Keeping Students Safe

Dennen’s draft article provided a clear list of issues and solutions for the use of social media in the classroom. The passage on safety, particularly in the K-12 setting, made me wonder if I would have used social media when I was a high school health teacher. I don’t think I ever would have beyond it being used as a research tool. I do not think the school board would have supported me friending any of my students nor would they have been comfortable with a private group for the class. I did consider creating a FB group at one point, but I quickly realized how bad that could turn out for me. I would have to have had the approval of the administration so that at least one of them would have access to the account to monitor what was being discussed. Seeking this approval would have likely got the idea shut down, but going behind their backs would have posed even bigger problems had a complaint or issue come out of the group. I did ask students to use their own devices from time to time. Our administration encouraged us to make the student’s constant engagement with their phones to our advantage. I remember three lessons that they used their cell phones to look up information. Once was to find athletes who had suffered from a mental disorder, once to find athletes who had suffered abuse and a last time to explore the Truth.com website (an anti-cigarette use organization). Thinking back on it, this had the potential to cause them issues at home if their parents monitored their phone usage. It may have caused concern or been deemed inappropriate by their parents, depending on the content of the website. Not only did I have to be aware of the data usage students were incurring, I also had to do my best to make sure they were not on any sites with material that was beyond the appropriate and necessary level of the topic at hand. A simple search for sexual abuse in sport can bring up some sites that are not appropriate for the school setting or children. If the wifi had consistently worked in our classroom, the data issue would be nonexistent and a large number of the inappropriate sites would be blocked by the network. However, there were times when the wifi was working and it blocked websites that I had asked the students to access or websites that I needed to access for my lessons. Often times, YouTube would be blocked, so I would have to download videos on my home network to show them in class. While reading this article, I thought of another example of context collapse that I am sure must be an issue very frequently experienced by students living in the dorms. The school’s Wifi network is available to students living in the dorms and is used by them for both academic and personal use. Of course, this is a potential issue for any student using school property or the school wifi to access the internet, but more so for those that are connected to the network at all times, like those living on campus. At some point, off-campus students go home, giving them the option to access personal material through their home internet connection. Students living on campus are never off of the network, creating more restrictions to the material they are permitted to access and also reducing their freedom and privacy as anytime they are on the institution’s wifi, they have to abide by their guidelines. This means that the IT department has access to what websites they are accessing and for how long. It also means that they have less of a distinction between and control of their personal and academic life. I remember when I lived in the dorms during undergrad, a lot of students were caught illegally downloading music because they were doing it on the school server and their activity was being monitored.