Media Use for Parents

Last night, I gave a presentation at the PEP program in Kensington on developing a household approach to Media Use for younger kids, aged 6-14. From my perspective it went generally well, but not as well as I would have liked. I know when I feel "on point" but I felt a bit scattered and I feel it came through in the presentation. A clear throughline, a clear theme is critical when delivering content of such magnitude. It's too easy to throw out facts and a bunch of anecdotes without actually giving parents anything to walk away with. I always want them to leave with a message in mind and a clear plan of action. Can you tell I am Type A? Last night, I did not leave feeling as if everyone got that POA.

There was a good question raised that I must ponder, really think hard about: Now that computing is ubiquitous and pervasive, how can you restrict usage by using things like filters? Even if you as a parent are sitting with the child and helping them process that information they see (another one of my messages), you can't always be there. How can you possibly require computers in public spaces--one of the key messages I send to parents of younger kids--when things like their iPod Touch and other devices can access Internet. No iPods or iPads in their rooms? How realistic is that? I answered that a guideline should be set and that they will likely no abide that guideline completely, but as long as you set the guideline and explain why it is being set, the intention is clear to the child that you have boundaries on the issue--that THEY should have boundaries on the issue. But I'm not completely satisfied with that answer and seek to come up with a better one.

Having said that, I promised I would post the presentation here, and so I have:

Open publication - Free publishing

The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies By Their 20s

Great article in the New York Times about a new generation gap created by even newer technologies: The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s. Greatest insight: "My friend’s 3-year-old, for example, has become so accustomed to her father’s multitouch iPhone screen that she approaches laptops by swiping her fingers across the screen, expecting a reaction." Imagine how low-tech school is going to seem to her!

Image: Oksana Badrak

Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out

The title of my blog, Ed Tech Axis, came from the struggle I feel it is to help students & teachers integrate their personal use of technology with their educational uses. Students who have no idea how to format a Word document might have the most pimped-out My Space page on the planet, complete with CSS editing. Teachers who can't live without their Blackberry can't figure out how to use a wiki. So, it is with much excitement that I post about a book that has just been published. I read about it on Dana Boyd's "Apophenia" blog:

"Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth's social and recreational use of digital media. "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out" fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings—at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces."

You can even get it in downloadable PDF. Review to follow.

Avatars and Self Esteem

Over at Technology on a Shoestring, he recently blogged about an NPR podcast about Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. To save you the time of listening to the entire podcast, I'll quote the part that I think is relevant:

"One of the more interesting findings they observed was that when a person picks a better looking avatar from a set of possible avatars, the student will take on some of the attributes of the avatar. For example, subjects were asked to fill out an online dating form in which they picked people they thought they could reasonably date. The subjects who had selected a good looking avatar filled out an online dating form where they projected better possible matches. I should mention that the dating service form was filled out an hour later and that the avatar was not used or associated with the dating system."

Though these students are a lot older than the ones whose "self identity" is in the beginning stages of development, a la Erikson, it still indicates a positive influence from using an online avatar. As many reservations as I have expressed about this phenomenon, the evidence for it seems to be gently edging towards significant.

Seeing Knowledge Differently

This weekend's Baltimore Sun reprinted an article by Lisa Anderson entitled, "D'oh! We're Stumped in Knowledge Tests." The basic premise of the article is that American youth tends to fare poorly on examinations of memorized fact. For instance, we score terribly on civics and history tests and students simply cannot see the purpose of memorizing a poem. The author does a good job, I feel, of explaining that our students see knowledge differently in that it is something ephemeral, to be "found" and not necessarily "remembered." Anderson explains:

Ironically, Web sites demand that people read, but their information often
is more to be accessed than retained, more to be consumed than assessed and
more to be gulped than savored, unlike a book, a poem or a lengthy
article.

Later, she reminds us that older generations have almost always lamented the laziness of the young compared to themselves. It's true, the younger generation is almost always softer than the ones that came before--unless some hardship serves to shape them differently. Of course that is the case. I just wonder if that complacency toward remembering information makes this generation more likely to repeat the mistakes of the past. It calls to mind the Edmund Burke quote: "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." And then there's another one of his famous quotes : “All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”

The Moral Instict Online

My mother sent me an article she had torn out of a New York Times Magazine called "The Moral Instinct" by Steven Pinker. Firstly, I was so thrilled to receive something in the mail that wasn't a bill, so I hungrily sat down to read the article. Secondly, she sent it because she thought it applied to the line of research I'm informally conducting on moral behavior and how it applies to social networking. The article spends some time discussing what he calls the "five moral spheres" of fairness, purity, loyalty, authority, and harm. He explains that morality itself seems to be universal, but how these five spheres are weighted depends on the culture in which you live, and sometimes even in which subsection of that culture. For instance, a liberal will feel more strongly about harm and fairness and a conservative, according to Pinker, will feel strongly about all five.

So how does this apply to online interactions like IM and social networking? He gives an interesting example about 2,000 people in various countries being asked this question: If you saw a trolley about to fly off the track and you could save six people by flipping a switch on the track, but then one person on the other track would be killed, would you do it? Most folks felt that, yes, the one life justified the six saved lives. However, when the question was switched around to suggest that you'd have to throw one fat man into the way of the trolley in order to save those folks, not many people agreed that they'd do it. There was something about the "hands-on" nature versus the "flipping a switch." So, online, are we really "hands-on" or are we just "flipping a switch" when we throw out mean words or post a picture we took of friend when she wasn't at her best? When the f-2-f element is lost, does that morality change the same way it changes when we have to throw the fat man in front of the train with our own hands?

