Format bigotry

These kind of questions drive me bonkers:

• Should we ban games from our library?
• Should block social networking sites in our building?
• Should kids be allowed to access to YouTube in our district?

These questions make about as much sense as asking:

• Should we be ban books from our libraries?
• Should we allow kids to have pencils and paper in our building?
• Should kids be allowed to watch DVDs in our district?

Why, when thinking about what we give kids access to, do adults so often start with format as opposed to the content of that format?

The sense of banning a website based on the information's container (game, social networking site, wiki, blog, etc.) is as logical as saying, "Since Penthouse is published in a magazine format, we cannot allow students to bring magazines to school."

For some reason I've been asked a lot lately about gaming in school. I don't know that much about games and haven't been a big computer game player since Loderunner for the Apple IIe. But of course that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion (as with so many topics):

Let’s be clear that there are games and there are games -- just like there are movies and there are movies; there are books and there are books. Games vary widely in type -- from first person shoot em’ ups to skill attainment tutors with complex management programs. Games vary in taste, rating, maturity level, and even factual accuracy.

The question shouldn’t be “Do we permit students to play games?” but “Which games should we allow our students to play?" Game On! October 2007 Tech Proof column on the Education World website

Why are we as adults so willing to ban resources based on their format instead of their content? Quicker, I suppose. Decisive. New formats are always a little suspicious. The inability to distinguish between medium and message?

Forming an opinion of a website based on its format makes about as much sense as forming an opinion about a person based on his ethnicity. We've got to get beyond format bigotry.

Kids have.

Provocative statements from Remix

I am happily reading Lawrence Lessig's newest book, Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. I'm about a quarter of the way through it (Location 1271 on my Kindle to be exact), generously "clipping" as I go along. Here are a few of Lessig's many statements that challenged me:

Now I worry about the effect this war [on copyright piracy] is having upon our kids. What is this war doing to them? Whom is it making them? How is it changing how they think about normal, right-thinking behavior?

What does it mean to a society when a whole generation is raised as criminals?

Even the good become pirates in a world where the rules seem absurd.

The freedom to quote, and to build upon, the words of others is taken for granted by everyone who writes.

Whether justified or not, the norms governing these forms of expression [music and video] are far more restrictive than the norms governing text.

But what happens when writing with film (or music, or images, or every other form of “professional speech” from the twentieth century) becomes as democratic as writing with text?

Text is today’s Latin. It is through text that we elites communicate (look at you, reading this book). For the masses, however, most information is gathered through other forms of media: TV, film, music, and music video. These forms of “writing” are the vernacular of today. They are the kinds of "writing" that matters most to most.

This last comment looks like pretty good ammo for my "post-literate society" observations!

As always, these sorts of statements are best read in context. Pirate it, steal it, buy it, borrow it, or check it out from your library. What options!

Facebook - an educational resource?

"Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law". Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe

Every website shall remain unblocked until proven to be "harmful to minors."
The Blue Skunk

I'm going to visit with our elementary principals' group in a couple weeks. I've (ominously) been asked to discuss Facebook  with them. One never knows the genesis of such a request, but it may center around why our district doesn't block such sites.

Or maybe it is purely academic curiosity. I hope so, but I think I will be prepared just in case.

I don't much care one way or the other if kids have access to Facebook itself at school. I am a very occasional and reluctant user of the service. I just don't get the appeal. (Although now that I am up to 60 friends, I may consider running for public office.) Its value on the surface seems recreational in nature and it's probably a nuisance trying to keep kids from using it.

But I do care that we give all Internet resources due process, just as we would give due process to any library or text book before before removing it from our schools.

For educators who don't use Facebook, it needs to placed in some kind of context beyond the scare stories on Dateline. Here are some things I think my principals ought to know about these kinds of social networking sites:

1. How and why people use sites like Facebook. I think I will show the short Common Craft video Social Networking in Plain English and share the Educause two-page document 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook II.

2. That there may be Informational value to having access to Facebook, and that really, we should be blocking based on content, not format. Along with both Obama and McCain, one of our favorite sons, a first year US Representative, uses Facebook to connect with his constituents:

Shouldn't students have access to this information?

3. Facebook is but a single manifestation of social networking, a means of communication and recreation that today's children are growing up with. Club Penguin and Webkinz are popular social networking sites for the pre-school set. Facebook is replacing e-mail as a preferred method of communication. Even educational gaming is becoming more social, as evidenced by new and emerging products like vMathLive.

4. Schools DO need to teach safety and privacy with all social networking tools. If we don't, who will? Educators need to know that privacy levels can be set on most sites and children need to know how to do this as well.

5. Safety issues need to be put in perspective by sharing reputable information resources such as Predators & cyberbullies: Reality check by Larry Magid & Anne Collier at ConnectSafely.org. report:

"we do not have a single case related to MySpace where someone has been abducted." - social media researcher danah boyd

Recommend the books MySpace Unraveled and Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to USe the Internet Safely and Responsibily. Emphasize that "reputation destruction" and cyberbullying are more likely hazards than predation.

Show:

and 

6. It's OK for individual buildings, libraries and classrooms to set their own rules on what is considered "productive" use of school time and technology. But a district-wide block needs to considered by a range of stakeholders after study, not as a knee-jerk response to any single request.

OK, readers. What would you do at a command performance of administrators asking for a discussion about Facebook? Help me out here...

  I just remembered that I addressed this issue a couple years ago, See also Seven Things All Adults Should Know About MySpace at Education World. Duh.