Hello Internet! My Name Is...

There's a saying out there that goes like this: The Internet never forgets. In fact, this saying has spawned a blog in of itself (enjoy, ladies). In this day and age, there is no limit to the depths of the Ol' Interwebs, with both treasure and trash awaiting those brave souls willing to dive down far enough. Daniel J. Solove provided a beautiful example in The Future of Reputation when he described the hilariously awful accident of communication from a law student to his colleagues a prestigious law firm. "[T]he email and the apology soon became the toast of the Internet...If you run a Google search on the person’s name, you can still pull up the emails in an instant" (2007). Nowadays, even simple mistakes are no longer simple if the location their made is online.

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A Case for Cliches: Ethics, Technology and the Classroom

Is it more unethical to allow threats to students/schools (see list above) or to deny students/teachers access to instructionally-relevant Web-based tools and content?

When considering the difficult situation of how to handle access to technology in a classroom – ie, if, how, where and why to block – I believe there is no one right answer where ethics are involved. In many schools, blocking is implemented to preserve the security and efficiency of the school's precious computer system. Is this worse than denying open access to all the Internet has available, including instructionally-relevant content? No. Keeping a school's entire system is far more important than allowing access to potentially dangerous content and viruses. A few lessons or papers may suffer, but that's far preferable than losing an entire server's worth of data.

What does this mean for the classroom, however? Well, it pains me to say this as an English teacher, but I feel we must take comfort in cliches. What do I mean by this? Well, when all the debate comes down to it, there comes a point when we must “make the most of a bad situation” and even sometimes choose “the lesser of two evils”. In fact, a teacher's wish for free access for their students might even be a case of “be careful what you wish for”. Let me explain...

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“So the big deal about blogs is that they gave people like the power of the media, and created the personal kind of news that appeals to a high number of small audiences...There is likely a group of people out there who want to hear what you have to say" (Lefever, 2007).

I always knew there were a lot of blogs out there, but actually thinking about the sheer number and complexity of this vast network is like being a grain of sand and trying to conceive of what the French Riviera is like. Technorati.com alone counts over 1.2 million blogs currently available on the Internet, and I'm sure a few more have been created in the hour since I found that statistic (2011). However, in my first post to this blog, I mentioned that the only reason I hadn't made one before is because I couldn't conceive of anyone really being interested in what I had to say. However, now that this class has given me the opportunity to spout on and on about the education system – something I feel quite strongly about – I have hope that I can provide some helpful and possibly even interesting information out to the web at large.

“The World Wide Web is the Gutenberg printing press of modern times" (Shelly & Gunter, 2010).

I love this statement. Found near the end of Chapter 2 in our textbook, I'm truly struck by how simple and true it is. Information is now more extensive and accessible than ever before, and now students do not have to be passive receptors of that information. Instead, they can create and share and even influence the learning of others. Each new day, week, month and year brings more and more outlets and inputs for information. Data upon data, and format upon format. This chapter, as well as the two videos in our Module, made me truly examine not only the Internet, but how I interact with it everyday.

To start with, I love Google Reader, and I don't mean that lightly. In fact, if Google Reader was a man, my love for him would be the kind to inspire Shakespearean-like movies starring pretty but untalented actors. Ahem. Moving on.

Besides my classmates' blogs and educational one of the sort, I follow about a dozen blogs on my other favorite subject: food. My favorite food bloggers are a joy to read, but a pain to keep up without my Google Reader. Also, whenever I open up my iGoogle – where I keep my email, calendar, feeds and personal notes to myself all together in one handy-dandy, multi-tasking glory page – and my Reader tells me I have a new recipe from a spunky chef/photographer in New York, I get a thrill. The Reader plays beautifully right into my personal style of organization, otherwise known as “little piles”.

It wasn't until watching "The Networked Student" that I realized that my use of Google Reader was just one portion of my very own Personal Learning Network. Mind you, this network was mostly focused on my personal interests of books, food and crafts, but a network just the same! And now, with Graduate School and the wealth of resources and ideas floating around waiting for me to collect and utilize them, a new network is born. I can have my Firefox browser up with a multitude of tabs arranged with blogs, bookmarks, scholarly articles, and directories, while at the same time pulling up recorded Webinars to watch and reference in my own projects or online lessons.

The only downside to this arrangement is the very real possibility of multitasking gone too far. The situation is all too common: a savvy technology user has lots of media open and is surfing through a smooth rating, taking and applying information at an astounding rate, until the point is reached where they can no longer focus on just one thing at a time and everything begins to blur and productivity takes a dive. Thankfully, with a trained teacher to act as their "Learning Concierge", students can master the idea of “Information Management” to avoid the pitfalls of too much stimulus (Networked Student, 2007).

"By providing a variety of learning tools, the Internet and the Web are transforming the way teachers instruct and the way students learn basic skills and core subjects. These changes have brought the Web to the forefront of instructional strategies in education in a very short period" (Shelly & Gunter, 2010).

The Internet and the World Wide Web are an ideal tool for teachers and students, providing the kind of options never before available. It is our job as we serve both these positions to learn, grow and be ready to make the best possible use of whatever we have and whatever new comes next.

References

Drexler, W. (2008). The networked student. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwM4ieFOotA

Lefever, L. (2007). Blogs in plain english. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI

Shelly, G.B., & Gunter, G. (2010). Teachers discovering computers. Boston, MA: Cenage Learning.

Technorati.com. (2011, February). Blog directory. Retrieved from http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/