Contemplating a Name Change

This whole line of questioning that shapes my blogposts, that question of whether kids have a divide between their home use of technology and their school use, might actually suggest that I am a digital immigrant. The fact that I even perceive a divide there might suggest that I see technology as something that can be separated into social/educational use. I say all this because I've read another article (yes, another one), this time from the Annals of the Association of American Geographers from back in 2002. Gil Valentine and Sarah L. Holloway did a bunch of research in the English countryside and summarized it in their article, "Cyberkids? Exploring Children’s Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds."

Here's an excerpt:
"Our empirical data shows that children’s off-line worlds are incorporated into their on-line worlds in four ways. First, some children’s on-line identities are direct (re)presentations of their off-line identities and activities. Second, even when children construct alternative identities on-line, these are often situated or contingent upon their off-line identities and peer group cultures, in that they are constructed to enhance their off-line identities or to compensate for perceived off-line inadequacies. Third, children’s on-line worlds reproduce off-line class and gender relations. Finally, the limitations of the technology children use and the economic and temporal realities of their everyday lives affect the nature and extent of their on-line activities" (313).

Hmm....maybe there IS NO Ed-Tech Axis. My goodness. What's a girl to do now?

More on Identity

Sherry Turkle (MIT) wrote an article entitled "How Computers Change the Way We Think" in the Jan 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education. I thought this snippet was particularly interesting and conflicts with the somewhat relieving information I posted about last....

"Avatars or a self? Chat rooms, role-playing games, and other technological venues offer us many different contexts for presenting ourselves online. Those possibilities are particularly important for adolescents because they offer what Erik Erikson described as a moratorium, a time out or safe space for the personal experimentation that is so crucial for adolescent development. Our dangerous world -- with crime, terrorism, drugs, and AIDS -- offers little in the way of safe spaces. Online worlds can provide valuable spaces for identity play.
But some people who gain fluency in expressing multiple aspects of self may find it harder to develop authentic selves. Some children who write narratives for their screen avatars may grow up with too little experience of how to share their real feelings with other people. For those who are lonely yet afraid of intimacy, information technology has made it possible to have the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship."

Hmm....the research continues.
Image Credit: http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/

Forming Identity

If you've read any of my previous blogposts or forum posts lately, you know that I've been on a mad mission to explore whether there are negative effects for children who are developing their sense of identity at the same time as manufacturing multiple identities online. Today, I found the definitive source...written four years ago, would you believe? In a book of journal articles titled Children in the Digital Age edited by Calvert, Jordan and Cocking, I found an essay by Sandra L. Calvert. In the essay, she explores "Identity Construction on the Internet." I'm excited because she basically asks the exact same questions I have been asking myself and provides some interesting insights. Just as with most things in life, the answer is not simple. It all depends on what developmental psychologist you follow!

1. Erikson would likely say that as children are forming their "single unitary identity," they are merely using the Internet as a place in which to experiment, to try on various identities before settling on one.

2. Jung believed in a single identity (personae) as well, but he integrated these "archetypal images" into his theory--the mother, child, healer, king, witch, healer, etc. The Internet, again, provides a sort of playground on which children can take on the mantle of various archetypes before integrating one or many of them.

3. Social (Symbolic) Interactionists like Mead would say that none of us have a single identity, but that we shuffle various identities as we shift into different environments and social situations. Thus, the Internet is simply an extension of that exploration and construction of those parts of self.

Hallelujah! So the answer seems fairly clear, that the nefarious nature I thought might be intrinsic is not actually there. EXCEPT (and there's always an except isn't there?) that they are exploring and trying on all these identities in a public sphere, one that is timeless and placeless. In 5 or 10 years, a copy of that Web page will still be around on "The Way Back Machine". It's like a high school yearbook with all our worst school photos (identities) ONLINE for all to see for the rest of time.

Added to that embarrassment is the potential danger involved in exploring archetypes or identities that may bring personal safety into question. The real issue is how MUCH information children are putting out there about themselves, not what kind, it seems. Finally, there is the possibility that a child may be confronted with images and behavior he or she is not developmentally ready to process. But, I guess that's a different topic altogether.

Social Networking, Avatars and Child Development

A few more peices fell into place today. I finally had some time to sit down and begin the awesome task of finding the budding research about child development, specifically identity issues, and online avatars/social networking. It's time-consuming work because there is no definitive text. Marshall McLuhan started thinking about these issues in the 1970s, and of course Piaget and Erikson both performed copious research on identity in general. However, I have not come across anything substantial. Today, I learned about Dr. Marina Bers from an article in the Boston Globe. She has created a social networking space for children suffering from serious medical conditions. That's not really what's interesting, though. She's interesting because she has done research on identity and computer technology. I emailed her. I've got my fingers crossed. I also read a blog post by Larry Johnson about Avatars and identity. One of the folks who posted a response was a technology teacher in Florida. She's supposedly conducting research AS WE SPEAK on the very issue. I emailed her too.

Maybe they can help me figure out if I need to be more than lightly concerned about the students at my school having two (sometimes three or four) such disparate identities. Maybe they just learn to juggle identities like they juggle tasks. Maybe their brain really is able to separate out what is real and what is online. Maybe.