internet search, read fluently, and love to learn, does it make much difference if they are learning by finding and reading webpages on the Civil War or Civil War games?
• It gives weight to the penalty of having Internet access taken away. The penalty for misuse of the Internet is often a suspension of Internet us privileges. As a student, if I were restricted to only school work uses of the Internet and had my Internet rights revoked, I’d pretty much say, “So what?” and wonder what I had to do to get my textbooks taken away as well. But if I am accustomed to using the Internet each morning before school to check on how my favorite sports team was faring, the loss of Internet access as a consequence of misbehavior would be far more serious.
• It makes the library media center a place kids want to be. Many of our students love the library for the simple reason that it is often the only place that allows them to read books of personal interest, work on projects that are meaningful, and explore interests that fall outside the curriculum in an atmosphere of relative freedom. Kids need a place like that, and we should provide it – even at the Internet terminals.

Granted, my thoughts on this are pretty idealistic. Recreational/personal use of the Interent in schools can and does cause problems. But we risk losing kids as library users, both now and as adults if we take a hard line approach. Unless you only want kids in your library when they HAVE to be there, it must be cool and meaningful place to be.

Where is the happy medium? Is there one? How would you answer the question 'What do you allow students to do on the Internet?"

Comments

[Guusje Moore]

I'm so glad to read someone who says it's "OK" to let kids play games and surf the net in the library. I have a group of good readers who have earned extra library priveledges. After lunch they spend their time at Nik.com and Disney.com and playing "Speed Racer". It doesn't bother me at all- after all many teachers spend lunch playing solitarie on their computer. What's the difference?

[T Spadaro]

It never occurred to me that using the Internet to research topics of personal interest was a problem. As long as any interested students has access to a computer for school work why not let others research what interest them? Really the only way to figure out if the anime sites etc were not for a project would be to constantly challenging students about why they are on a particular site and that doesn't feel right either.

[Wesley Fryer]

I think this entire line of discussion is highly colored by the fact that student access to the Internet is so limited today in schools generally. When all students and teachers are at 1:1 (everyone with a laptop, and that day is not far off) then I think this conversation will be quite different. It will continue to be appropriate to have times when students need to be "appropriately focused" and "on task" during a class assignment-- but when student access to the Internet is ubiquitous, the nature of this dialog will be different.

For now, in cases (which are many) where kids don't have pervasive access to the web, I think there should be times for specific limits on computer and web use, and other times where the access is more open. We DO want kids to acquire digital literacy skills, and as the digital divide research has shown, this is largely obtained today at home when kids are exploring on and communicating via the web based on their own choices. Kids should know what the expectations for computer use in a particular place and time are, and then held accountable to those expectations. But I don't think it is reasonable or desirable to NEVER allow them to have a broader level of "free choice" in terms of online activities. They need that. It is one of the six senses discussed by Daniel Pink in his excellent new book, "A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age." I think teachers everywhere should be reading this book and discussing its implications for teaching and learning. We need more time for creative and free play. Especially in cases where kids don't have those opportunities for technology at home, it is vital there are opportunities for them to digitally explore and play at school.

[Jeff Utecht]

Some of my favorite times in the lab are when big sports games are going on and the kids come in to check the scores. The best was about 3 years ago when the first cricket match between Pakistan and India took place. Students where watching/listening to play by play via the web. It was an exciting time.

I agree and like the analogy to books in the library. Information is information. Students get 30 minutes a week to check out books that interest them...why don't we give them 30 minutes a week on the internet to visit web site that interest them. In the end they are still reading what interest them and building reading skills. Thanks for the thought!

[barupa [Barbara Paciotti]]

I don't quite understand those who worry so much about kids using the Internet for personal interest? Do we worry when kids check out sports team books? drawing books? joke books? pet books? biographies of movie stars or musicians? the Guiness Book of Records? and oh, goodness, all that fiction!! Why the library is just full of books that can distract kids from that important "class work"! We must weed that stuff immediately lest kids have too much fun reading for personal gain!

I must be missing something here, because I feel the need to ask, "When did personal interest get taken out of class work?" I have long been a proponent of personalizing classroom learning and was captivated when I first learned the I-search process in library school--all my ideas and years of 'experimenting' pulled into a formal workable process! Adults want learning that is relevant (which is why teachers so often lament about useless staff development) and why would kids be any different? Their less-sophisticated and less-disciplined minds need relevance even more.

How much better to expand structured classroom learning experiences with the sharing of knowledge and insight gained through personal exploration of curriculum topics. Oh, excuse me, that would be higher-order thinking and depth vs breadth and all those things teachers would love to do if only we didn't have to teach to those state tests.

Hey, what if we put the tests on the computers and allowed kids to test through their subjects and then pursue individualized learning? But I guess some would worry about all those kids wasting so much time on "life-long learning" after they'd already tested through the requirements. (Why do people think life-long learning only refers to adulthood? Are kids not alive?)