John Finch

This afternoon we heard from another presenter, John Finch, who talked about the dangers surrounding technology, but also around the myths. It was interesting to hear a different perspective on some of the topics, including cyber bullying. I know that, up until today, I felt that cyber bullying was an issue that has been on the rise with all of the technology that surrounds us. I was interested to hear that the data actually shows nothing of the sort. Now that I hear it from another perspective, it makes sense. Bullying has always been an issue- it is just being done in a different context these days.

One thing that stuck with me from the presentation was the information reported back from "Tell Them From Me". The website measures how engaged students are in school, school completion as well as how safe the student feels in school. The survey was done in over 80 new schools in the spring and fall of 2012 and found that on average about 25% of students are bullied physically, emotionally and verbally each week. Interestingly, cyber bullying was only reported 8-12% of the time. This surprised me- I would have assumed that the cyber bullying numbers would have been much higher. It makes me wonder if the cyber bullying topic is being blown out of proportion in the media? I had never thought of the Amanda Todd story as a blackmail story either, it has always been portrayed as cyber bullying and so I never thought any deeper about it.

I was heartbroken to hear that the highest percentage of bullies, as reported by students, were actually the teachers in the schools. The thought had never crossed my mind that after all of the thought and efforts we put into anti-bullying campaigns, the adults could actually be the biggest problem. Socio-economic status is apparently what a lot of kids feel bullied about, specifically the clothing that they wear. I would never purposely treat any student differently because of what they wear, but I will make sure to be mindful of it now.

I appreciated John's point that we need to keep parents in the loop when we are using social media in our classrooms. Letting them know our reasoning for a class website or any other media and getting informed consent from them is one measure that we need to take in order to use technology responsibly. It's a very important step to take in order to protect ourselves and also to be respectful of parents' wishes.

I was interested to hear what John had to say about referencing as well. One of the things that I worry about with using all of the technology out there is that I will unknowingly break some sort of copyright law or something similar. Clearly I understand that if you take someone's words, pictures or videos from print or from the web, you need to reference them. I just worry that with all of the small print involved with most things that I might accidentally teach my students or show my students something that is somehow unethical.

Overall I enjoyed listening to John today- he definitely gave me a lot to think about in terms of technology, copyright and other ethical issues.