Sorry, I just couldn’t resist using DOPA and meme in the same sentence!!
Over the weekend, my RSS aggregator seemed to be flooded with commentary on the USA’s Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) of 2006. While it is easy to resonate with sentiments which imply all politicians are dopey and just dont get it, I tried to digest as many facts as possible and keep an eye out for responses from blogging teachers in my own geography. If you are looking for a shortcut to the facts, check out my delicious tag - I will try to keep only the best of the best fact sites there.
UPDATE:
An important USA perspective from Barbara Ganley fresh from BlogHer - the Digital Divide angle is one that resonates with me - because I have discovered that only teachers who have computers (and expensive Australian ‘fraud-band’) at home can blog effectively:
“but no talk about legislation that will deepen the digital divide by making blogs and other social networking sites out of reach for kids without computers in the home, and force those who do use the sites underground to form their communities. Read Danah Boyd’s inspired research on MySpace and adolescents…”
As for responses from teachers in South Australia, there are two that jumped out at me and got me thinking hard about a positive way forward. Firstly, Graham Wegner’s post U.S.D.O.P.A makes the observation that most social networking is already blocked for schools here in South Australia and ends with the very insightful comment:“Makes it kind of hard to teach socially responsible online behaviour when the windows to the outside world are blacked out”
Second, Al Upton points out that edublogs-now-accessible-in-decs-schools-and-preschools and offers to help those of us who want to get blogging happening in South Australian schools. Al’s optimistic tone and use of the word ‘CELEBRATE’ got me thinking about ways we can show leadership and model good behavior in a world where, unfortunately, responsible officers will be forced to implement policies where ‘everything is blocked by default’ - or as Graham puts it ‘the windows to the outside world are blacked out’.
So, if we assume that the authorities who need to show a duty of care to our kids will begin by blocking access to most of the interesting (ie potentially powerful for both good and evil) parts of the social web what are the smartest things we can do to prototype ways forward? To my geeky mind, one of the most strategic points of leverage lives in the concept of ‘namespaces that represent communities of practice‘ - like edublogs.org as mentioned by Al. Let me try to explain what I mean by this:
- If most of the social web is blocked by default, it is reasonably easy to implement policies which unblock (or white-list) certain DNS namespaces.
- If these ‘white-listed’ namespaces represent communities of practice then it is possible to monitor the behavior of each community so that it earns the right to remain ‘white-listed’ over time. The community can set standards and self moderate.
- These communities will be able to develop and model techniques for dealing with all the nasty elements of humankind - from disagreeable content to online predators. I have teenage kids, and I want them to learn how to be ’streetwise’ on the social web - I know this is MY responsibility but I suspect some of the most important lessons they learn won’t come from me.
I know this approach is only one small step and that it won’t address all scenarios BUT, I cannot think of a better place to start. If you have better ideas let me know!! Otherwise, here is my suggestion for affirmative action:
- Build a list of namespaces like edublogs.org that represent social web communities that might care about being accessible from schools.
- Work with each community to find ways of setting standards which make access from schools a safe thing to implement.
- When we have a decent, credible list of namespaces, start lobbying for policies which will cause these namespaces to be accessible by default from schools in our area.
Lets not be content to sit back and join the chorus of whingers, lets get on the front foot and begin to show how the vast potential of the social web can be used for good in schools.
Fang - Mike Seyfang
