Social Technology and the Middle Level Child

Balancing opportunity and risk

Why is texting so powerful?

• Self regulated speech- when teens are trying to communicate, there are so many variables to consider (body language, appearance, see words before you say) The ability to
  regulate what you are saying.
• Removes social cues-
• More efficient- can respond to relevant components of conversation instead of everything
• Asynchronous-
• Digital native/immigrant- just because they are young, doesn’t mean they understand how to use the tech. The main difference is the expectations of technology vs limitations

Opportunities

• Social barriers to learning- Academic conversations are dominated by the academic elite and the social elite. The rest of the class is not able to communicate equally – especially the marginalized students.
• Poll anywhere questions to allow students to ask questions about topics that they are uncomfortable with. Example- in
  health class on menstruation, at the end of lesson, had students think of a
  question (if you and I were alone in this room and you could ask one
  question….), wait 90 sec. Have
  them text questions in to “Poll anywhere”. Great feedback to spot misconceptions for reteaching.
• Another example- discussion of religion where each account was created by teacher, so teacher knows who each poster is, but class mates do not know each others post ides.

The inverted classroom- we are going from the information expert to the concept shepherd. Re imagine the learning environment.
Provide different ways to allow the students to access content

Extend the classroom footprint. If students that access to multiple events. Cultural, historical and social access.

No longer need to “I’ll get back to you on that”, instead have the kids look it up.

Take a picture of the board to take notes/homework for absent friends.

Friend your students on FB. If there were more of that, probably less cyber-bullying, more connection Check with your union.admin first.

Sociology of profile pix- girls with overhead shot- “I have boob” (sexual awareness)

Sphere of Influence

• Pretechnolgy-what you could touch
• With the Phone-extended verbal connection
• TV- extended visual and connection
• The internet extends the social sphere
• Access to information, access to people access to place

The new grounding

• Being grounded is dead as well know it- "go ahead and send me to my room"
  
• Text=primary communication
• The thing they value the most, is the first thing we take away. cell phones

Sexting- Kids are sexually emergent in their understanding of themselves. Puppy love is one of the strongest emotions. Sexting is
often not related to promiscuity, but rather related to the relationship.

Cell phone-sniping trying to take pictures- up skirt pictures

General harassment

• -embarrassing pics forwarded or posted
• student/teacher victims
• sexual exploitation- take pictures in locker room

Forwarding emails-

• Text bombing- new phone with limited plan, so kids gather and send a billion messages to flood over limits
• Textual harassment- web pages stay up, permanency of sites where a few “words” would be forgotten
• Stranger danger- the greatest risk from people they know. But also build relationship with strangers

How do we deal with this?

• Pencil vs technology
• If a person wrote a threat, would we take away their pencil? No, so why do we take away their cell phone for cyber bullying>
• Model effective practice. What is a good post.etc.

Jon Landis

jonlandis@me.com